I’d like to pick the veteran airport creators’ brains on this one…
The MSFS 2024 SDK added the ability to add black backgrounds to PaintedLine objects. Has anybody came up with a way to replicate the black backgrounds under PaintedLines using the MSFS 2020 SDK? I thought I had it when I added an asphalt material to the PaintedLine (in this case, a hold short line), but all that did was replace the whole PaintedLine with an asphalt rectangle. Priority settings for the PaintedLine objects and the added material would have been awesome here, but whatever. So… has anybody had success with black backgrounds under PaintedLine objects?
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It appears I just didn’t look long enough in the materials for an optional material to replace the default. I found a material named INI_LINES_WHITE_CENTERLINE that appears to have all the default lines with black backgrounds. Selecting this material as the “Optional Material” in the PaintedLine properties appears to work. There may be a better option in the materials list but I stopped searching once I found a material that seemed to do what I wanted.
If you use a material that the user of the scenery doesn’t have, it will cause visual issues, so I would recommend only using your own materials or materials from the fs-base package in 2020, to guarantee that the user will have it. ini_xxx sounds like it may be from an inibuilds scenery.
You make a good point about not assuming everyone has access to the material file I cited. I’m not too worried about visual issues because if the end user doesn’t have the particular material file, it should default back to the deficient… er… default Asobo lines material file. Why they never did a black background set of lines I’ll never figure out. Even small airports are using them in some places.
I actually got the idea to try searching material files again from BennyBoy444’s tutorial on creating custom Painted Lines:
He started with a material containing the lines and customized them, which got me wondering what I had in my Material library.
The add-on sceneries I have in my 2020 Community folder are:
airport-US-ARMY-DavisonAAF-KDAA-oozler_YBJg8
flightbeam-kden
flightbeam-kiad
The only other folders in the Community folder are for GSX Pro (2 folders), Navigraph (8 folders), FlyByWire (2 folders - 1 for the A320 Neo and 1 for External Tools/Simbridge), and PMDG for the B738 (2 folders). I suppose the INI_ material file could have been brought in by any one of them, but when all else fails you can follow BennyBoy444’s tutorial and make a custom material file from the default.