active NCA Wind Turbines Missing Red Obstruction Lights

[rhalunen]

Just east of KLVK there is a large Wind Turbine Farm which is beautiful during daylight hours. At night however they are not showing red obstruction lights. Now I don't remember if they were lit in FSX or because I see them often when I fly over them in real life. Could Holger possibly clarify if they are/are not supposed to be lit? At night in real life when we are descending  from the East into KLVK the whole area is lit up with a stunning sea of red lights.

 

Cordially,

Roger Halunen

[Jethro VH-JET]

Hello Roger,

 

I am an FSX user and just took a pre dawn flight over the area east of KLVK - Livermore, where many thousands of wind turbines are happily spinning. I did not see any obstruction lights on top of each mast. I was getting 31 FPS of my (locked 32 Framerate) over the area, but I don't believe there were ever lights implemented on top of these turbines, because of the sheer number of turbines. Adding lights in this particular wind farm would be an excessive resource burden having an immediate effect on FPS and scenery load.

I'll let Holger state wether this is correct or not.

 

It would indeed be amazing to see a twinkling sea of red lights as in real life, but not many PC's / hardware / 32bit Sim of the era when the NCA Region was released, would manage without an OOM or unflyable slideshow. I think the Devs erred on the side of resource management and left the lights out for good reason.

[rhalunen]

Greetings Jeff;

 

Seems like old times. I remember the option in FSX to turn off any of the three CA_objects_windfarms_CA_PLC_addtl_animated.BGL files just to get enough FPS to struggle over the area. Yep, good times...

 

Now with P3D V4 64 Bit there is very little impact on FPS with everything on and spinning like crazy. Thanks for refreshing my memory on FSX. After all the years of simming and real world flying things can get a little convoluted. I think you're right on the Devs previous caution but I'm hoping Holger can work some magic with a change to the P3D Library; we'll see...

 

In the real world when we are on descent to approach at KLVK there was always a sense of anticipation as a galaxy of red twinkling lights came into FOV just before we had to focus on the NDB and ILS. Yep, good times...

 

Thanks for helping out.

 

Cordially,

Roger Halunen

 

Keep the greasy side down and the blue side up 

[Holger Sandmann]

Hi guys,

 

it's been four years since I placed those wind farms so things are a bit hazy... If I remember correctly the problem is that FSX has a hard limit of how many objects of the same or similar kind can be visible at once; if the threshold is exceeded those objects will blink in and out of existence, which is very annoying. Hundreds or even thousands of turbines within a small area created those problems in both NCA and SCA and we needed to simplify things. Looking through my files it appears that one of those steps was to not include the turbine with the red obstruction lights at these huge wind farms.

 

In P3Dv4 and its 64-bit engine that limitation is no longer a concern. If you prefer to have those obstruction lights I've attached an archive with an alternative placement file that belongs in \ORBX\FTX_NA\FTX_NA_NCA05_SCENERY\scenery.

 

Make sure that you have the windfarms active in the NCA control panel then replace the current version with the P3Dv4 version. I've included the original FSX versions as a backup.

 

Let me know if this does the trick and doesn't lead to any other issues. One obvious drawback is that most obs lights for a given windfarm will flash in sync. After a while, and depending on your aircraft movement, they will start to de-sync but you won't fully lose the non-random triggering and thus often have effect chains that appear like LED light strings. If that looks too weird you can always revert to the FSX version.

 

Cheers, Holger

NCA_windfarms_with_obs_lights_for_P3Dv4.zip

[Jethro VH-JET]

Many thanks Holger,
That is a much better explanation than I could offer. I knew there was a reason that the lights weren't included for these large wind farms in NCA believing it related to tailored scenery performance, now I know why in FSX this wind farm shows thousands of turbines and then blinks where only half are shown. Never crossed my mind that the FSX hard limit for objects was the reason for blinking wind turbine objects. I assumed this phenomenon was much like the early version FTX lights on poles, where under DX10 the light orbs would blink like aircraft beacon lights (all in sync), although that was probably for the same FSX object hard limit.

So unlike object limits in FSX,  P3Dv4 users would display many thousands of wind turbines remaining constant, no blinking in and out of existence.
 

As I don't use P3Dv4,  I won't be able to use your attached file, but would be very interested to see a picture or video from those who are able to try it.

If someone does try the file could they make the sim time around post-Dawn or pre-Dusk where the scenery is not overly dark but lights are visible, that way we can still see the terrain, wind turbines, and Lights en-masse.

 

[Jethro VH-JET]

Hello Roger,

 

Yes I agree, FSX is still very much a managed experience.  Sometimes I get ("P3Dv4 envy") purely for the 64bit advantage, but then I remember how much I still enjoy all my FTX stuff in FSX with my current Maxed out (set n forget) slider settings, even though I may sometimes need to lower my expectations. FPS can still fluctuate OOMS ever present, but my flight hops are now so short (time limited) I can endure and maybe even escape FSX'es little tantrums.

[rhalunen]

Salutations Jeff & Holger;

 

No worries. FSX was my trusted steed since it first came out and served me well. It's said that it's only a real hobby when you work on it half the time and enjoy it the other half. You have indeed earned your wings. I changed out the files and did a quick cursory trial flight and nothing blew up but I did see minor degradation in FPS (Locked @ 32 and dropped to 17-25).  I have a mid range rig; Win 7 64, I7-920 OC 4.0, 9 Gb RAM, Evo 840 1 TB SSD & GTX 1060. Sheese howdy, there are a LOT of lights out there.  It looks like Christmas blew up! Tonight, when it gets dark, I'll do a more complete assessment, clean, tweak & fiddle till I've optimized it and get some shots for you with a more complete analysis.

 

Holger, you never cease to amaze me. You have forgotten more about scenery design than most folks (Including Me) will ever know. Your efforts and contributions are greatly appreciated.

 

More to follow, film @ eleven...

 

Cordially,

Roger

 

If you want to go up pull back on the stick. If you want to go down just keep pulling back on the stick.

[Jethro VH-JET]

Thankyou Roger,

 Really appreciate your early assessment on the now included lights for (Holgers NCA wind farm light Objects), on your PC and that nothing blew up. Looking forward to your more complete assessment and pictures to follow. As I'm sure Holger would also like to know how you got on.

 

I am also in agreement with your justified praise of Holger, not sure if he is a US citizen or a Canadian, but if Canadian a Knighthood is not out of the question in my books.

[rhalunen]

Gentlemen;

My findings on Lit Wind Turbines as follows:

 

1. Screen Shots: Darn those lights move fast. I had to slow the replay down to 25% to try and catch as many lit as possible at one time. It was like trying to catch a swarm of fireflies. If you're too far out you cannot capture the full scene with any clarity and if you're too close you don't get the full scope.

2. Performance: FPS fluctuates wildly as you approach, pass through and egress the Wind Farm. It would vary anywhere from 30 - 9.5 FPS. Highly unstable. It appeared that the more passes and time you spent loitering in the area the less erratic it became but still not acceptable.

3. They sure are beautiful. Holger, as the vast repository of knowledge, would having lights all remain on instead of strobing possibly improve stability and frame rate? And, is it worth the effort?

 

Roger