[1.3.1] Aviation Lights v3.14 [use MOARdV's version instead!]

[MOARdV]

11 hours ago, qeveren said:

This is one of those mods that I always, always install.

I do have one (admittedly very minor!) complaint, and that is that, while the lights do emit light (duh), the textures of the lights don't become emissive, so they don't actually look like light sources.

If someone wanted to make models that had functioning emissives, it would not be a lot of effort to update the mod to support it.  I, however, am not a modeler, so it's outside the scope of what I can do.

[qeveren]

13 hours ago, MOARdV said:

If someone wanted to make models that had functioning emissives, it would not be a lot of effort to update the mod to support it.  I, however, am not a modeler, so it's outside the scope of what I can do.

Ah, gotcha.  Well, even without that, this is still one of those must-have cosmetic mods for me.

[NermNermNerm]

Is there perchance a PAPI light mod for the KSC runway?

[MattFreeman]

I have an issue. I downloaded the zip and then grabbed the contents of it and dropped it into my ksp folder once I did this I went into the game and the lights did not appear in the utilities section. It did load up though I am sure of it as that loading screen you get when starting up the game it said aviation lights at the bottom I am also in career mode and I am not sure if I have to upgrade or get more science before I can use it.

EDIT: Nvm Found out it's a research thing

Edited November 5, 2017 by MattFreeman
New knowledge

[InterplanetJanet]

I love using this; it makes "which way is up?" much easier, and also looks quite quite cool.

The one thing I would like to change, though, is that in the VAB/SPH, the part selector shows 'the backs' of the lights, which does not show their colors; it'd be a nice tweak if they were rotated in that icon view about 180deg so you could see what color they were immediately, without having them rotate/spin (by placing mouse over part picker icon) or reading the description (which is too much like RTFM, and who does that? =)

[MOARdV]

3 hours ago, InterplanetJanet said:

I love using this; it makes "which way is up?" much easier, and also looks quite quite cool.

The one thing I would like to change, though, is that in the VAB/SPH, the part selector shows 'the backs' of the lights, which does not show their colors; it'd be a nice tweak if they were rotated in that icon view about 180deg so you could see what color they were immediately, without having them rotate/spin (by placing mouse over part picker icon) or reading the description (which is too much like RTFM, and who does that? =)

I think this issue has to do with the way the parts were exported from Unity.  @Stone Blue says that there is a mod that will fix that, although I just tried adjusting it in the config file, and that seems to fix the problem.  However, it required a couple of other tweaks.  Let me see if I can put together a MM patch that will server for the time being until I put together a new release for this mod.

EDIT: The config node tweaks would allow the part to be oriented correctly, but that would affect existing lights, and it would require a plugin change to move the glow effect to the right place, so it's looking like EvilReeper's Part Icon Fixer & Tweaks mod will be needed to fix this in the current version of AL.

Edited February 11, 2018 by MOARdV

[Stone Blue]

1 hour ago, MOARdV said:

EDIT: The config node tweaks would allow the part to be oriented correctly, but that would affect existing lights, and it would require a plugin change to move the glow effect to the right place, so it's looking like EvilReeper's Part Icon Fixer & Tweaks mod will be needed to fix this in the current version of AL.

yup... thats why i only have a "beta" version of DeadSkins, only available thru a link to my GoogleDrive on the DS thread... the placement of the light sources is hardcoded into the Aviationlights plugin itself...and I'm not a coder, and I didnt think it was enuff of an issue to really bother MOARdV with looking into...as warning, it *might* break existing crafts that use DS parts... I dont play career, so I havent tested it for that..

As to the icons in the editor, for DeadSkins, the textures included little colored dot stickers, on the rear face of the part... so thats one option, is to add a small texture sheet to the existing AL models...
OR, the other, is to add support for the Part Icon plugin, which orients the existing models so the lens is facing the camera, instead of the back of the parts... either would be up to MOARdV to decide on... either could be done fairly quick and dirty right now...

but it sounds like we may be looking at possibly fundamental changes for an update, anyway... we'll see.

Edited February 11, 2018 by Stone Blue

[MOARdV]

I wanted to do a quick survey of other AL users.  Does anyone use this option in the VAB:

I'm working on a major overhaul to the plugin, and I am tempted to scrap the "Cycle Modes" option in the VAB to eliminate clutter.

[Stone Blue]

29 minutes ago, MOARdV said:

I wanted to do a quick survey of other AL users.  Does anyone use this option in the VAB:

Not I....

[maja]

2 hours ago, MOARdV said:

I wanted to do a quick survey of other AL users.  Does anyone use this option in the VAB:

No

[Drew Kerman]

13 hours ago, MOARdV said:

Does anyone use this option in the VAB:

nada

[Li0n]

17 hours ago, MOARdV said:

I wanted to do a quick survey of other AL users.  Does anyone use this option in the VAB:

Neither do I.

[InterplanetJanet]

21 hours ago, MOARdV said:

Does anyone use this option in the VAB

"Not I," said the mouse. =)

[MOARdV]

28 minutes ago, InterplanetJanet said:

"Not I," said the mouse. =)

"Then I'll do it myself," said the hen.  And she did. ... wait, wrong story.

