City Night Light - Has anyone tried this before?

[orsin 160]

I am thinking of a city night light solution. I would like to check if anyone tried this before, and what was the result

 

The idea is to use a semi-transparent low polygon box that provides a layer of orange colour near the ground. And set the element to be rendered disregarding light levels. Just like the light on carrier deck.

 

Each single element will cover a small area. Every 30/50  elements can be grouped to be 1 model to be placed to cover the entire road cross/block to simplify the planning. And they can be made destroya ble.

 

Anyone?

[+Menrva 4,198]

It can be done, but each city has its own size and tiling so many variations might be needed. The object requires to be set up as a ground object (as a downside, it would appear in the mission editor), not placed as a terrain object because the light effect would flicker very much otherwise. I know this since me and Jimbib added floodlights to new airbases made for the ODS 30AE mod, together with a light effect.

Speaking of which, I haven't thought about using horizontal polygons for the light, we can simply use SF2's effects to create such lights, as done already on carriers and vehicles of the ODS 30AE mod.

About making them destroyable, the way the game works, you'd have to make each lamp post separate sadly. Make one huge object with 50 of them and destroying one would destroy them all.

All in all, it's worth a try, but there are side issues and limitations to take into account.

Edited May 30, 2023 by Menrva

[orsin 160]

Back 7 years i have already experimented night lights using fake object and a floodlight source. The result was captured in my other post back then.

 

The key issue with that approach is the game engine is not designed to handle long term constant light. so when the fight breaks out, light sources such as AAA and missile etc will compete the limited light sources allowed by the engine. The result, is that cities will "black out" when you fight. So the outcome was not that great.

 

If we have options to build non-daylight-sensitive TODs, they can be deployed easily. Otherwise it can be a row of non-daylight-sensitive LODs. And we don't necessarily need flood light but just light points. Again flood light will compete with weapon light source. By using a semi-transparent polygon it can potentially emulate flood light without generating a light source.

 

The reason to make a light array in the form of road cross is that it can then be universally applied to cities without creating 1 model per city. When we have more buildings just put more of these "cross lights" in it

Edited May 30, 2023 by orsin

[+Menrva 4,198]

@orsin There's another experiment using TODs and tweaked shader done by Stary for his Korea/Taiwan tileset. Basically the texture for TOD buildings would be a TGA and windows would be made transparent. With the tweaked shader Stary provided, windows wouldn't be affected by darkness and would be visible from a long distance, thus simulating lit interiors of the buildings. There's one major issue with this approach; you'd have to set ObjectsFade=FALSE in the Options.ini and MipMap=FALSE for SolidObjectTextureMaterial in the terrain's data.ini or else it won't work at all, and by doing so you'd get lots of very noticeable flickering which cannot be fixed. Mip mapping exists for that exact purpose and so disabling it is not ideal at all. With either mip mapping or fading enabled, this trick by Stary no longer works.

This would be the best solution if the flickering could be solved somehow, but mip mapping is a necessity.

Edited May 30, 2023 by Menrva

[+daddyairplanes 10,216]

14 hours ago, Menrva said:

 Make one huge object with 50 of them and destroying one would destroy them all.

fairly realistic actually, if one of the 50 objects was also a transformer controlling the block or a local substation with those 50 lights as part of it

but as you said, would then meant alot of work on the part of the terrain builder, and even with a set of patterns they would have to adjust the tile to the object rather than the object to the tile (as i understand it)

[+yakarov79 11,063]

I think we have all been there...doing some chellenging things...and then...ahhh sh..it is still not what we wanted...but it is still fun working on something new..

[+hi ho silver 179]

Many years ago i tried using the moon light to light the buildings . Had some success but seemed the shadow side was still dark ..

Edited May 30, 2023 by hi ho silver

[+Gepard 11,268]

For a civil flight sim lights at night are a must have. But for a military sim not, because in wartimes the lights are switched off at night, to give no navigation help to the enemy.

[+EricJ 4,236]

I mean yeah, it would be nice, but not something that I particularly need either for this game.

[+daddyairplanes 10,216]

for the most part i'd say yes

but pretty sure Baghdad and Belgrade were still lit up on night one. Hanoi doesnt exactly count because the US had been bombing the country for years by the time the restrictions came off in 72.

but since i dont think we have a way to have the lights on only for the first night of a campaign, then best to leave it

 

i still say it would be cool to target a substation on the first mission of a campaign and turn the lights out

[orsin 160]

Proof of Concept. Any Good?

every 20-30 lights are clustered as 1 x 30KB object that spans across some 200 meters. Easy to drop on map with no performance hit.

Edited August 28, 2023 by orsin

[+daddyairplanes 10,216]

(must not ask for convoys of civilian cars, must not ask for of civilian cars)

[+EricJ 4,236]

I mean the second shot (from the top) looks interesting but I don't see any lights in the rest of the shots.

[orsin 160]

6 hours ago, EricJ said:

I mean the second shot (from the top) looks interesting but I don't see any lights in the rest of the shots.

zoom it in.

The 1st and the 2nd shots are to show the lighting looks unobvious during day time. 

[+EricJ 4,236]

Okay, will do.

[simonmiller416 1,817]

It's good to see progress, but is it possible to expand the light source, I think the real city lights should be a large area.
Although I know it's just a proof-of-concept stage.

[orsin 160]

2 minutes ago, simonmiller416 said:

It's good to see progress, but is it possible to expand the light source, I think the real city lights should be a large area.
Although I know it's just a proof-of-concept stage.

see my post above which links to an older post.

[+Soulfreak 6,522]

13 hours ago, orsin said:

Proof of Concept. Any Good?

every 20-30 lights are clustered as 1 x 30KB object that spans across some 200 meters. Easy to drop on map with no performance hit.

 

That looks pretty cool!

[Stratos 3,188]

I agree, is a nice effect!

[Stratos 3,188]

17 hours ago, daddyairplanes said:

(must not ask for convoys of civilian cars, must not ask for of civilian cars)

The way to go is to add them as terrain tods, as a fighter pilot you will not notice they're not moving and the look will be cool enough.

[orsin 160]

File is now released for download. It only took me about 15 min to add lights to the entire Kamchatka terrain so it should be simple enough for anyone to do for any other terrain.

[Stratos 3,188]

On 28/8/2023 at 6:58 PM, daddyairplanes said:

(must not ask for convoys of civilian cars, must not ask for of civilian cars)

AAAAAAH! Do you mean for cities? like small cars attached to orsin new lights?

for cars on roads, I love the look of this...

 

[simonmiller416 1,817]

On 2023/8/30 at 5:33 PM, Stratos said:

AAAAAAH! Do you mean for cities? like small cars attached to orsin new lights?

for cars on roads, I love the look of this...

Looks really good!