FTX Global - FTX Night mode transition day to night

[John Venema]

Hello all,

Just some examples to further show the new autogen-based lighting system we use for Global. These shots were taken by Cedric Bogros, one of our developers and alpha testers. The location is not important; in this instance we're looking at Belfast and Dublin.

FTX Day = Lights in FTX Global at night only - no lights in FTX scenery

FTX Night = Lights in FTX Global always on 24/7 - lights at dawn/dusk/night only in FTX scenery

So the purpose is the same; use FTX Day to save FPS in FTX regions and disable dawn/day/dusk lights in Global. Use FTX Night to enable all lights in both products.

Belfast transition from day to night with FTX Night active:

Dublin transition from day to night with FTX Night active:

If you look closely at the day screenshots you will see the FTX Global autogen lights still glowing during the day. They become brighter obviously as dusk and night approaches.

We also have added lighting to all vector major roads worldwide. This lends itself very nicely to approaching large cities with all the freeways and arterial roads visibile from all approaches.

The main difference with Global is the vastly increased density of the lighting without an FPS penalty. I found perhaps 1-2FPS difference over Boston with autogen set to Extremely Dense switching from FTX Day to FTX Night. To me that is almost no penalty, and to be honest I don't even think the performance varies 2FPS, perhaps 1FPS. Because the lights are just autogen now without lightpole polygons and .fx calls, the performance is now related completely to your PC's autogen performance. Another benefit of this is the ability to reduce the level of lighting simply by using your autogen density sliders.

[2189]

looks good

[rsvette12]

FTX Night = Lights in FTX Global always on 24/7 -  lights at dawn/dusk/night only in FTX scenery

 

 

Only at night what good is that, global lights are pretty much useless.

[Rob Abernathy]

Having this great lighting system without a FPS loss worldwide at night isn't useless in my opinion.

[JohnR]

Just another reason to want it, CC at the ready

[John Venema]

FTX Night = Lights in FTX Global always on 24/7 -  lights at dawn/dusk/night only in FTX scenery

 

 

Only at night what good is that, global lights are pretty much useless.

Clearly you did not understand me. Use the FTX Night app to turn the FTX global lights on 24/7 if you want dawn/dusk/night lighting. You just need to use FTX Day to turn them off during the day.

[Vor_Active]

Hello John,

 

the Pictures are superb! First Class!, but I caught myself stupid about this switching from day to night. I am confused. I have already on my Desktop 2 Icons FTXday and FTXnight. Now, installing FTX GLOBAL there will be another switching app?

 

I am sorry but today I got Senior moments and to me this with in FTX Global at night only - no lights in FTX scenery and Lights in FTX Global always on 24/7 -  lights at dawn/dusk/night only in FTX scenery it's hard to understand

[rsvette12]

Thanks John wow I was scared so I will have my lights for dawn and dusk - that's good news

[John Venema]

The icons are the same ones; we've only changed the code of the app. So just use them the same way as always.

[bdub24]

Hi John,

 

So just to understand when explaining the differences of the lighting structure, Do the light poles exist in FTX Global or is kind a like Ultimate Scenery where there just a light beam?

[John Venema]

There are no light poles in FTX Global. We now also remove the light poles for FTX Regions in FTX Day mode for even better FPS in those regions.

[Vor_Active]

The icons are the same ones; we've only changed the code of the app. So just use them the same way as always.

 

From the very beginning I have never understood the philosophy of using the FTX Day and FTX Night. I clicked once on the Icons and nothing happened. I went through the Forums to find some answers but as far as I remember I found one but actually I don't remember the answer to this.

I fly on FTX Regions mostly on daytime but now as FTX GLOBAL Comes I want once and for all to completely understand about lighting.

Is there a link that explains this in a more Detail manner?

Thank you in advance

[CLett737]

Looks great guys!

[Jon Murchison]

Am keen to understand how you will manage this in regards ORBX Scenery areas where currently having lights on can make a big impact on performance, for me anyway.

 

I currently don't use FTX Night because of the FPS hit. If I understand your post correctly you are changing the code of the current tool which I will continue to use for scenery areas as well as Global. So, if I turn lights on for global then I would expect I turn them on for my ORBX scenery areas as well? If that is the case I see it as something that could be problematic given I wouldn't want FTX Night on for the reasons I have mentioned.

[garys]

^{Then do the same as you do now. Before starting FSX we all generally know what flights we intend to do. If you know your going to be flying in an FTX area then set your lights to day. Pretty simple really.}

[JoseCFII]

I'm also hoping for simple on and off switch of the new lighting system for FTX Global and all the regions. This means a seamless integration with FTX Regions.

 

In other words, I want FTX Global to work together with the Regions and this new lighting system has to be implemented in the Regions for me to see a benefit and a desire to continue to purchase any FSX add-ons.

[Bruce Hamilton]

From the very beginning I have never understood the philosophy of using the FTX Day and FTX Night. I clicked once on the Icons and nothing happened.

 

They turn night textures within FTX regions on or off, you won't see anything happen on your desktop

[John Venema]

Sigh...

 

People are complicating things waaaay to much

 

The FTX Day and FTX Night work exactly the same way as before for FTX Regions, but with the added benefit of the light poles being disabled during the daytime with FTX Day so you'll get even better performance in places like Seattle, London, Sydney etc.

