William Stapleford

Happy Easter for all that celebrate this Holiday. Here is a quick preview of another helicopter with corrected lighting issues. The cool thing is that I learned alot about the helicopter when I researched the proper lighting for this particular helicopter. I learned that this is one of the few helicopters that have no tail rotor and uses inductive fans to control it. It really was cool to learn some new stuff about helicopter. Anyways here is a list of changes. The nav lighting has been corrected. A top 2x flashing red strobe was added to the center of the tail fin assembly, a second 2x-1x combo red strobe was added to the lower portion of the tail. A combo nav/white strobe was added to the left and right tailfin. Each will flash a correct pattern and they should not sync up. Added the corrected lighting effects for each strobe and customized the range and brightness. I have also figured that the game has limits on how far a light can been seen. Technically the aircraft lighting should be able to be seen far away but after zooming out it will eventually stop. The front white, pos light has been changed to a solid light and adjusted the lighting. Please note that the lighting for this aircraft is taken from photos and videos found online. It is realistic but some of the aircraft found do have other forms of FAA lighting. Anyways here are some of the shots. Hope to get a video soon as screen shots do this no justice again. Still looking to get these changed models into the game so please someone help me. Have a great day/ night everyone Bill Delaware/ USA

Here is one vehicle that has driven me nuts over most of the EM series and one they should have gotten correct as this is requirement by the FAA. Oh well now my little rant is done. I have corrected the helicopters POS lighting and NAV lighting. I have changed the lighting to the correct strobe pattern for the sides and tail as well. Added some flare to the ground and the body of the helicopter. The photos again do not show much but the change in the NAV lighting on the tail. The lighting and strobe patterns are copied from real life videos of the actual EC-135P. This is a finished model and no further changes should be needed. More to come Bill

Better late then never but here are a few shots of the WIP (work in progress) The DR / EMT Station wagon is near complete still trying to work out a few lighting issues but here are a few shots of what I have so far. Remember that this is the default model with many changes and additions to the lighting of the vehicle. The daytime shot, changed the lightbar and lighting effects and timing. Vehicle now has Wig-Wag strobe (LED) headlights, and rear pattern strobe brake lights. I have been working on creating different patterns. The photos really don't do justice to the patterns and the lighting effects. Nightime shot from overhead showing the lighting effects of the wig wag strobes and tail lights, I have tried to tweak the values to keep from over lighting night and daytime. Lens flare is still an issue depending on the angle it is viewed at but this may be an EM5 bug. Another low light show showing the different lights lighting up, hope to get a video up soon so everyone can see the patterns, this show also shows the timing of some of the effects becoming out of sync. One thing I have noticed is that if anyone decides to mod lights or effects in EM5 make sure that you SAVE and reload the prefab. If not the lighting will never go into the patterns that you are trying to make. The reason is that with every change made to the lighting or effect of the flare it will start the timing all over. So in order to get it perfect I recommend saving the effect, deleting it and then putting it back on. This FORCES everything to be in time, they way it should show in game. More to come as time allows, also for anyone that knows how to package this so others can try it let me know. i'm have yet to test it in game. Currently this vehicle has approx 50+ different lights and effects. Have a great night everyone Bill

I will try and make a couple fixes to the front and rear patterns and hopefully get a few screenshots up later today. I downloaded a program to show videos as well. Does anyone know how to get the new prefabs to show up in game? All I can do is show them in the world builder and create a test scene like I did before. Thanks for the encouragement too. Bill Truck81 yes I have changed some of the lights to red and blue or added red to already configured blue lights. The problem is the effect for Material light animation keeps the "plastic lens effect" blue so it creates a purple light. Same goes for changing to yellow the blue will create a green glow. Have yet to find a solution for this. So I added red lights and changed some of the effects to suite what I see more over here in the US.

