Spot Light
-
My Sqad currently trains LANTRIN Missions.
Which means Ramp Start at night.
Which means you need some Light to find the switches in the pit.
Then i found the SimSpotLight Callback. Sounds good but quite useless because it needs Batterie but you cant find the Batterie Switch if everything is dark……Isnt there a proper solution to get a flash light in the sim?
Quite frustrating…
-
Do you mean your cockpit look like that and you can’t find the battery switch?
Sorry couldn’t resist
But i do have a solution:
1. build a pit and then you can get your switches by tactile feel since they all have specific shapes
2. you can even pop a real flash light in that case as wellSorry I couldn’t resist again
…
I really need to try harder
-
he he, seems like you are using the same Cockpit Mod as i do at night without light
But to be serious, thats a Bug in my opinion……
-
Depends if the spotlight callbacks is meant to emulate a flash light, or the two folding spotlights under the glareshield
-
Ok, lol. Twice…
-
Just use your night vision goggles, they work.
Use night vision, set your switches, spool up your engine, turn night vision off.
Once spooled up, lights already set to come on.
I do it all the time. Not saying its right but it works.
I have night vision tied in to one of my buttons on my throttle. -
Additionally to learning the SimSpoltlight callback, you can also learn the key binding for battery power, that’s the equivalent of finding the switch with your fingers in the real pit
That would be Shift+Alt+W for up, Shift+Alt+Q for down on an english keyboard with the standard keyfiles.
-
My Sqad currently trains LANTRIN Missions.
Which means Ramp Start at night.
Which means you need some Light to find the switches in the pit.
Then i found the SimSpotLight Callback. Sounds good but quite useless because it needs Batterie but you cant find the Batterie Switch if everything is dark……Isnt there a proper solution to get a flash light in the sim?
Quite frustrating…
Well never minding the silliness above the correct answer is to turn on your NVGs as they do not require aircraft power and will allow your guys to find the switches.
-
To be honest, if i use the NVG to find the Battery switch, why should i use the Spotlight afterwards? Then i would just spool up the Engine and never use any Cockpit Light because im wearing NVGs.
And its really Gamey to use the NVG to find the Battery Switch isnt it?
Using a Key Combo for Battery is also not a good solution to me because if i dont fly Falcon a while i cant remember the key combo.
For Spot Light i would use a Spare Button on the Thrustmaster MFDs, for Battery i wouldnt do that because its too easy to switch Battery off then while in flight.In the Real Pit you would just use a Flash light, so if the Devs tell me that these are the lights under the Glare sheald then its a Feature Request to get a proper Flash Light, if not then its a Bug Report.
However you call it, currently there are just workarounds for a proper Ramp during night conditions.
-
Additionally to learning the SimSpoltlight callback, you can also learn the key binding for battery power, that’s the equivalent of finding the switch with your fingers in the real pit
That would be Shift+Alt+W for up, Shift+Alt+Q for down on an english keyboard with the standard keyfiles.
Thanks for that answer l3crusadr. It’s one of the rare situations where using a keyboard, when you have a HOTAS, makes sense to me. That and ICP.
-
To be honest, if i use the NVG to find the Battery switch, why should i use the Spotlight afterwards? Then i would just spool up the Engine and never use any Cockpit Light because im wearing NVGs.
Normally would only need to use the NVG to get the initial switch positions done and to turn on the cockpit lighting of choice and wait for the generator to come online. At that point the NVGs aren’t required. Never mind that I am pretty sure that the spotlights require generator power to work thus wouldn’t be useful prior to start anyhow.
And its really Gamey to use the NVG to find the Battery Switch isnt it?
Why would that be “gamey”? Real NVG doesn’t require aircraft power to use so why would you consider that to be suddenly un-realistic in the sim?
for Battery i wouldnt do that because its too easy to switch Battery off then while in flight.
