JonMyrlennBailey
Active member
What interval, in feet, should floodlight towers be spaced in American yards?
What interval should floodlight towers be placed in American yards?
- Thread starter JonMyrlennBailey
- Start date
Now that's really down to superdetailing standards! 
When I build a yard, I add lights wherever they might be needed. Set the environment to dusk, and wait for the lights to come on. If an area appears too dark, add a light. I don't think you can go wrong with that.
Bill
When I build a yard, I add lights wherever they might be needed. Set the environment to dusk, and wait for the lights to come on. If an area appears too dark, add a light. I don't think you can go wrong with that.Bill
JonMyrlennBailey
Active member
Setting a floodlight tower down into he dark only renders a 60-foot light pool. I sink the tower bases 1 m below ground anyway so the ugly light pool doesn't show.
JonMyrlennBailey
Active member
TRAINZ LIGHT POOLS JUST DON'T LOOK NATURAL LIKE REAL LIGHT REFLECTIONS IN THE REAL WORLD.
They never did. Please don't shout.
They are made out of light cones. These are objects that cast light spots but are invisible. This method dates back to the early 1990s and I used it in 1995 when I created scenes in 3d-studio R4 for DOS.
The problem with these light cones back then was having too many of them caused substantial rendering performance issues and were voided unless absolutely necessary. Final rendering was done using render-farms of several PCs networked together. Each machine could run a dongle-free copy of 3ds in render-mode. The master machine would dole out the frames for rendering in a round-robin manner to the clients as well as grabbing some frames for rendering its self. Even using multiple machines for rendering scenes with too many light spots, would cause this process to crawl along.
Not a lot has changed here except the graphics is better and machines are faster. Even today, I find too many lights in Trainz (any version) cause a performance hit in addition to looking like spots of white paint covering everything in their area.