Night lights

[Ernest1984]

Hello all!

Once i've played FlightGear last time, i was flying in the evening/night and i thought about some idea:

The lights on the ground should dissapear by the basis "more further - more darker they are", not how it is now, like they dissapear totally, just like "that", after reaching the point of some distance. This would give much more reality to the graphic aspects of FlightGear i think.

[Quix0r]

The best would be when they are "real" light sources. E.g. look at the tail fin of some airplanes, if you turn on lights the tail fin texture is being replaced with a "night version" texture. Same applies to buildings.

Adding those (multiple) light sources could drain your FPS a lot because it is "expensive" to calculate them + shadowing (object self-shadowing for example, like the Source engine from Half-Life does). But I think that is to hard to implement. And I'm no C++/OpenGL coder.

[VicMar]

As far as buildings are concerned, this can be controlled by either .xml, or .ac files.

These should be taken into account when the model maker submits his work for inclusion in the FG scenery data-base.

There is a field in the .xml file which allows the visible distance to be set on the lit up part of the model, plus white buildings which are not lit can be given some night texturing in the .ac file by entering a small amount of 'emis' on the white material.

There have been pictures taken by satellites which show there is extremely bright illumination at night practically all over the world.

Hope that helps.

Cheers,
Vic
http://wiki.flightgear.org/index.php?ti ... and_colors