[lowfighter]

Always wanted to fly in the evening and see the town and village lights. How about a program which reads the objects of a map and returns lights (stationary objects) for certain buildings at the right positions and heights? Then you can use the output stationary lights file as a mission template. The prog would need as input file the map objects file (inBuildings.txt) and a building-corresponding light file such that when it encounters a buiding on the map it knows where to place the corresponding light(s). Then it would need also a scaling procedure, if the map has lots of houses then the scaling could reduce the number of lights to one-third etc. What do you think? Anyone?

[Poltava]

+1. You can improvise this now, using different stationary objects, like Airfield Campfire, but it's messy and doesn't work when you get close enough.

[Ectoflyer]

lowfighter:
[...]at the right positions and heights?[...]

The possibility to raise lights from soil to a desired height is already possible in the stock IL2 !!!

In the FMB you place one of the four lights you find in 'Stationary objects' in the map,
keep it selected, pass to 'perspective' vision (press Enter, it works when very close to selected object)
and then... you click F4+ right mouse and, voil

[lowfighter]

Thanks chaps for replies,
the need for a prog is just for not spending infinite time illuminating each map, so to do it automatically. Campfires are a good suggestion, maybe having a new "campfire which is not flickering so much would be good. Writing a prog for using ONLY the campfire would be really easy (you just need the coordinates of the objects, no heights or rotations).

[Fisneaky]

....then we'll need ARP wardens

[caldrail]

I see... So the village on your map isn't obeying 'blackout' regulations? That, in IL2 terms, is guaranteeing a visit from bombers, thus eliminating the lights altogether so making the whole exercise pointless

[aviatorsneah]

Yes this would be great. I was actually going to request the same thing given the other night i was doing a night raid over london...just didnt look right. I tried populating the area with the lights but never saw them anywhere, didn't try raising them though. Is there a way to have "glowing" textures for maps in IL2? like how MSFS has always done night city textures?

[lowfighter]

Hey don't joke it's a serious idea mackdown: :drinking: mackdown:

[dunkelgrun]

Hey don't joke it's a serious idea mackdown: :drinking: mackdown:

It's a fun idea, and worthwhile, but for historical realism it's a no-no. Besides, the maps are far too light at night anyway.

:cheers:

[Checkyersix]

You could do this with Zuti's Actor's Management tool. Extract the outbuildings.txt file for the map, then pick some common buildings on the map and use the replace function to replace them with airfield campfires. You can scale them down by selecting some neutral buildings to place along with the campfires, and then using the filter function to remove them from the produced outbuildings.txt. Finally you just copy/paste the finished outbuildings.txt into a mission file.

The biggest problem is that only a limited number of airfield campfires are allowed to "glow" at a time, so if you make them too dense you might not get the right effect. I'm not sure if it's only on-screen campfires, or some absolute limit (like the first 10 or so in the .mis file).

Good idea though. I hope this one works.

[Fisneaky]

Lights have become very dim with HSFX, so you would need the standard light effect to use it with any success.

I did experiment with the campfire texture - way back when, while exploring possibility of a flares mod (failed but did illuminate skin for parafrags, but led to animated "cinema" and revolving truck wheel mod).

Maybe some illuminated building skins to replace stock ones as a night mod?

Would need to dig deep on my external drive to find more info.

[aviatorsneah]

Maybe some illuminated building skins to replace stock ones as a night mod?

Would need to dig deep on my external drive to find more info.

That would be great....maybe even create some duplicates of some maps populated with these buildings for use with "night only" missions. Kind of like "moscow summer" and "moscow winter"...have a "moscow night". etc etc...

[lowfighter]

Cool, keep them coming ideas!

[Fisneaky]

meanwhile , theres always Monkey wrench

[Bobbo]

I see... So the village on your map isn't obeying 'blackout' regulations? That, in IL2 terms, is guaranteeing a visit from bombers, thus eliminating the lights altogether so making the whole exercise pointless

Switzerland on the Alpine map should be light up a night, shouldn't it? I recall a commentators during the war mentioning you could tell were Switzerland was by the lights at night.