add streetlights?

[iVIPER21]

hey scenery design guru's,
i think that night flying in fs9 is lacking many things. one of the most evident things i notice when flying at night in real life is the way street lights help to give reference to the height of the ground below.

what i'd like to do is create extremely simple 3D streetlights (to minimize FPS drop) and add them to urban area streets.  this sounds like quite a daunting task to place every single one in a decent sized city, so i was thinking maybe there is a way to have fs9 add them like how it autogens trees/buildings n such. either way, i'd like to experiment with a few and if it looks good then i'd plug away at it for awhile.

i downloaded EOD and i am wondering what i would use to place them into the scenery. also, is it even possible to do what i am talking about? would there be a way to add a light effect onto the streetlights like there are on the radio-towers (but with yellow/orange/amber instead of red)?

speaking of radio towers.... it seems to me that they are just .bmp files with transparency instead of actual 3D objects. would it be possible to use this technique for what i want to do with the streetlights?

i really think this would make fs9 at night look 100 times better so thanks for all of your help!  ;D

[RollerBall]

Afraid you're on a hiding to nothing here Viper. You could do what you want for specific scenery areas but not 'wholesale' for the whole sim. Even if you could, you would shoot FRs to bits I suspect.

There are already lamp poles in FS9 - if you fly low along a main highway you'll as likely hit one if you're not careful - but they don't light up at night, probably because of what I said above.

You might be able to search through the texture folder to find the day and night textures for them and then try to modify the night ones. However, you wouldn't get the cones of light that I suspect you are looking for.

I did them in Kai Tak but the cones had to be specially coded to turn on and off at the right times and anyone who has the scenery will know that even the 'few' lights I have around the apron and stuff affect FR.

There are some other things as well.

Autogen is contained as an XML file in a folder called 'Autogen'. However, although you can delete chunks to take out autogen such as the fast food restaurants (regular readers will remember a ....ahem.... maniac on the forums a few months ago who was recommending doing just that without saying that is what had been done with his 'magic' FR increasing replacement file) you can't as far as I know add any 'extras' to the XML file because the sim is not programmed to see em.

Also, you have to add objects to 'libraries' using the MakeMdl SDK and all such objects have to be created in GMax (EOD not suitable).

I don't want to deter you (!) but quite a few formidable obstacles here

Roger

[iVIPER21]

thanks for the info RollerBall. i was hoping it wouldn't be too complicated but...  :( yet another thing for M$ to think about for FS2006. i'll still mess around with it a little bit, but scenery is not my area of expertise really, so we'll have to see what happens. who knows, maybe i'll come across some groundbreaking fs9 scenery loophole and bust out my jujitsu on it, lol. thanks again and i'll let ya know if i come across anything.  ::)

[RollerBall]

who knows, maybe i'll come across some groundbreaking fs9 scenery loophole and bust out my jujitsu on it, lol

here's wishing you well