 

We'll explain it all quite clearly in the user guide.

 

Will we update all our old regions to use the new lighting system? Not sure, it's a massive task to re-annotate tens of thousands of LM textures but we will look into it.

[Vor_Active]

Thank you both for the reply.

 

 

Sigh...

 

People are complicating things waaaay to much

 It is the thirst to discover the inner world of FSX 

[JohnB777]

Awesome, just one of the many reasons I just can't wait for FTX Global. My credit card is armed and ready!

[Martin Reiffer]

Will you implement a way to completely disable your lighting features? I would like to continue using UTX night lighting for vector roads. I could also live with FTX Global night lights (=FTX day) + UTX lighting if the impact on framerates is acceptable.

[John Venema]

The FTX Global vector road lights have zero FPS impact, whereas the UTX ones will, so it may be worth using ours instead.

Either way, we'll look into being able to optionally activate them.

[Sid]

The FTX Global vector road lights have zero FPS impact, whereas the UTX ones will, so it may be worth using ours instead.

Either way, we'll look into being able to optionally activate them.

That would make things nice and simple John as the UTX lights certainly impact on frames and resource load and it would make it nice and easy to de-activate them without much hassle. Good luck and thanks for looking into it anyway. Speaking of Vector. I know its not a thing we all focus on much, not sure why cos of its usefulness in VFR flight, but do you think there might be any possibility some way in the future to eventually look into FTX vectors as some sort of extra-purchase add ons, perhaps on the country-pack style basis you mentioned regarding airports/poi/cityscape packs, or perhaps by regions, such as South-East Asia, North-East Asia, South Asia, Atlantic Latin America, Pacific Latin America, Central America, Sub-Saharan Africa, Middle East etc. etc...or whatever chunks of the globe you divide it up into. Even if they're only partial and not perfect.

 

Obviously, I understand the full fat FTX regions all have and will have this but I mean only for the areas you don't plan on doing full fat regions, perhaps such as the ones above. If you do of course, forget all I'm going on about...I'll buy them all one by one, even if its not until the next decade that you could even make a start on them. But if, as I'd imagine you probably won't be able to if the community hasn't grown and diversified enough by then, I thought perhaps FTX Global Extras Vector Packs (roads, rivers, lakes, coastlines, railways, etc) could be something the dedicated FTX Global team could eventually add to the collection of  purchasable 'Global extras' once other things are done (though I know that won't be for a whole while), for areas where the data was relatively readily available of course, if it even is. Its only a thought really and there's probably a myriad of reasons for not doing it...perhaps lack of interest in the community...perhaps too difficult for some reason I'm not aware of...perhaps not even possible...I don't really know regarding these issues. Just throwing it out there really, in case a long way in the future the Global team's thinking of what next, though I appreciate that won't be likely on this side of the decade. A long-term thought for a time that may well not be on your radar yet with all else that's going on. Exploring possibilities only I guess.

 

Kind regards,

Sid

 

Thanks for bearing with me.

[Martin Reiffer]

The FTX Global vector road lights have zero FPS impact, whereas the UTX ones will, so it may be worth using ours instead.

Either way, we'll look into being able to optionally activate them.

 

I would certainly make the switch but I still have a few questions:

 

I don't like switching around so I need a solution that works 24/7. If I am not mistaken leaving FTX Day permanently on will trigger 3D lights at night (but not at dawn/dusk). I can live with that (I guess the lm textures are still lighting up) but does this work for the FTX regions, too?!

 

I have extremely dense scenery areas (e.g. FTX ENG + Aerosoft London) so if the old-style lights of the FTX regions produce worse framerates than my UTX lights (only highways and major roads) my switch will have to wait until the regions are updated. Or is there any way to reduce the FTX lights to highways and major roads? In fact this is all I need.

 

I like the red/green UTX lights at intersections and rumour has it this feature will be included in FTX Global, too, right?!

 

Cheers

Martin

[jetavsim]

Hello John,

Looking forward for the FTX Global release. In my opinion night lights looks very dark. Especially with ENB which doubles the contrast and black colour becomes x2 black

Here is a shot for comparison. Just my two cents..

 

[jetavsim]

And here are a few old shots of mine using UTX Europe with Night Lights

[John Venema]

You can't have your cake and eat it too; those UTX lights use performance sapping .fx files whereas our 3D lights are autogen only and don't have effects attached.

So by all means use the UTX lighting as well if you want the Christmas Tree effect, but you'll have to cop the performance hit.

[wolfko]

Hello John,

Looking forward for the FTX Global release. In my opinion night lights looks very dark. Especially with ENB which doubles the contrast and black colour becomes x2 black

Here is a shot for comparison. Just my two cents..

 

Then I would suggest to switch off enb during dusk, night and dawn. I only use enb during day time for the reasons you have mentioned and other obvious reasons.

Wolfgang

[toby23]

This is how it works...

 

1. Use FTX DAY when flying in FTX Regions during the day.

2. Use FTX NIGHT when flying in FTX Regions at night (dawn, dusk, night).

3. Use FTX DAY when flying outside of FTX Regions, regardless of the time of day.

 

 

Why can't I just select one?

 

- If you use FTX DAY and fly in an FTX Region at night, you won't see any 3D street lights.

- If you use FTX NIGHT when flying outside of FTX Regions during the day, you will experience a performance hit.