Dotted lines
Dotted lines consist of lined up dots. Use them for night lighting effects like taxiway side or center lights. The dots' color and spacing can be set. If you want to position dots accurately, there is an option which will only draw a dot at every shape point.
It is important to know that the visible range of dots depends on the dotted line's scale. The larger the scale, the further you can see it. It is recommended to use a scale of 0.5, in order to get full positioning accuracy. Set the scale used for dotted lines in the FILE\ PROJECT settings... menu item (click the SCALES tab).
Don't forget to disable the DAY option (VISIBILITY tab), otherwise dots will be visible at all times.
Notes on drawing dotted lines
There are no special restriction for dotted lines, but keep in mind that huge amounts of visible dots have an impact on frame-rates. When drawing taxiway side or center dot-lines, keep lines short (200 - 300 meters) and set a short visible range (VISIBILITY tab). In real life, taxiway lighting cannot be seen from very far.
Setting dotted line properties
In order to access the settings dialog, make sure only one dotted line is selected. Double-click anywhere on the map to open the dialog. You can also access the settings through the SELECTION\ PROPERTIES... menu item or by left-clicking the polygon handle.
Enter a comment in the COMMENT box. Comments are only there to help you identifying shapes. They appear in the SCASM source file. This is useful in case some hand coding is needed.
Dotted lines are always colored. Only 22 palette colors are available. Click the preview box to set the color. A dialog will be shown. Two types of colors are available. Preferably use the short range colors for taxiway light effects.
The VISIBILITY settings influence the shape's appearance. The most important option is the visual RANGE. Is the viewer's distance to the shape's center greater than the value set here, the shape will be not drawn. You should pay great attention to those values, since setting too large ranges for all shapes will lead to a bad performance of FS. The bottom line is: the less FS has to draw, the higher frame-rates. Small details cannot be seen from far away anyway, so use short ranges for such. To give you an idea what reasonable values are, check out the list below:
Type of light Visual range (meters) Bright 1,000 - 4,000 Taxiway lights 400 - 600 If you are not confident with the metric system, simply use the CONVERTER to convert miles, feet, ... to meters.
Sometimes it is necessary to hide a shape at certain times of day. Push any of the the three buttons (DAY, NIGHT, DUSK/DAWN) to make the shape visible at the chosen time of day. For example, releasing the DAY button will make the shape invisible at daytime.
GroundMaker has a layer option for dotted lines. It is not recommended to use it though. Shapes are drawn in the following order by default: polygons, lines, dotted lines and FS runways. Layers are usually used to force shapes above the runways (use layer 28).
3D taxiway lights
To improve realism at your airport, use the new 3D taxiway light feature. Each 3D lights is made up of a small texture which rotated to the viewer in FS, its Y axis always pointing up (billboarding technique). Since most lights have a 'cylindrical' shape the effect is unnoticeable, even when moving around the light. 3D lights are drawn using the DOTTED LINE tool.
In the DOTTED LINE's settings dialog, select one of the available 3D TAXIWAY LIGHTS items. Note that the DEFAULT item uses a build-in texture. A custom texture can be set for each USER light. Lights will be visible at shape points only. In other words, there will be as may lights as there are points in the DOTTED LINE shape.
Set you USER light textures in the FILE\ PROJECT SETTINGS... dialog. Click the EXTRA FEATURES tab and select one the user lights in the drop-down box. Browse for a texture. You will notice a round circle on the texture. It represents a light source (smooth dot) which you can position on the texture by dragging it. Set its color by clicking on the small box on the right.
If you edited the USER 2 light for example, you'd have to select the 3D TAXIWAY LIGHTS <USER 2> item from the drop-down box in the dotted line's settings dialog in order to see it in FS.