Ramp Lights - Not

[Captain Coffee 2,030]

Is there a fix for this problem?

 

When I park an aircraft on a well lighted ramp at night, the ramp lights don't illuminate the aircraft...is this fixable problem, or an "FSX Feature"?

 

This is the "Chromed Livery" btw...not one of the Dark Blue paint jobs.

 

 

[Gunner 69]

  I don't think its "fixable". Mainly, because that ramp actually is a night texture, meaning its not illuminated by a 3D light, its just looks like that. So there is no light to illuminate the plane. I think. I'm not a game-lighting specialist, so i may be mistaken.

[dodgy-alan 1,587]

I bought this question up a while ago, It's a real pain not having aircraft lit up on the ramp. You'd have thought with all the tech available today they'd be able to fix the problem.

[UKJim 502]

Its a shame you can't use redux lights by A2A to create lights at airports and not just the planes

Maybe one day it might be possible who knows.

[Gunner 69]

I bought this question up a while ago, It's a real pain not having aircraft lit up on the ramp. You'd have thought with all the tech available today they'd be able to fix the problem.

 

   I don't think its that easy, Allan. Its more a design thing , than a problem (if i'm right). To have objects, (planes in our case), illuminated by light bulbs, its needs to be designed from the begining like that. So, there must be objects what will be illuminated and objects (light bulbs) what spread light, light which will be reflected by the illuminated objects. And i think that FSX would be on the knees if it has to compute that too. Again, my speculation.

[Captain Coffee 2,030]

Do AI landing lights shine on our planes?

[allardjd 1,853]

This topic kind of piqued my interest so I did a little fooling around in MS-FSX. I have an add-on from FlightSimTools.com called Airport Wizard and one of the things it does is to allow you to add illumination to aprons. You get a top-down view of the airport and can right click on the image to add one or more bright spots of light, as if from an overhead pole light, but no object is added, just the spot of light. Illumination fades with increasing distance from the "spot" position and the effect is fairly realistic.

 

I placed an aircraft on a dark ramp in a parking spot right at the ramp edge; there were also a number of AI aircraft parked nearby. I looked it all over in the as-found condition, then added a "light spot", just off the edge of the apron, right in front of my aircraft.

 

Looking again in FSX I can see that the ground and ramp textures are illuminated but the aircraft is not - the aircraft itself is as dark as before, even from a top-down view. Also, the aircraft casts no shadow, even though the illumination is from almost directly above.

 

I rotated the aircraft to face a small airliner parked in the next parking position and switched on the AC lights with the "L" key. Interestingly, my landing light illuminates the ramp surfaces but not the AI aircraft itself. Also, when I pressed the "L" key, not only did my aircraft lights go on, so did the ones of the adjacent aircraft, including his "logo light" on the vertical stabilizer. Switch mine off and his go off too. Have never noticed that effect before.

 

I guess ramp illumination is a property of the surface textures of the airport itself and there's no capability for ramp lighting to register on the aircraft textures. Pity!

 

John

[Captain Coffee 2,030]

Great effort John. I had a glimmer of hope when you mentioned the addon...oh well.

 

Ya, it was my hope that AI lights might shine on us, and a BoB-esque street light "aircraft" with "Landing Light" for a bulb might be created and parked around the ramp.... using FSRecorder to station a line of them along a ramp specifically for a Video, or Screenshot...would take a bit of setup of "Parked Poles". But might be worth the effort for making a video/screen art, if not for casual flying.