After steam decided to ruin my original work with the latest 1.3 patch and had me under the false assumption that all my work would be saved. I have now started working on yet another lighting mod. Please again remember that I am by no means a good/perfect modder. I also am not trying to take away anything from the other lighting mod project reality lights. I think his mod is awesome I could never get it to work and decided to strike out on my own. I can say I have learned a ton of things as things have gone by and also found many shortfalls to 16tons programming. If anyone can offer any tips for how to fix these flaws I am all ears but for now I can only work with what I have got. Some of the faults i have found Lighting synchronization - lighting will eventually find its way out of sync and it becomes clear if a screenshot is taken Lighting viewing angle - these seemed ,to be hard coded and I can change the values in WB all i want and never see a change. This makes the lights in the front of the car still shine through to the rear etc. Look closely at the default prefabs and you will see it too Lighting shines through vehicle - goes with the above but even tail lights at times are seen from the front of the vehicle or side lights shine through to other side Rotating lights - these seem to get lost at certain viewing angles. If you zoom out from my test map I can see the rotator beacons stop working until zoomed back in. this is with very little cpu usage, Material light animation - these have almost caused me to throw my computer across the room, I have found the blue "lens" effect and turned it off, saved the prefab as a new one, placed the new one back into the map and the animation (blue lens flare) is back on. I have deleted it from the model and still can't get rid of it for good. Finally is that no matter what I can only see my vehicles in the prefab list and never loaded into the game. I don't honestly know what to do to package it for testing so if anyone has ideas I will gladly listen and try them. Major changes to most prefabs to include EMT / DR vehicle - all lights changed to strobes, added wig wag headlights, changed light bar, added yellow traffic director, added rear tail brake strobes AMB - all lights changed to strobes / random patterns, added rear red brake strobes and yellow marker strobes, top strobe lights on rear, traffic dir yellow light bar above rear door, yellow/red flashing mini strobes on side marker lights, wig wag head lights Tow Truck - Changed the blue light bar to red and yellow, added side marker / turn strobes, rear red brake light strobes, white light to rear cargo area, side marker flashing strobes Police Station wagon - Changes lights to strobe effect, added red , yellow to light bar, added red brake strobes, headlamps strobe, front proj beam effects for blue strobes on front, side proj beams on left and right to simulate side strobes on light bar Helicopters - this one really bugged me because the aircraft are federally regulated and not a single aircraft has tail and position lights as found in this game. Currently working on getting the NAV, POS, and strobes corrected so that it is true to real life and the aircraft manuf. I will be posting screenshots later and if I can figure out how to post a video then a video. I will be looking for some people to try and run this or atleast let me know what they think. This again is to suit my taste and get a more realistic feeling for what I see around the USA. The patterns and lighting positions are fictional and are by no means accurate. Also I suggest STRONG caution when viewing multiple vehicles as the strobe effect could possible trigger seizures. Anyone around the US can agree that when an accident occurs the the police and fire strobes are very attention grabbing and sometimes can cause accidents because people will get fixated on them. This is my attempt to give that feeling similar to EM4. Thank you and stay tuned for screenshots and more vehicles to come. Anyone working on any MESH models please let me know. Bill Delaware USA

Sync lights and effects Looking for help if possible. Thought maybe with the new updates that some of the editor problems would go away but that is not the case anymore. Im finding it near impossible to get my lighting effects to sync up with the lighting itself.It can be seen very easily be seen when taking a screenshot. The stripes or flare will be seen but the "bulb" will be off. Harder to tell when looking at it in game. Also seems to happen when using small time values in cycle. I have made sure that all the effects have the same pattern coding and same timing but still they go out after a few flashes. Is there anyway to force the effects to flash at the same time all the time?

Can you pleased answer one quick question. I have now lost all my changes to the original pre fabs twice now and im trying to figure out how to avoid this is the future as new patches are put out. No that I can create a new project does this now mean that all the changes will be saved from now on? If that is the case then any project I have should be its own separate project. Im confused because all I was doing was creating and saving new prefabs with all the lighting changes. Thanks for any help. Bill

Not sure if this has been addressed or not if so sorry. I am trying to follow one of the written tutorials on the em5 site and I am unable to even get past the first part. When I go to create a project. I hit F11 for asset browser Click on the far left button that looks like a piece of paper Give it a name and descr and save. Then in the debug box it shows in red Qsf error Qsf asset browser dialog failed to create the project I noticed on the mouse over on the button it says Create new project. (TODO) Does this mean it doesnt even work. Please help Bill

Very hard to hide from the truth, honestly if anything this should prove to 16ton ent. that the customers really do want a good quality product and that instead of shrugging us off maybe they should pay attention to the market. The whole the customer is always right attitude died a long long time ago it seems. I would gladly pay for a full release of what we were promised, but this game is far from that and far from finished. Maybe they should contact the modders of EM4 and put them on the payed staff then we would get a quality sim and all the hard work they have done would be payed for an rewarded. Hey just a quick question just tried on of the tutorials for reskinning the cow per the website and found that I can not create a project in the asset browser. I click on the button and it is "create to do" and then in the debug log it says it cant create the project. This means that I cant do much of anything. Does anyone know what the most up to date version of the game is on Steam. I hate steam but it is the only way i can play as I cant get find EM5 on dvd anywhere in the states. Steam is another huge money grubbing company so who knows if they even updated the game. I'm afraid to update for fear of corrupting files and losing the prefabs i created with new lights and patterns. Thanks Bill

