Runway Shadow

[Pat Pattle]

Hi all,

I'm fiddling around with runways again. Even though this runway (building model) is only 10cm off of the ground I get a big shadow with Ankors shaders. It has to be elevated otherwise it starts 'flashing' and disappearing into the airfield texture below it.

Is there a setting in the shader files that can turn this off for a particular model?

 

[Frosty]

Great texture!! It surely looks like proper concrete! Much better than what we have now .

Is your model a textured plane or box?? The lowest I have been able to set my PSP model is 1cm above groundlevel without conflict with the underlying airfield texture or autogen secenery and that is a textured plane. I don't see any significant shadowcasting with that setting nor does it flicker at any distance.

With your runway being 10cm AGL, don't the wheels of the AC look as if they need inflating? Or have you found a way to make the runway model solid? It's hard to tell from your screenie.

 

[Pat Pattle]

Hey Joost! The texture was made by Kevboy some years ago, I have a few different versions.
The runway is just a textured plane with the xdp set as a 'carrier' , I'll try lowering it a bit.

 

[mongoose]

Great texture!! It surely looks like proper concrete! Much better than what we have now .

Is your model a textured plane or box?? The lowest I have been able to set my PSP model is 1cm above groundlevel without conflict with the underlying airfield texture or autogen secenery and that is a textured plane. I don't see any significant shadowcasting with that setting nor does it flicker at any distance.

With your runway being 10cm AGL, don't the wheels of the AC look as if they need inflating? Or have you found a way to make the runway model solid? It's hard to tell from your screenie.

How does this fir in with the brick runways we were trying to develop for Netherlands' Fliegerhirsten? I shall have to revisit those again sometime but maybe Clive can add some help on those.

 

[Frosty]

... The runway is just a textured plane with the xdp set as a 'carrier' ...

Do you mean the 'category=' setting in the .xdp? Mine is set to 'category=airbase'. Does using the 'carrier' label make the runway solid?

How does this fir in with the brick runways we were trying to develop for Netherlands' Fliegerhirsten? I shall have to revisit those again sometime but maybe Clive can add some help on those.

Yours are created with the PSP model as a basis, so they should be 1cm above the ground. The difference is they do not use an alpha channel because there are no lightening holes in the brick texture . They do have a bump map to give the bricks and the seams between them more '3D-ness'.

 

[gecko]

Have you guys considered using decals? These are objects just like the runways in the objects folder, so they can be placed in a facility. An example of a decal is the bomb crater object. In the case of a decal, ModelName value is the name of the texture to be used minus the the .dds extension, such as ModelName="crater" where "crater" refers to crater.dds in the effects/fxtextures folder. This may allow for sharper looking runways without the shadow and flat tire issues that building them as models can create.

 

[Pat Pattle]

Do you mean the 'category=' setting in the .xdp? Mine is set to 'category=airbase'. Does using the 'carrier' label make the runway solid?

No but when we were testing all of this many years ago sometimes the aircraft would explode on the runway and that stopped it. I'm guessing then that using either 'carrier' or 'airbase' can be used.

Have you guys considered using decals? These are objects just like the runways in the objects folder, so they can be placed in a facility. An example of a decal is the bomb crater object. In the case of a decal, ModelName value is the name of the texture to be used minus the the .dds extension, such as ModelName="crater" where "crater" refers to crater.dds in the effects/fxtextures folder. This may allow for sharper looking runways without the shadow and flat tire issues that building them as models can create.

I haven't tried that method yet Daniel but will certainly give it a go. Using a 'building' is the only way I've found so far that can give a decent detailed image. I have played with the mos file as that would seem the most logical place to have one but I cant get a square image to 'tile' the layer selection, it only distorts. Very annoying!

If anyone can fix this I will gladly have their babies.

 

[Pat Pattle]

Further to the above, I have just remembered that the stock airbases have a runway texture, although you wouldn't think so in game! I'll start dismantling those to see what secrets lay inside.

 

[Frosty]

... If anyone can fix this I will gladly have their babies.

Uhm, your eternal gratitude is more than enough but I think I can fix those two problems:

@1 - My logic said this: a runway model is like any 3D model so if you enter its geometry (its max. bounding box), a collision is triggered. But the max. bounding box is no longer used to determine a collision if a damagebox is added. So my solution was to create a damagebox of arbitrary dimensions (but preferably small for obvious reasons) in gmax, attach it to the model's hierarchy and bury it deep underground where you can't enter it with your aircraft/vehicle model. So that's a negative Z-value with no part of the damagebox poking through the runway surface. This way I have created the PSP runway, taxiways and hardstands.

@2 - The runway 'decal' is a .dds texture masked by an alpha channel, which is in the case of runways is "a_square.dds". By manipulating it in the .MOS editor, you change both the alpha mask and the texture, distorting the latter. To remedy this, after bringing the runway to the desired location, rotation and dimensions, go to the 'colour' tab and change the 'scale' values to bring the runway texture back to the intended scale. Use the 'rotation' value to bring the seams between the tiles in line with your runway direction (when talking about your new texture). This way I have created a brick runway for james with brick of nearly real life dimensions and laid in the proper direction (I say "nearly" because there is something like the moiré effect with lines that close to each other. That was a bit of a bummer). I have an illustrated article/'how-to' on this subject. If you want it, let me know.

@ Daniel: I'm with Clive. I know about the runway decal option but I haven't been able to bring my PSP to a sharp, crisp resolution. As a textured model it is, well, quite perfect (can I be so shamelessly content with my own creation?). Additionally, other shapes than square/rectangular seem difficult to achieve with the decal method.

 

[mongoose]

Clive, I am interested to know if you got rid of the shadow. It would be nice if that could replace existing concrete runways.

 

[Pat Pattle]

I'll take another look James,now that the longer evenings have arrived!