@FlyingRaccoon I’m looking at adding orb
lights (red beacons) to the top of buildings. I’ve seen orb lights implemented
elsewhere (eg. the default carrier), but cant figure out how was this done.
Can you pls guide me on how to create these type of lights and attach them to
SimObjects/Regular objects? It must be visible from a distance, bright enough,
etc. An omnidirectional light only seems to produce the light splash, not the
“orb” (light ball)
Hello, it is not iposiblle to use default ones, you need to create a model for
it Crerate smal spehere with standard material. Give it material property to
emitt light , choose normal color and emission color… for emission factor,
put it very high to have bloom efect …[play with that] Just !!! model needs
to have LARGE i mean very LARGE plane or cube and material should be INVISIBLE
(it will not reender inside of MSFS) and that should trigger LOD because round
sphere is now large, to be able to see that light from FAR FAR AWAY 
I
recomend that the model.xml have 4 lods (even fake LODs) for MSFS not to hide
them form distance. Tose are generaly instructions i suppose you know what to
do. Best regards
If your buildings are part of an airport you can avoid the workaround above
and use a combination of Light Presets (found in Properties at the bottom of
the Airport object), and Light Rows. This gives you the proper red beacon
style lights that can be seen miles away without worrying about lods and
models.
A small sphere won’t work, because when zooming away, there will be not enough
texels for the engine to draw (despite the giant cube that is useful only for
the Lod value) If you choose the LOD way, You need to make several spheres,
one per each Lod, enlarging them gradually (E…g Lod 100 sphere with 5cm
diameter, Lod 50 sphere with a 3 meter diameter, Lod 0 spheres with a 20
meters diameter) Than, you will quickly discover that during the day the
spheres are gonna look awful, so you need to wrap the object in a simboject
trying to remove them in daytime Proper solution are light presets and
lightrows, you just need to be in an airport test radious: Simply slam an
airport object in your scenery with the icao of the nearest airport and
enlarge the airport radious according to your needs, don’t touch anything else
in the airport object rather than lights rows and light preset Obviously this
solutions can’t work for larger sceneries like we love Vfr, so a proper
solution from Asobo is gonna be welcome. Solution are light rows/presets
outside of airports 
You are right … but taking in consioderation that lightpreset do not scale
with distance… for someone who do not know how to start my solution is colse
ehough to start. Lightpreset is imposible to include in model but in scenery,
and airport object is needed, as you stated. I think LIGHT object is needed
for material/model/ to be able to represent bulb. Or som aditional parameters
for ASOBO_macro_light to have “ORB” … etc…
Or Asobo could publish the GUIDs of their lights used in both airport lighting
and street lighting for us to be able to attach them to our meshes regardless
within the airport area or not :).
1 Like
Right But there is no really big deal in adding an Airport object in the
project editor, just be wise and use the nearest one and not some fake icao
just for the purpose of using the Light rows The orbs looks like an effect,
imho. It is interesting indeed that the default carrier, as per the OP
suggestion, has them (don’t have the time to check yet). The carrier is a very
convuluted piece of scenery, involving worldscript , Simbojects, and the model
has several attach point, maybe for some king of lights too iirc. It is worth
a in deep analysis
<https://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/threads/msfs-scenery-
lights.455868/post-910458>
@FlyingRaccoon - which lights, like those
used for airports and street lighting can be re-used from the SDK without
needing an airport? It would be great to be able to use these dynamic lights
that are visible far away without needing a dummy airport and needing one
seems a bit of an arbitrary restriction. Are you able to share the GUID as
@ZdenniZ suggested or please can the orb lights be
opened up to more than airports in a future SDK? Presmably they are already
optimized so it would be sensible for those of us that could use them outside
airports. Thanks, Chris
You don’t need a dummy, but just extend the airporttestradius of an existing
airport in a stub. This example is a 10000w ligh 20km from Churchill Canada;
If you’re handy with XML editing, you can just use any guid and made-up
name… not related to any model: blah-blah-bla h is made up, as is the
mesh="{00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000}
Last Christmas I created a Christmas Tree in Blender to put it on some
airports. I used Blender lights (points, spots) and emission textures to
illuminate some light bulbs. It was working, but the lights were casting huge
illumination to the ground which was unreal and unpleasant. Also lights were
not visible from far away. A few days ago I watched
@mamudesign video about MSFS lights but I
thought that light rows was not a proper solution for my Christmas Tree. So I
created a light effect in Visual Effects editor. A very simple flashing orb
light. Using FX templates I attached it to nodes within the Christmas Tree
object (SimObject to be able to have behavior code). It is working and it is
visible from far away, like the default beacons. I haven’t experiment yet with
all the Visual Effects editor possibilities and I don’t know if we could
create all the necessary parameters e.g. frequency, duration, phase, rotation
for orb lights. Asobo devs please comment on this (if Visual Effects
editor is the right solution for orb lights and if all the necessary
parameters can be created with it). If so I will appreciate if
@mamudesign or any other experienced dev could
make such a video tutorial (creating light effects with Visual Effects
editor). I’m jus a newbie.
