Red and Green lights in the Afterburners

[Voodoo]

When viewing the rear of the F18 from an outside view, what are the strange red and green lights (red on the left and green on the right) that appear right in the centre of the afterburners as you slowly progress the throttles into the afterburner range? The green one on the right comes on first and then goes out as you push the throttle further, then the red one on the left comes on and it too goes off as you increase the throttle further.

It looks like something left over from a programming testing stage but how on earth can we get rid of it?! Can we edit a texture somewhere?

[mbmorgan]

I see that you haven't received any answers yet ... so I'll give it a shot. I guessing here ... but because the AB effects are basically "lights" as far as FSX is concerned, what you are seeing is therefore likely related to the left wingtip light (red) and the right wingtip light (green) somehow being displayed in the location of the corresponding left/right engine AB effect location. I don't know if the lights can be eliminated from the AB effects ... but do know that if you are in a position to see them, you are probably just a little too close for comfort ...

Mike

[Voodoo]

I'm determined to try and find a way of getting these danged lights out of the equation. In addition to the green right side light on stage 2 afterburn and the red left one on stage 3 I've also noticed there's a stupid "landing light" also active on stage 2 afterburn and visible from the front on a fly by mode (or when sitting on the runway at night.
I've managed to alter textures to fix the problem of the burner "disc" animation being too far forward in the tailpipe but I really want to nail this lights bug. Which files are aircraft lights controlled from? Or are they fixed to attach points in the models themselves and you have to somehow get it back in to GMax or 3dS to edit them out? Are there any editors for the MDL files? There used to be for earlier versions of FS.

[Great Ozzie]

Well could be navigation lights    as green is for the right/starboard side (wingtip) and red for the left/port side (wingtip) and there should be a white light on the tail (and I think also white lights on the wingtips that face aft).

Rob O.

[Great Ozzie]

sorry mbmorgan... I missed your post before i posted... 

[fael097]

I've managed to alter textures to fix the problem of the burner "disc" animation being too far forward in the plenum chamber

how??

Are there any editors for the MDL files? There used to be for earlier versions of FS.

i've been looking for a editor the last 2 months with no luck... found some crappy converters for fs2004 mdl files that didnt work, and nothing for fsx. if you find one, please let me know.

you know, i've been trying to fix the f-18 to make it perfect, but the "paper" afterburner effect, the green/red lights on it, the disc too far foward, the buggy brakes, the crashes when you try to load a flight plan into the mdf, all this shit just make me want to cry, and i gave up. the only thing i could fix is the rear landing gear position to look more realistic.

i wish i knew how to decompile MDL and DDS files. actually i wish i could even open the BMP textures on photoshop, but apparently i cant, they look blurry green&pink when i open.
its just frustrating, i would edit all this shit if i could even open.

[vortex_25]

Interesting..

I had always assumed the green "light" bug in the afterburners was a graphics loading problem, similar to when you look at airports from distance and get a split second green block while the graphics load (seems to happen randomly if the FPS is less than 15, for me at least), but had no idea where the red was coming from until you mentioned the nav lights on the F/A-18, which are green and red.

They've got to be related.. a fix would be great.

[fael097]

f-18 afterburner has 6 stages. the first one releases a weird white smoke that disappears when you change the AB stage, 2nd a green light centered on the right engine, 3rd a red light centered on the left engine.
and i didnt mention the "disc" or the "paper fire"...

im posting some screenshots to clarify this, in the mentioned order:


[attachment deleted by admin]

[Voodoo]

Thanks fael097, those pics illustrate almost all of the afterburner problems really well. The only additional one is the false landing light that comes on at afterburner stage 2 (if anyone wants to see it, sit on the runway at night with your lights off and run the throttle up to afterburner stage 2, and watch the runway suddenly light up with a false landing light).

I've attached a picture to show you how I have gone some way to address a few of the problems. But sadly I still can't get rid of the "false lights" at stages 2/3, and the "fuel dump" contrail at stage 1.

I have made a partial improvement to the afterburner disc by changing it's texture. This disc itself actually has two hidden purposes by being mounted too far aft - 1) because it is partially transparent it is actually used to create the effect of lighting up the plenum chamber more brightly as the burners are increased, and 2) it is needed to hide the front ends of the hot plasma exhaust textures which look hideous if you blank the disc texture out. So I've left the disc textures in place but edited them to have less structure and look more just like a "hot exhaust" rather than an afterburner ring.

I managed to move the burner ring animation forward by editing the three "fx_afterburnerfire.fx" files.

I have edited the hot plasma exhaust textures so that the front end of the textures don't extend outside the afterburners themselves (which they did at a couple of stages).

All the files are in the attached ZIP. The 3 "AfterBurnerFire" files should go in the main "Effects" folder. The 2 DDS files should go in the F18's own "Texture" folder. (REMEMBER to make copies of your original files before you replace them)

By the way, fael097, try out a utility called DXTBmp to help export those DDS and BMP texture files to your preferred graphics editor. I hope this helps you.

I hope these small changes make the F18 burners a little more realistic and are to your liking, people. One day maybe someone will find a way to edit out these horrible lights and fuel contrails, and allow us to complete the fixes. Until then - Happy Flying.

PLEASE NOTE - THIS FIX HAS BEEN SUPERCEDED BY VERSION 2, WHICH IS POSTED FURTHER DOWN THIS THREAD. VERSION 2 SINCE IS SIGNIFICANTLY SUPERIOR AT ELIMINATING THE NAV LIGHTS IN THE TAILPIPES. - Voodoo


[attachment deleted by admin]

[vortex_25]

WOW crosherg!

I downloaded and installed your new afterburner effects, and they are much better than the defaults!

I love how you can actually see the engine internals through the fire now. Way more realistic.

Awesome work!

[Voodoo]

Thanks Vortex, glad you enjoyed the changes. Not perfect yet, but a little bit in the right direction I think.

[Voodoo]

I've posted an improved "Version 2" that is a significant improvement on my first version of afterburner fixes for the F18 earlier in this thread. I think an MDL editor for FSX would be needed to allow editing of the model attachpoints and completely eliminate all the bugs, but since that doesn't seem to exist at this time, version 2 of my fix that I present here for your flying pleasure, makes almost all of the bugs more or less unnoticeable. I won't be doing any further work on this so...Share and enjoy!

All the instructions are in the Readme.txt file in the zip.

If you want to get rid of the poor looking "smoky afterburner trail", simply rename the file "fx_fueldump.fx" found in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Microsoft Flight Simulator X\Effects to something like "fx_fueldump.fx_old".

[attachment deleted by admin]

[ryanbatcund]

Voodoo - I installed your new textures but I definitely don't get that nice look in your picture.  This is what I get (Vista x64 SP1 latest nvidia drivers)

[Voodoo]

Hi Ry.

I think...it might be you have not placed the fa18_ab.bmp file in the right place. Could you check the following instruction and let me know if that fixes it?


fa18_ab.bmp
Put this in the main Effects Texture folder:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Microsoft Flight Simulator X\Effects\texture

[ryanbatcund]

Yep it's in there....  BTW, the original night effect is still there, not sure if your modified files are supposed to change the night effect too.