I would have to agree with the language barrier problem. I have watched the videos and then copied the moves but honestly the vids only show a few things with the editor. There is so so much more to play with in the editor that the tutorials don't even scratch. I have been messing with the lighting on the vehicles and have learned a lot but nothing compared to others and nothing compared to the other guy that has the light mod out. I wish they would give us more information on the actually creating new mesh objects and the actual controls and coding of the game. Only then can this become a good a stable platform to work with. Its really sad to see something that had / has so much potential fail like this. Hopefully some new people can step up to the plate and begin the process of messing with some of the coding. I have once and managed to corrupt the games and prefabs so bad only a full re-install would fix it. I would love to be able to implement traffic control lighting like EM4 had. I have yet to find a way to add workable lights to a vehicle other then the ones coded into the game. I think EM5 has a chance to survive but only us as a community have the chance of making that happen. Its sad when a developer cares so much about the profit that they completely leave all the fans behind and release a game/sim that is incomplete at best and far from anything that the promised, then to charge full price for this is a joke. It is becoming more and more common however with every game manufacturer / developer. Does anyone know how to get modded prefabs into the game to test outside the editor. Last time I attempted this it cost me all my work. I can post some pics of some of the work if interested but i have no clue how to get it so others could try it. Anyone know about creating meshes? Bill

Just wondering as I have checked the forum multiple times and have noticed that pretty much noone has posted anything anymore. I see more post on EM4 forums then this one. Just wanted to see if everyone has given up on EM5 and switched backed to the modded EM4. I see that very few mods have been made for EM5 and little to no information has been put out on making mods. I have been working on changing and adding lights to default models but that is about it. Hopefully im wrong but doing a search online for EM5 shows very little activity. I think a total of 3 forums including steam abd all seem to be dead. Thanks and hopefully we can make this game better since the company that produced it cared about nothing more than making a Profit. Bill

Here are some of the screenshots I promised. Remember that all these shots were taken in the editor on a small street setup I created and an accident scene to show reflections. After review I believe that several of the lights need to be toned down. Also because I have no clue how to actually model a new vehicle each of these vehicles is default and I changed the colors to be more of what I find around this area. Tow trucks in the States (USA) do not have blue lights, these lights are reserved for Emergency Vehicles only. Feel free to comments and if someone explain how to get these in the game please let me know. More Changes and alterations to come. If someone could please help me figure out how to reskin these items I would be very thankful.

I will post some pics later but thanks to the help of anyone that has taken the time to informe on basic lighting I have decided to post some screen shots (coming when I get home) and possibly the files for test if I can figure out how to actually make it work in game. So far all I have been able to get to work is in the editor and all screen shots are taken in the editor with a small scene I constructed for testing lights and the effects of the surrounding environment. A few problems have come up though as I play around. The first is that the light shines through the vehicles making it impossble at least for me to make strobes on the front of a lightbar different then those in the rear. Often here in the states thats the way it is. I can not figure out how to get the lights to be seen in only one direction. Second lights go out of synch with the flare effects to ground even if the timing and custom effects values are copied directly to the other effect. It may last a little while but then drifts out. Sometimes very noticeable. Third I can not understand how to create a light up polygon as they did in the game. Looking for help with understanding this if someone can lead me onto the right path. Most of the EM5 vehicles I have turned off the lighting for the blue lens found under material lighting if I remember correct. Forth even if the lighting effect is turned off for some vehicles the blue color is built into the models texture. How do you change the paint scheme or alter the textures of the vehicle. Another thing that I could use help understanding. Remember that I am new and trying to understand this I am in no way trying to put others work to shame or even compete with them. Im sure the others mods are far better. Changes made to date. Police car Added flashing strobes rear brakes Strobes headlights Red flashing strobes to fog lights Rear yellow flashing strobes to rear window Tow truck Changed all effects to yellow fast flashing strobes for light bar Added red center flashing strobes to lightbar Added red tail strobes Added yellow side marker and turn signal flashing strobes Changed surrounding lighting effects, created 4 spot effects for lightbar effects. Ambulance Added forward strobes headlights Rear strobes tail lights Rear red and yellow strobes top rear marker lights Yellow side marker lights strobes Yellow/red side marker mini strobes Changed to alternating flashing blue lights on top More changes to come and screenshots. Thanks to all who have helped and continue to help with my above mentioned problems. Bill

