• There seems to be an uptick in Political comments in recent months. Those of us who are long time members of the site know that Political and Religious content has been banned for years. Nothing has changed. Please leave all political and religious comments out of the forums.

    If you recently joined the forums you were not presented with this restriction in the terms of service. This was due to a conversion error when we went from vBulletin to Xenforo. We have updated our terms of service to reflect these corrections.

    Please note any post refering to a politician will be considered political even if it is intended to be humor. Our experience is these topics have a way of dividing the forums and causing deep resentment among members. It is a poison to the community. We appreciate compliance with the rules.

    The Staff of SOH

  • Server side Maintenance is done. We still have an update to the forum software to run but that one will have to wait for a better time.

An Effects/MCX Question

falcon409

falcon409

Moderator
Staff member
This is one of a line of rwy lights at White Birch Airfield (4N8). when I first placed them, the light was huge, way too large for what I wanted so I loaded the effect in the editor and reduced the particles and radius and got it to where it looks much better. The problem is that after tweaking it, the light is no longer inside the bowl like it was originally. I can make the adjustments to get it centered again, but I can't find a way to get MCX to show the actual light. . .only the yellow position cube, so my adjustments will be doing it blind basically. . .I'll have to adjust then save, then load the sim. . . .but in MCX there's no way to tell which way to go based on the way it's placed in the Sim. Any suggestions?

rwy_lights.jpg
 
Hi F,
Find the exact co-ordinates of the light. In MCX you can relocate items, just change the location of the bowl to match that of the light, and hopefully that will be it.....

Cheers

Shessi
 
Shessi said:
Hi F,
Find the exact co-ordinates of the light. In MCX you can relocate items, just change the location of the bowl to match that of the light, and hopefully that will be it.....
Cheers
Shessi
Click to expand...
Taking a quote from "Lost in Space". . . "Will Robinson, that does not compute"

Here is what I see in MCX: Are you saying to get the coordinates from the sim? If so, that won't work. . .that would move the cone to the position of the light (I assume that's what you mean) and that isn't where I want the cone, even for the short distance it would move. I want the cone to remain in it's position and get the light matched up correctly with the cone. I've posted the question in FSDevelopers as well, maybe someone there can suggest a way to get the light centered without moving the object to meet it.
 
Ed, last time I had this problem, I tried to estimate in meters how offset was the effect in sim from where I wanted it to be and then I moved the location of the attachment point in MCX by the opposite amount. So then in MCX the effect would show misplaced but it looked OK in the sim. This trial and error process took a couple of cycles to complete.

The modeled-in approach I'm proposing for the light will spare you this problem. As said, I will send you something later today.
 
Dimus said:
Ed, last time I had this problem, I tried to estimate in meters how offset was the effect in sim from where I wanted it to be and then I moved the location of the attachment point in MCX by the opposite amount. So then in MCX the effect would show misplaced but it looked OK in the sim. This trial and error process took a couple of cycles to complete.

The modeled-in approach I'm proposing for the light will spare you this problem. As said, I will send you something later today.
Click to expand...
I tried moving the attachment point and it seemed no matter how I tried to place it, it never was quite right. . .almost like there was an invisible barrier holding it just out of reach, lol
 
spokes2112 said:
Offsets on the .fx emitter?
Click to expand...
The X,Y and Z Offsets are at 0.00

NOTE: Roman, I just realized that the shadow (ground shadows turned on in FSX) isn't correct for the position of the cone. . .but the light, does match the shadow. In MCX the object is offset from the center points (red,green). Could that be the cause?
 
In this case the answer came from GaryGB at FSDevelopers:
[FONT=&quot]Hi Ed:[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]*.Fx (and certain types of 'Shadow' objects) are offset from the MDL AttachPoint when DrawCall Batching is used; try disabling DrawCall Batching for the MDL. [/FONT]
idea.gif

[FONT=&quot]GaryGB
Click to expand...
[/FONT]
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top