Well if you had done any research here you would notice that the only time this can occur is if you set that hot key to battery TOGGLE. If you simply set it to battery switch to main power it wouldn’t do anything as it is already set to main power……
In the Real Pit you would just use a Flash light, so if the Devs tell me that these are the lights under the Glare sheald (sic) then its a Feature Request to get a proper Flash Light, if not then its a Bug Report.
However you call it, currently there are just workarounds for a proper Ramp during night conditions.
Oh please. With all of the things that could be improved or worked upon in BMS this picking nits is what you would bug report? There are a few workable answers here that solve the problem and aren’t “gamey” as you put it.
-
For a number of real world units, it would be gamey due to regulations prohibiting goggling on the ground.
-
Real world you’d have a flashlight and/or lip light (a must-have!) for this. Gogs would not be focused to see stuff that close.
-
Gogs would not be focused to see stuff that close.
There ya go, it’s NOT gamey, and it’s a bug!!!
C9
-
Well regarding the NVGs, take a look at them:
Thats nothing you can switch on and off, thats why i said its gamey.
Duno if they even work that close.a proper flash light isnt nit picking in my opinion, its pure logic to have a simple 5$ Flash Light that you dont have to mess arround with very expensive equipment just because you cant see anything.
There are so many features in that sim, many of them you may consider nit picking if you would request them now, because thats all about why we play that sim, right?.Even for my Squad, currently the Story of the LANTRIN Missions is that we have a technical defect in the NVGs and for that reason we cant use them.
-
I imagine in the real world there is external lighting from hangar roof lights, flood lights on the ramp, etc. to assist? I doubt there will ever be an instance where a pilot would have to start his jet in total darkness, surely?
-
Well regarding the NVGs, take a look at them:
Thats nothing you can switch on and off, thats why i said its gamey.
…Even for my Squad, currently the Story of the LANTRIN Missions is that we have a technical defect in the NVGs and for that reason we cant use them.
Technical defect in EVERY NVG set on base? That’s gamey… :wfish:
-
Thats Story, a bit of a fictional one but a story to keep things interesting.
You can also say that we dont have any NVGs because of delivery problems.
doesnt matter that much because still, you wouldnt use nvgs to find the battery switch in RL.
In fact if you have to use NVGs for the Battery switch you wouldnt have enough light to mount the NVGs on your helmetMaybe there would be light from somewhere or maybe just the ground crew will put out some flash light. But you would get some light from somewhere without using plane systems especially if the reason for the light is to be able to find the right switches…
-
so basically you are asking bms dev to stick to you’re so called story and address something specifically to suit your hypothetical scenario?
the solutions are there:
1. the cockpit is never as black as it would prevent you to find the switch with the mouse (or prove me otherwise) Even if it’s dark, isn’t the mouse changing aspect when over a hotspot? So you can guess wait to have it confirmed and then hit the mouse. I have been doing ramp starts in the dark for almost 20 years, never had a night where it was too dark to see anything in the pit before you have lights available. It’s the same stuff for ppl who don’t use TIR and complain about the airsource button being invisible under the armrest…
2. the switch has a position callback you can memorize and use
3. you have nvg - irl you can’t google on ground or it can focus, who cares? BMS has a reality on its own. It works, so use it it’s a valid solutionimplementing a flashlight is not going to happen
then people would cry with comments like how am i going to orient the flashlight? and if we make the flash light like a flood light illuminating the cockpit, ppl will complain it’s not realistic because a flashlight is directionnal …it’s a sim guys, sims are full of compromise. As long as you don’t accept that you’re in a world of pain
Red Dog
Reality if for ppl who can't handle simulation -
WEll the orientation stuff is pretty simple.
Just take a look at X-plane, they just do an illuminated cone arround the Mouse and call it flash light. Works just perfect.Ofc there are Hotspots, but in a black pit, you just cant find out if you have the battery switch or anything other.
Im also around since AF, almost 15 years. Im not a noob but those workaround are just immersion killers and a solution wouldnt be that complex, just use a proved concept from x-plane where this worked for years.
Oh and the Pit IS so black you just have a black soup at night. Nothing to see. Maybe the Theater builders can do anything about it with putting more lights on the ground.
