By: Benjamin Supnik

Benjamin Supnik — Tue, 16 May 2006 02:00:00 +0000

Yes it is, and that’s exactly what 850 will do; Sergio had the same idea. The problem with lights and computers is that the dynamic range of the monitor isn’t bright enough to do a good center of the light – a white center compensates. To this end, the new light texture is 1024×1024 with 64 lights on it, to cover all of the combinations. In both the case of our lights and custom lights, this technique can be utilized. Hopefully the RFC for lights and objects will be up in a few days.

BTW the other alternative is HDL – high dynamic-range lighting…under this scheme, X-Plane renders to a special off-screen buffer that can represent ultra-bright and ultra-dark images. When the buffer is transferred to the screen, the ultra-bright colored light centers bleed out as white and potentially also create other lighting effects. We’ll get there some day, but only the current generation of video cards can do this on hardware.

By: flyboyqw

flyboyqw — Sun, 14 May 2006 11:35:00 +0000

Is it a good idea to give each light a seperate texture instead of using one texture and coloring them yellow, red, green, etc? This enables adding a white center in the texture giving it a much brighter appearance. Here is a demo screenshot I made in OpenGL:

http://pilotpage.monosock.org/fileadmin/files/lights.jpg

Comments on: Taking a Detached View

By: Benjamin Supnik

By: flyboyqw