Nightfighters might find this interesting

Does anyone see anything ... odd ... in these screen shots?






Moggy

Lights for the airfield and aircraft? Yeah, Baby, Very Yeah!!!!


Serb

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Serb's EAW Flightline

Hey Moggy
May I ask you waht's the airbase around? Is it...Project X related (look at the Wildcats...and the tower ust like in PAW)?

This one's an accident. Actually I was trying out one the aircraft selections with the Midway project. Took Pretzel's B17 to see if I could lob a bomb on the Japanese main fleet. Unbelieveably I hit the Battleship Yamato from 10,000 feet. This is something I will never do again if I play EAW until I'm 90!

Anyway, despite having three engines smoking and a crowd of angry Zeros after me I try to make it back to Midway Eastern Island. Having used "skip to next" its rather dark as I get near the atoll. As the airfield approaches I see the twinkling of lights and almost fall out of my chair in surprise. All the PAW towers I had placed on Eastern and Sand Island are lit up from the inside. There are also other sources of light from the parked wildcats. I had not looked at the Midway atolls in darkness since I set them up.

I put the B17 down and try not to destroy too many buildings in the process, and examine the light sources with the free camera. I exit the game and put one of the towers into the 3dz editor to examine the elements and see which is using the luminous colour. It turns out that the panels generating the light are defined in the 3dz as a type no.3 "coloured polygon-surface painted in single colour of index given". The colour indices used by the panels concerned are 6, 8, and 15.

At the moment I'm not sure how to use this... its 1.58 am here in the trench and I'm off to me bunk. Thought I'd share it before before I go off duty!

Moggy

Jolly good Moggy, Jolly good indeed.

Hey, there just might be a use for my "Night Hunter" mainscreen after all....
Very cool Moggy.....


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"Can he ever be young again, or was his youth used up in the cockpit of his beloved Thunderbolt?"
MajorLee

Moggy,

This looks great!

I seem to recall you were trying out "stuff" in order to get some airfield landing lights happening...any luck?
Sure would add to the immersion factor.

Peter.

Woah!!!

I'm not really sure but I think that color index 6 is not "fosforescent" for sure.

Maybe I could make some test in the Me109K I'm modifying with indexes 8 & 15 and see what happens... If you're in the right way we could have navigation lights!!!

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Capitán Manduca's EAW Workshop

I think that Migge was doing some similar work with lighted objects and landing strips. Perhaps you could ask him what he knows.

He posted some screens back a month or so ago at the old forum.

Far out! Any plans for making subtle runway lights? Or aircraft recognition lights?

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Bury's EAW & Dora Page

"Midway Project"?
Ive missed something??

Alain-James

Done some experimenting with the PAW Wildcat to try and find the main source of the luminosity in the wheel bay. The principal source is element 32, the lower bulkhead behind the wheel bay, and in commom with all the other light sources is an element type 3 ("surface painted in single colour") which we don't seem to use a lot in EAW, though they do seem to crop up in these converted PAW wireframes.

Problem has arisen in trying to ascertain which colour index number this element is pointing to. I tried to use both the 3dz editor and the converter, but they are giving me different results - editor says the colour index is 41, converter says 241. Certainly I've tried both these palette numbers (painting and converting elements to type 3) and not obtained the luminous effect. This suggests neither of these numbers is right and may shed some doubt on the palette number results for the tower in the earlier post, as Captain Manduca says.

It seems clear there is a colour in the EAW palette which gives this light effect. At the moment I'm digging into the hex numbers of the 3dz file to find the right colour index.

If we can find this interesting "colour" runway lights etc ought to be possible.

Moggy


PS Alain, The Midway project is something I'm putting together to use the carriers, and not to be confused with the major pacific theatre building operation being done by Jim Farmer and team. The Midway project will be a single mission addon with the US side able to fly from Midway Island, and the three US carriers Yorktown, Enterprise, Hornet. The Japanese side will be able to fly from the four carriers Kaga, Akagi, Soryu and Hiryu, as well as the escort carriers Hosho and Zuiho with the Main and Occupation fleets.

Okay. Its palette colour code 241 with my apologies to the converter. I changed some of the other single colour elements in the wildcat to this colour:



Moggy

Thanks to have..lighted me

Alain-James

YEP ! I was trying to add light along the runway as Migge show us a picture two month ago but I don't find the palette index 241 solution.

Night return will be easier soon

Thanks to share the solution Moggy



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previously known as PipsJG26

Yes, I think this is going to work. However it seems you can't paint a panel partly in this colour, you have to create or use a type 3 "one colour" element. I had a quick and rough go at a Mossie, wing and tail lights just using the elements that are there:





The better soloution is probably to create small additional elements in the appropriate places to define as navigation lights.

