Lights SS V2 FS9 scenery objects by Sidney Schwartz
sidney.schwartz@comcast.net

This is a collection of lighting objects for FS9. It includes ramp lights, street lights, and smaller lights for mounting on the outsides of buildings. These are standard FS9 scenery objects and can be placed using Instant Scenery or other programs that are able to use FS9 scenery libraries.

Making FS9 objects that appear to cast light is difficult (at least for someone with limited technical knowledge like me). These are actually the landing lights FS9 uses for aircraft, but repositioned and angled. Since these lights were designed to look best when positioned horizontally, the effect is not always as good as I'd like, but it's the best I could do. These lights only illuminate FS9 surface textures...they will not illuminate aircraft or other scenery objects. Sorry, this is a built in FS9 limitation. 

My thanks to all the scenery designers who figured this trick out, and to Arno Gerretsen for his MDL Tweaker II and other tools. 

IMPORTANT! CHANGES FROM VERSION 1
=================================
Version 1 of Lights SS was created using a modified landing lights texture (spotlight.bmp) and multiple light sources in each light "bulb". Unfortunately, this method had a serious effect on frame rates, especially on older systems like mine. With this version I have gone back to using the default landing lights texture and reduced the number of light sources to one per "bulb". The result is lights that are less bright than in version 1, and also have a different shape on the ground. If you have already installed Lights SS version 1, VERSION 2 WILL REPLACE ANY VERSION 1 LIGHTS YOU HAVE ALREADY PLACED IN YOUR SCENERY!! I strongly recommend that you back up your existing version 1 files before installing version 2. Then if you decide you don't like version 2, you can go back to version 1.

Installation
============
(These objects may share some textures with other object libraries of mine. If asked if you want to overwrite existing files, say yes.)

If you have NOT already installed Lights SS V1:
1. Unzip files into temporary location.

2. The easiest way to install these objects is to copy lights ss v2.bgl into your FS9 Addon Scenery/Scenery folder, and all bmp files, except spotlight.bmp, into your FS9 Addon Scenery/Texture folder. Or, if you are familiar with how FS9 scenery folders work you can put them in any active scenery folder of your choice.

If you HAVE already installed Lights SS V1:
1. Go to the scenery folder where you installed V1 and rename lights ss 1.bgl to lights ss 1.bgl.xxx. 

2. Now install the new files. Overwrite the V1 texture (bmp) files with the V2 texture files. The objects won't appear differently in your scenery, but they may help if you have been experiencing the dreaded scenery "blurries".

3. I've included a copy of the default spotlight.bmp. If you have been using a modified spotlight.bmp and would like restore the default, place this in your FS9/Texture folder, but first make a backup copy of your existing spotlight.bmp.

For Instant Scenery and EZ-Scenery users:
Also copy lights ss v2.txt into the same folder as lights SS v2.bgl. This will provide descriptive names for the objects in the Instant Scenery and EZ-Scenery programs.

Credits
=======
I use the following programs to make scenery and scenery objects:

Modeling: 
Gmax by Discreet
MDL Tweaker II by Arno Gerretsen
CAT by Arno Gerretsen

Library BGL creation:
EZ-Library Manager by Arno Gerretsen

Object placement and scenery BGL creation: 
Instant Scenery by Abacus
Library Object Manager/Scenery Creator by Jon Masterson
Library Ojbect Viewer by Jon Masterson

Graphics: 
Lview Pro by CoolMoon Corp.
DXTBmp by Martin Wright

Terms of Use
============
These objects may used by anyone by any means in FREEWARE scenery only. You may distribute them as long as you distribute the entire package, unchanged, inlcuding this readme file.