Here's what I'm doing for Aviation Lights 4.0:

In the VAB/SPH, the AG editor will provide toggle options for all for modes like it does today, and it will add options to active all four modes + "Turn Light Off".  The Right-Click part menu will list the four buttons as before (with new names), but it will also show a Light Mode field that tells you which mode the light is configured to use.  In the above example, Toggle Flash was pressed, so the mode is Flash (Flash is also the default mode if you don't click anything, which will be important in a couple more pictures).

If you click on Toggle Double Flash, the mode changes to let you know. One other thing - in the VAB/SPH, the light will switch on if it's on, meaning that if the light is on in the VAB/SPH, it will be on when the vessel spawns.  However, it will not flash in the VAB/SPH (unless I figure out how to do that before release).

The Light Mode is important, because I'm removing buttons from the part menu.  The only option visible is to toggle the selected Light Mode:

The one odd thing about this (or maybe it's a feature ) is that you can change the mode in the part menu through action groups.  If you've got an AG for Toggle Light and one for Toggle Flash, the part menu will show whichever one was the last mode that was used. For that matter, any of the AG options except Turn Light Off will update the part menu.

Of course, if there are enough people who want all four toggle buttons in flight, I can change that back.

[MOARdV]

Okay, another screen shot of what I've got planned for Aviation Lights 4.0:

First, the items marked "B9PartSwitcher" are there because I'm using a DeadSkins part for testing, since the model is structured in a way that I can change lens colors without changing colors on the entire mesh.  B9PartSwitcher will not be a requirement for AL.

The Type Preset can cycle between Navigation, Strobe, and Beacon (and the presets are controlled by a config file, so more can be added).  The Color Preset changes the color, obviously (and is also in a config file, so it's easy to add more preset colors).  If Advanced Tweakables are enabled, then the R, G, B, Intensity, and Range sliders are visible (like in this screen shot).  Otherwise, it's just Type Preset, Color Preset, Light Mode, and the Toggle buttons.

An upside of the color presets is that they ignore symmetry, so you can place the wingtip nav lights using SPH symmetry, and then set the left light to red, the right to green, and not have to line up two separate parts manually.  The downside of the presets is that if you place lights in symmetry that you want to have matching settings, you'll have to set them individually.

One thing I'm considering is to reduce the part count to 1 and let the player use the presets to configure the lights.  Should there be a single configurable part?  Or should I keep the pre-configured parts as well?

[Li0n]

13 hours ago, MOARdV said:

An upside of the color presets is that they ignore symmetry, so you can place the wingtip nav lights using SPH symmetry, and then set the left light to red, the right to green, and not have to line up two separate parts manually.  The downside of the presets is that if you place lights in symmetry that you want to have matching settings, you'll have to set them individually.

You could also add a button to the right-click menu to enable/disable symmetry. I've done it in CrewLight for the motion detector module.

13 hours ago, MOARdV said:

One thing I'm considering is to reduce the part count to 1 and let the player use the presets to configure the lights.  Should there be a single configurable part?  Or should I keep the pre-configured parts as well?

I prefer one configurable light, utility tab is usually so big...

Anyway the rewrite is looking good

[InterplanetJanet]

I'd prefer to keep them as separate parts, actually - and Community Something  (Category Kit?) has a Lights category for parts.

But eh, it's not that much of a preference.

[viperwolf]

@MOARdV Thank you for maintaining, and further developing this, its my go to mod. Its very appreciated!

[majNUN]

On 14/02/2018 at 9:16 PM, MOARdV said:

One thing I'm considering is to reduce the part count to 1 and let the player use the presets to configure the lights.  Should there be a single configurable part?  Or should I keep the pre-configured parts as well?

I would prefer a single configurable part. This is not just a great aviation light mod, but it's a great light mod in general, and being able to adjust the light colours would be a fantastic development. I eagerly look forward to the update. Thanks for the work!

[maculator]

After reading the last page waiting for the update would be a good idea I guess?

 

Does the current version work with 1.4.1 or can anybody report any issues? I really want to add it.

Edited March 18, 2018 by maculator

[Rohaq]

It looks like a number of commits have been made since the last release - maybe it's worth making a release candidate for testing on 1.4.1?

[Stone Blue]

I guess nao that 1.4.1 has dropped, I *really* need to get emissive textures done, and handed over to MOARdV
Ill try to work on those today

[MOARdV]

1 hour ago, Stone Blue said:

I guess nao that 1.4.1 has dropped, I *really* need to get emissive textures done, and handed over to MOARdV
Ill try to work on those today

Yeah, I was holding off on releasing an update until I had some lights with emissive textures to test with *cough* Stone Blue *cough*

If AL v3.14 works with KSP 1.4.1, I'd say go ahead and use that for now - I haven't actually checked, myself.  The update will not break existing ships (fingers crossed ).

 

[Lisias]

On 3/20/2018 at 4:56 PM, MOARdV said:

If AL v3.14 works with KSP 1.4.1, I'd say go ahead and use that for now - I haven't actually checked, myself.  The update will not break existing ships (fingers crossed )

It works on 1.4.1 perfectly.

[MOARdV]

I've released v4.0.0, and started a new thread over here so BigNose doesn't have to keep editing the title of this thread.

Compatible with KSP 1.4.x, adds a lot of tweakable functionality like I posted here a month or so ago.