A way to get AI aircraft to turn on their formation lights at night.

[JalilDoran]

According to Google and my searches of this forum, there has never been a function in the Mission Editor or in LUA to force AI aircraft to turn on their formation lights at night.  If I'm not mistaken this makes normal night escort missions sort of impossible.  In all my experiments the AI aircraft go dark shortly after taking off.

Am I wrong or should this be part of the "Wishlist"?

[twistking]

Unfortunately you are right. DCS still stands for Daylight Flight Simulator. Even if you could make the AI turn on nav lights, you would still not see them after a few hundreds feet. Night flying is still broken in so many ways...

[JalilDoran]

I agree formation lights are way too dim.  But having the setting would be a step in the right direction and as for not even having the setting yet long after the issue has been noted, I can't understand how this is possible.  

[Tavilha]

On 12/15/2024 at 6:10 PM, JalilDoran said:

According to Google and my searches of this forum, there has never been a function in the Mission Editor or in LUA to force AI aircraft to turn on their formation lights at night.  If I'm not mistaken this makes normal night escort missions sort of impossible.  In all my experiments the AI aircraft go dark shortly after taking off.

Am I wrong or should this be part of the "Wishlist"?

I'm buiding a night escort mission and I'm baffled by not being able to turn the AI strike package's nav lights on around the RV area. The perfect feature for this would be a response to a communication (via F10 menu for example), asking the friendly aircraft to momentarily turn the nav lights on for visual confirmation.

So yes, +1 on my part for the "wishlist"

[norman99]

On 12/16/2024 at 9:50 AM, JalilDoran said:

I agree formation lights are way too dim.  But having the setting would be a step in the right direction and as for not even having the setting yet long after the issue has been noted, I can't understand how this is possible.  

Because ED were busy implementing LSO flares instead...

Yes, I'm being facetious, but the prioritising of seemingly random, irrelevant features nobody asked for, when there are mind numbingly obvious things that need to be addressed, gets frustrating.

Edited January 8 by norman99

[Rolln]

Try making a custom livery and add the following to the livery's Description.lua file:

custom_args = {
    [190] = 1.0,
    [191] = 1.0,
    [192] = 1.0
}

This may not work for all aircraft.  Basically it is just setting the models draw argument for the 3 nav lights to draw them.

Edited February 27 by Rolln