[Flightgear-devel] Airport/Runway Lighting (An idea??)

[John W. <ca...@mm...>]

Hi,

Not being a graphics/rendering expert I've been wondering how to add =
runway/taxi and other
airport lights for night flying.=20

How does this sound;

1. treat the lights as a textured surface of say some color (like white, =
or blue),
2. define a polygon surface that overlays the region/area where you want =
lights,
3. compute the location points and create a "spike" with a vertical =
dimension above the surface
of the polygon (a different height for each type of light),
4. map the textured surfaces onto the polygon(s) such that the top of =
each spike is painted with the color
of the textured surface. (if the base height of the polygon is below the =
ground it will be overlaid with
the later scene textures)
5. render the scene.

Observations:
the polygon and spikes would be calculated once during init, or it might =
better be done
off-line as a datafile for each airport. Light intensities could be =
varied by changing the textures. Large
arrays of lights such as approach lights could be set at the correct =
angle by varying the
slope of the polygon. They could also be precomputed to save CPU cycles. =
Light attenuation as a
result of fog and haze would be "free" - part of normal scene =
redendering.

That still leaves the problem of moving lights, beacons, strobes, other =
vehicles and aircraft etc.
not to mention aircraft landing lights.

Just a crazy idea, but...

Regards
Jack W.