@SFSimsDev, @ZdenniZ,
@vantech, I found some GUID’s in
Asobo_DefaultLibraryObjects.spb :
| AirportLights | |
|---|---|
| Elevated | |
| Omnidirectional_White | {305F1AAC-21F5-4AD5-A118-1561EE060DDE} |
| Unidirectional_White | {305F1AAC-21F5-4AD5-A118-1561EE060DDE} |
| Omnidirectional_Blue | {6171FD88-D41A-43F7-9FB0-A9F0E95D5760} |
| Unidirectional_Green | {DF747901-842D-460D-8858-EF0C1EFB6E14} |
| Omnidirectional_Red | {31880487-2A18-4DE8-B203-3F2E665BDDF6} |
| Unidirectional_Red | {31880487-2A18-4DE8-B203-3F2E665BDDF6} |
| Unidirectional_Yellow | {DC8B2CFB-E8CC-49E3-B5C4-D47A505C4179} |
| Half_White_Half_Green | {A66849E5-DD84-4557-AFE5-845887677432} |
| Half_White_Half_Red | {3401291F-6FD6-4C8B-8891-31E6A11ECE5E} |
| Half_White_Half_Yellow | {42E52659-557B-4183-B7FD-91B1A7BC7A96} |
| Half_Green_Half_Red | {F31DCBCE-0271-4EA7-B2D3-A6C7265F3A30} |
| Half_Green_Half_Yellow | {45C38E95-C617-4107-83B8-094878A5C9D4} |
| Half_Red_Half_Yellow | {FD35FD8C-BF89-47D7-89F6-65AA2A9BF0D6} |
| Inset | |
| Bidirectional_Green | {E8514371-1DD3-4F63-BDAD-5E047FC14587} |
| Unidirectional_Green | {54DB2457-7CCA-4E36-BCC9-9E2B9F1C8CD2} |
| Bidirectional_Red | {9DB75559-73A8-4AC7-9ED7-A43E4EAD54B4} |
| Unidirectional_Red | {6BBAD022-FB53-4583-AD44-C62DBE8D61AE} |
| Bidirectional_White | {E1DC45BD-9D03-4F1F-B396-E42FEA4C5793} |
| Unidirectional_White | {DAFE8C47-ADE2-43B3-B025-FFD66D73CEDE} |
| Bidirectional_Yellow | {8C8224D5-9FE1-4FD6-B063-F6628820C49F} |
| Unidirectional_Yellow | {4AF90ED6-C5FA-4754-89ED-D0C5F274FDC6} |
| Half_Green_Half_Red | {805D3ED5-24EE-460A-8F0E-704CDCE2D8A5} |
| Half_Green_Half_White | {FB4C040B-9754-4749-B1E3-66CABEE56D61} |
| Half_Green_Half_Yellow | {DFD1F143-1442-4A19-A6B5-CA9D1219CFD9} |
| Half_Red_Half_Yellow | {964A7B74-1DBA-476D-BE12-0A35399C9D81} |
| Half_White_Half_Red | {8C13DEA3-2884-4DB0-BC17-26C9A51C05B9} |
| Half_White_Half_Yellow | {8B224949-F105-44D0-B781-FDAC67F0CBBA} |
| Other | |
| VASI | {6ECA826B-2FFC-4561-9572-68BFF41C3479} |
| REIL_Omnidirectional | {574057C3-6419-4B21-9A39-76E3C2BE891B} |
| REIL_Unidirectional | {574057C3-6419-4B21-9A39-76E3C2BE891B} |
| Approach_OnGround_White | {7693C94F-FC73-4BD8-A36B-AA7E6614AFB9} |
| Approach_OnGround_Red | {68BEAE63-A930-414D-9DA2-03F161662015} |
| Approach_OnGround_Strobe | {7693C94F-FC73-4BD8-A36B-AA7E6614AFB9} |
| Approach_Pole_Strobe | {CB50FB05-EEAC-43E0-B2E1-55299BCA495E} |
| Approach_Pole_1_White | {CB50FB05-EEAC-43E0-B2E1-55299BCA495E} |
| Approach_Pole_1_Red | {2515E913-B122-4C89-87FF-2AF24F2E744A} |
| Approach_Pole_2_Spaced_5f_White | {B9A746AA-416C-47B9-BC92-7216D8BCD836} |
| Approach_Pole_2_Spaced_9f_White | {F5CA2F2E-862B-4716-8289-9B36B48A555D} |
| Approach_Pole_3_Spaced_2_5f_White | {7693C94F-FC73-4BD8-A36B-AA7E6614AFB9} |
| Approach_Pole_3_Spaced_5f_White | {E5324B95-AAB8-4827-8B20-C4A35AADAFCD} |
| Approach_Pole_3_Spaced_5f_Red | {C89465C0-5F6A-449C-8400-D251CB1CDDC0} |
| Approach_Pole_3_Spaced_9f_White | {12E55BBD-7BD2-409D-A2AF-7D99F7CBC0D2} |
| Approach_Pole_4_Spaced_5f_White | {03B0D872-D511-408F-A30A-718391C79758} |
| Approach_Pole_5_Spaced_2_5f_White | {5C6F52BF-1BBB-4B68-9C78-17089EBE88A1} |
| Approach_Pole_5_Spaced_3_375f_White | {C1EC451F-3B94-49B6-B585-89069C0821D6} |
| Approach_Pole_5_Spaced_3_375f_Red | {09EAF88F-A17D-404D-A873-518F5870BF7B} |
| Approach_Pole_5_Spaced_5f_White | {97879CA3-39D1-4ACD-93AC-44BF36CB6C60} |
| Approach_Pole_5_Spaced_5f_Red | {814808C8-44E9-4FCD-89A9-FD4F3209F6F5} |
Those are only the Asobo lamps/fixtures/poles without the light effect
That’s intriguing! Thanks @rhumbaflappy -
I’ll give it a whirl definitely.
Also useful. I hadn’t thought about trying the visual effects editor. Its come
along a fair way and your experience with it seems promising too.