Aircraft lights at night.

[bcm652]

Question, maybe more of a suggestion. I noticed that the aircraft lights are not on at night during GSX ground service with my 737-800 default airplane The cargo doors and main exit doors are not lighted when they are opened. The cabin lights go on inside and the stairs are lighted but that's all.
Win 10, FSX, 737-800, CYVR.

[virtuali]

In general, GSX never changes the status of any system in your airplane, but it rather asks you to do something, like opening a door.

In your case ( default 737 ) the kind of lights you can turn on and their effect on the plane, is something decided entirely by the airplane itself and which ones have been enabled in the airplane.cfg AND the actual airplane model and textures, which must be made in a way to react to the lights listed in the aircraft.cfg in some way.

[bcm652]

Thanks for the reply. The default 737 has some incorrect light switch settings to begin with, but I will look at the CNF. file anyway.

[bcm652]

Checked the 737 Cfg. files and it doesn't show any extra lights, except for the usual, landing, taxi, panel, etc. and there is no way to edit more lights.
I thought it would be a neat touch for being serviced at night.

[virtuali]

I'm not sure you understood my reply, I'll try again:

The aircraft.cfg only indicates which lights are active on any airplane (so the relevant default light keys can control them), and the position of the visual Effect associated to it.

Not all lights you see are found there, there might be other way to lit the airplane, which are defined in the airplane *model* ( the .MDL ) and might be very different from plane to plane and are:

- Night lightmaps, which are textures that turn on/off depending on the status of some light

- Visual effect added through "Attach Points", which are special properties of either a part of a model or a dummy object that is parented to it. There's some behavior code attached to it, which is embedded in the airplane .MDL file, which makes the light appear conditionally, but in this case they might be completely independent from the default light system, because the airplane developer might have a custom light system to overcome the limitation of the default one, and controls every kind of light in a custom way.

This is not unlike how custom door animation work but, with doors, GSX never tries to alter their status, but rather ask you to use the door. Asking you to open the door make sense to prevent GSX animations from starting and have crew/people passing through a closed door but, in case of lights, are you sure it would be of any value adding another question about asking you to turn on the lights ?

That, to keep in line with the principle of not wanting to alter the airplane status, because we might not know what might happen.