Lights on aircraft

Hi mrzippy (and anyone else),

OK. As you can see, I have moved into the FSX forum, where I should have been to begin with.

Well, I don't know if I should be making that much of a big deal about it, but I would like the cabin lights on my default Bombardier Learjet 45 (FSX SE) to work. I would like them to show up just the way yours do on the photograph that you kindly posted today (Saturday, 10 Dec 2013) at 16:12. (Here is a dumb question: The cabin lights are the ones that illuminate where the passengers sit, right? I just want to make sure that we are on the same page.)

And just to be clear, do these two lines of code from your aircraft.cfg file control these cabin lights?

light.8 = 4, -26.00, 0.00, 2.00, fx_vclighth,

light.9 = 4, -14.00, 0.00, 1.90, fx_vclight,

If so, then I am going to have trouble, because for some reason those two files no longer exist in my Effects folder. I don't know why not. I never deleted them.

But those are the two files I need, right?

Incidentally, why did you comment out your landing lights, if I may ask.

Thanks.

Stanley

Hi mrzippy,

If I am in the cockpit, I do see a light.

But from outside the plane, neither the cockpit light nor the cabin lights show.

Stanley

Did a test for you last night. First saw no outside lights. But checked my aircraft.cfg file and saw I had disabled light 8 and 9 for some reason. (with // )

Removed the // and got a result. Checked them one at a time for you. Here's the result.

Even with 8 and 9 both off with //, the panel is still lit when seen from inside the cockpit.

light.8 =lights the cabin in outside view.

light.9 =lights the cockpit in outside view.

It made me decide to add some comments to my .cfg file, like this:

light.8 = 4, -26.00, 0.00, 2.00, fx_vclighth, //cabin outside

light.9 = 4, -14.00, 0.00, 1.90, fx_vclight, //cockpit outside

Hi everyone,

So then, here is my problem. Somehow those two files (fx_vclighth and fx_vclight) got deleted from my Effects folder. I don't know how. Perhaps it was some third-party download.

Is it appropriate for me to ask if someone could send me those two files?

Since I have FSX Steam Edition, I guess that I could re-download those two files from the server, but I don't want to have to go through that.

Stanley

I don't have fsx steam edition, but Steam has some way of fixing missing default files.

I think it is called "verify files" or something.

Use that, as who knows what else you may be missing besides these files.

 

Is it appropriate for me to ask if someone could send me those two files?

 

Since I have FSX Steam Edition, I guess that I could re-download those two files from the server, but I don't want to have to go through that.

 

Stanley

Technically, NO! For FSX-SE there is a procedure to verify your game cache, which is the same as doing a Repair for FSX-MS.

Be careful of what you download and install. There are even some well-known payware aircraft, etc that make changes like that and using auto-installers, you'll never know it!

Hi everyone,

I will go through the "verify files" procedure (or a name like that). I have done this before, but it is time consuming and then resets a few things. All in all, however, it is a good system.

I appreciate everyone's help.

Stanley

Hi everyone,

OK. I verified my files with FSX SE, and indeed I was missing several dozen files.

Those have now been restored as part of the verification procedure, and I am most happy to report that the lights in my default Bombardier Learjet 45 are working perfectly!

I appreciate so much the help that you nice people provided.

I must say, while I am on the topic, that I very much enjoy buying add-on aircraft and scenery. However, developers of such software should avoid changing or deleting existing files.

Stanley

Hi everyone,

 

OK. I verified my files with FSX SE, and indeed I was missing several dozen files.

 

Those have now been restored as part of the verification procedure, and I am most happy to report that the lights in my default Bombardier Learjet 45 are working perfectly!

 

I appreciate so much the help that you nice people provided.

 

I must say, while I am on the topic, that I very much enjoy buying add-on aircraft and scenery. However, developers of such software should avoid changing or deleting existing files.

 

Stanley

Glad to see that it's back to working! If it's possible, when using an auto-installer, it's a good idea to install it to a newly created folder instead of your Sim. That way you can examine the contents before putting into FSX. Some payware installers won't let you do that, unfortunately.

I don't know about payware, as I'm a cheap SOB...errr...frugal. Yeah, really frugal, that's it!

Anyway, I don't trust auto-installers as far as I can throw the Five-Sided Puzzle Palace. I always point them at an empty temp folder and install manually to FS9 or FSX from there. Too many times have auto-installers pulled that file delete/replace on me, resulting, at least in FS9, in a un-install/re-install requirement.

Glad you got things all squared away :D

Pat☺

... checked my aircraft.cfg file and saw I had disabled light 8 and 9 for some reason. (with // )

You did not do that, Microsoft did.

One point I think has been missed in this discussion and that point is that some of the lights on some planes are hard coded into the model file and will not show up in the aircraft.cfg.

Some of the default aircraft appear to have [Lights] sections that carried over from FS9 that then had lights commented out after they wee added to the model.

The FS9 Lear's [Lights] section is almost identical to the FSX version except for those lights being commented out.

IIRC, several of the planes had the VC lights removed from the FSX models as they were handled in FSX with night textures instead of effects.

peace,

the Bean

As Zip and PT said: EXTRACT (no installation is happening yet) to a temp folder making sure you tick 'Use Folder Names'. Then you copy the airplane (model,panel,sound,texture) files. Then you COPY effects to Effects folder and when asked to 'Overwrite' or 'Replace' just say NO!! If they have an effects that different it should also have a different name. None of the DEFAULT effects should EVER be overwritten. You might have to rename effect (in aircraft.cfg) to an effect (name) you already have in Effects folder. But it's a small price to pay for safe, and best, installation practice.

Chuck B

Napamule

You did not do that, Microsoft did.

 

Dang! I hope not. Microsoft put //in front of light.6 and light.7 (landing lights) in my default Lear45 for FSX. These are modeled. 8 and 9 are the VC lights. This is making my head spin!:rolleyes:

One last input on the default Lear 45. Don't get me wrong, I like this aircraft and it's fun to fly occasionally.

I normally fly in the 2D cockpit and I start each flight cold a dark. At night, sitting in the cockpit, I turn on the battery....the MFD, PFD, and warning lights illuminate. If I hit the A key and switch to the VC it's darker than the black hole of Calcutta. But, By hitting the panel light switch, the MFD, PFD, etc light up as well as the cockpit lighting. Who's been screwing around with the cockpit wiring?

This is one strange aircraft!

Eh, strange,

In my fsx lear lights 8 and 9 were commented out.

I checked the fsx lear aircraft.cfg file. The default one, as saved just after installing.

And yes, those were indeed commented out.

Stringbean says this is because the lights are done different in fsx then in fs9. And 8 and 9 are not needed.

Then why, with those commented out, do I not see cabin and cockpit lights in outside view?

I noticed 8 and 9 were commented out too (in my backup FSX MS+Accel). I'll bet that's one of the things they did to "accelerate" us. Mr Zippy has FSX Standard/SP2. I don't think this is an effect light that's been replaced with a modeled light, it's a VC light, you can't really even see a VC light effect, they just light things up. If that's what they did it's a lame way to gain some performance, we paid them money to comment out our lights! :)

Thanks, Jim! I didn't even take into consideration the difference between plain ole Me and Acceleration. Don't you feel accelerated?;)