As to runway lights, I think the answer is creating a small 3dz shape with face elements defined as lights and placing them alongside the runway. The only difficulty is that this will mean recycling one of the existing airbase Tmods and setting up each "nightfighter base" separately.

Ah well, what else have we got to do!

Moggy



[This message has been edited by Moggy (edited January 03, 2001).]

Damn what good luck . I was wanting to fiddle about with night fighting for my BOB campagin. So you could be dogfighting above london in your beaufighter! If only someone could fix the eaw clock...

Very impressive. Thanks.

Moggy,

Thank you very much for the work involved in finding this! Could you post the whole definition for one element, so that I could see how it is in the 3dz text? WoooHoooo!

Serb

looking very interesting!

Karl

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http://lide.uhk.cz/~psstruk1/

Hello Serb,

Take element 90 (the wing tip) in both the "f" and "g" sides of the Mosquito wireframe. As set out in the converter text dump this was defined as a type 5 element:

E090= 148 0 5 9 77 157 75 74 157 78 78 161 77 79 164 76 80 165 73 81 164 70 82 162 65 75 157 61 76 157 67 0 198 255

I ammended this to make it a type 3 element with the "241" colour code, as follows:

E090= 148 0 3 9 77 074 078 079 080 081 082 075 076 241 255

(I put in the leading zeros where there were three figure numbers in the slot because I find the converter seems happier with them)

Moggy

Hi Moggy!

Thanks! That's exactly the kind of answer I was hoping for! I will see if I can create a simple element on the bottom wing tip of the 262, and code it.

Serb

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Serb's EAW Flightline

[This message has been edited by Serb (edited January 05, 2001).]

Hello Serb - I'll be interested to see the outcome. Let's get those nightfighters flying!

You could try palette colour 240 as well. It may be brighter. I think there are a range of luminous colours in the EAW palette at those numbers (240+) and hopefully one that could be used for exhaust vents.

Moggy

Here's a rough bash at some airstrip lights:



Moggy

Looks great Moggy!

Okay ... all the palette colours from 208 to 255 give this luminous effect. They are mostly shades of white/grey (240-255),

red (224-229):



This gives us the red glow for exhaust outlets ...

yellow (230-239):



...and the remainder are dull drab olive greens. I can't find a bright lumious green.

Moggy

Hehe Terrific man!!
In addition if these "lights" are objects too, it would made landings and take-off far more interesting: hitting them then would resulte into a crash, like it can occurs for a plane at high speed to hurt those balises...

UN-FRICKING-BELIEVEABLE!!! Moggy, put some exhaust glow on the B24 and JU88, and lets go snipe hunting!! WhhooooHoooo!!

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"Can he ever be young again, or was his youth used up in the cockpit of his beloved Thunderbolt?"
MajorLee

Here's your Ju88 Major. A rough attempt to do red hot exhaust on the engines (palette colour 227), and nav lights on wings and tail.



It occured to me that it might be possible to add landing light elements on the wings that are defined in the 3dz as part of the "landing gear" component, so that the lights only display when the gear is down. Perhaps someone more experienced in the mechanics of the 3dz files would comment if such an arrangement would work.

Moggy

WHOAAAA ! How I like such exaust

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previously known as PipsJG26

Moggy,

Those runway lights are great.
Keep up the good work on the aircraft lighting too.

No time to sleep there's a war on you know

Peter.

WOW! where was I when this thread began?

Fantastic work, looking forward to nightfighter mossie missions...

"did I hear Lancaster..you there, at the back!"

Hey Moggy,
it should be possible to but certain "lights" on only when gear is down. Example:
Add an element NumberXYZ: EXYZ = 145 1 3 ...
The 145 at the beginning says that this line is linked with the landing gear, the element 145 1 ...is visible when gear is down 145 0 ... is visible when gear is up. So if you put these numbers at the front of an element you can place this one-coloured object wherever you like and turn it "on" by lowering the gear.
Have you already tried to use the luminous colours with the Texture-file or are you sure it only will work with an one-coloured object (I´d like to add the "glowing" exhaust to the Me163)?

Thankyou binni. That is good news. I've got some other things to finish before I can work further on the nightfighters, but would welcome anyone else trying out this and the other stuff.

I have tried to use these colours in a texture file, but do not get any result, no glow at all. It only seems to work when I use the type 3 one-colour element. I wonder if any of this differs between video cards. For the record mine is a matrox G400. Further experimentation may show a way to use these luminous shades in multicolour texture files.

I wonder of for the Me163 you could use the kind of flame composed of cycling elements of single but different shades, such as the V1 uses, and that I think is present but not used in the Me262.

Moggy

Hi Moggy,

If you send me a file for the runway I will tell you if it works with TNT card

OMenu@AOL.com

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previously known as PipsJG26

Get you a package dropped soonest.

Moggy