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Is there a way of controlling the max distance from which a custom light source (spot light from Blender in this case) is visible in MSFS?
Wattage and the "custom distance"-option doesn't seem to do much in terms of how far my flashing spotlights are visible. I need it to be visible from approximately 7-10 km away. It is currently "only" visible from 2 km out.
Hello.
"FlightSimLights" have no range parameter. It's handled on engine side and can't be configured at the moment.
Regards,
Sylvain
Thank you for your reply. It's sad that one cannot adjust the range by an effect of the light source (like in real life) - Wattage > Lumen = Range, essentially. This does not seem to apply in MSFS.
Blender, as you probably already know, does not have the same selections available. I cannot choose the object type in the same way as in 3Ds Max, so the custom light source is just a regular spotlight.
Perhaps the engine's range-interpretation of custom light sources could be "parented" to the "wattage" (in Blender)/intensity (in 3Ds Max), that is being transfered into the .gltf-file?
Are you planning on implementing such a feature as described and requested with custom view-distance of custom light-sources?
This applies mainly for non-airport projects that adds collision lights to buildings/structures, as this is where we need to be able to see the lights from further away.
Thanks in advance!
Hello.
Nothing planned at the moment.
We are going towards exposing scenery features outside airports so lights could be considered as well.
I suggest you create an idea to describe your needs and have it upvoted.
Regards,
Sylvain
If it's an airport try to build your own LightPresets within the airport.
Those are light dots with lots of different settings you can try. There's no distance parameter neither as far as I know but depending on their intensity, direction etc. they may be adjustable to be visible for a much greater distance.
Just an idea.
In theory you could create a fake airport closeby that has an invisible runway and is set as CLOSED=TRUE so it doesn't become visible anywhere. But you'd need to be aware that in doing so you would block an ICAO code. Which makes this something that should only be done with VERY careful consideration.
I'm not sure however if the closed tag would make the lights invisible as well.
I have made several lighthouses along the Finnish south coast. The lights can be added, blinking or rotating in Blender. But there seems to be no way of making them visible for more than 1-2km away. Lighthouse lights should be visible for several nautical miles, some even more than 10 nm. The same problem applies to warning lights on buildings and high masts etc.
We really need a way to control the visibility distance of such lights. In Blender it would be easiest to let the wattage of the light control the distance, imho.
A way to ensure a (small) scenery object (such as the lighthouse blinking light) stays displayed when it is displayed at a distance is to 'fool' MSFS into 'thinking that the scenery object is larger than it is.
This can be achieved (using Blender) by adding a mesh plane to the scenery object and place it below your scenery object and set the MSFS material to MSFS INVISIBLE and then joining all the meshes into one (select All meshes then press ctrl J).
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