Thanks for taking the time to explain. So what I did was take a ambulance from prefab browser. The larger transport. I did not edit aambulance existing lights on it but added my own. I grabbed a flashing blue flare from prefab browser and possitioned it as close as I could to the rear upper left corner round light that EM5 seemed to forget. Figured it was easiest to do that as it was already colored on the model. I changed the flare strobe color to red. I then went through all the options of the and found the light controler tab. Changed the timing and made it more of a strobe POP insread of a blinking. After this renamed the prefab part. Right clicked and selected to link it to the vehicle lighting. A large blue box appeared around the ambulance. Then when I clicked my newly labled part from the layers tab it showed a green line to this large blue box. Selecting the ambulance and moving it now takes all the new stuff with it. I saved my prefab as a new prefab and then found it in the prefab browser and placed a second one in the map. Both worked correctly. So now we come to the fun part could someone please explain the different parts of the lighting tabs. Some make sence ie color. But others make no sense to me at all. Lighting control shows a custom pattern with a ton of 1s and 0s. Im assuming this is binary on and off but I just dont understand how to make a better flash pattern like you stated above for your strobes. What controls the shape of the lights. There is a directional option too but I did not see much change when playing with that. There are lights in the prefab browser that are square and grouped, I think they are for the fire truck but I cant get these to work correctly. Im trying to add directional lights to the rear of the amb and side marker strobes etc. Doesnt have to be exact but just playing around. Of course only one editor video is translated so I have to guess at what all the others are saying. Finally how do I take my test copy and see it in game? Thanks for any help anyone can give im happy to finally see some things working correctly. Long ways off from ever being as good as other light packages but its fun to try. Thanks Bill

I need help I guess I messed up the editor because now I can't see anything but black and a skyline. This seems to have happened after iv was messing with the weather and honestly I have no clue what I did. I have tried a ton of things to reset it but have not been able to. This includes seeing another weather thing like hot or sunny doesnt even show in preview window. I really dont want to reinstall the game if possible. Im sure I just did something stupid. Thanks

Thanks a lot for the replies. I think this game has awesome potential when some modders really start getting into it like EM4. Here is what I have so far. I opened the builder and chose to see the prefab browser. I choose my vehicle that I want to modify and find the simple police car or emergency medical vehicle. Over on the right after I place the unit I see the properties of all the points on the car. I find the point that shows as a left blue light and go through all the different options to change the color and timing. I can see the changes and then find the associated flare points and modify them to be the same time and color as the light. It shows good on the preview or live view window. I then saved it as a new group or object and called it TEST_(original veh name). Now the part that i cant figure out. I go back into prefab browser and find the light section. I chose the rear left blue light. I drag it over and position it on the rear left tail light of the car. I change its properties to be red and and the flare as well to the same point. It looks good on the live view but i can not attach it to the car. I see that you can detach from parent but i cant get the light to become part of the vehicle. If i chose the vehicle and move it the lights I added will stay in the same position but the light that were on the model and modified are fine. I'm lost as to what i need to do to make the lights stay with the vehicle. Any help would be great thanks. Bill

Ok i know that there are some new mods that change the lighting on the vehicles. I have been trying to figure out how to add new lights to the vehicles and mod the existing lighting. The editor is very confusing and the tutorial that has subtitles only covers the basics. I was hoping that someone who fully understands the language in the video will continue to translate with subtitles but until that happens I'm trying to simply edit and play with simply things. I know how to get a vehicle and get it place it in the editor and then to change the property of the lights and the lighting animation and action however that where it stops for me. I will give a simply example of using the medic vehicle and changing the left light bar light to a RED light flashing. I have gotten that far but have no idea how to save those changes and to add that to the game just as a test. I have also created other lights that sit in the tail lights and flash a random code 3 strobe pattern but these also do not seem to be attached to the vehicle and also appear to shine through the vehicles at all angles. could someone please explain how to mod the lights and get those changes into the game etc. I know the RED and BLUE lightbar on these vehicles is silly as the cover of the mesh model skin shows it as blue but it is a start and also easy to see the changes and what each change does to the light. Also if you create a LED strobe for the LEFT side of the car, can you simply copy and paste this to the RIGHT? Simply things that i just cant figure out yet. Thank you for your time and help. Bill

Just started to try and play around in the editor for the first time. I wanted to mess around with the lighting on the vehicles and try to create some of my own. I opened the prefab browser and placed a police vehicle down to start. Then found the lighting controls for it and added some rear strobes to the tail lights. I was panning around when i realized that i could see the lights from every angle. It was if the light was showing through the vehicle. When i looked at the default lighting it was the same thing. How do you restrict the lighting so that it does not show through the vehicle. Unless mounted in the window or a roof lightbar the lights should not be seen from every angle. Tail light strobes should not show through to the front bumper and front grill lights and headlights should not be seen from the rear. It appears that every default vehicle has this issue as well. Just wondering if anyone has some tips or a fix for this. I think that this game has tons of potential in the right peoples hands. Hopefully we will start seeing some bog mods coming out and all the videos of the editor can be translated to English or new videos added by members explaining how this editor functions. Thanks for any help that can be provided. Bill