but would they behave like a normal ship, or they would be just an ornament?

yes I like it too, but also flakmokey's model looks impressive (currently working on it). After the appropriate treatment I ma sure that the other lighthouses will look pretty good too. It is unbelivable ho much textures/materials can change the look of the same mesh :yep:

By the way: do you think that dat format lighthouses would look as good as GR2 ones? making them dat objects would speed up things very much (i have better experience of them).

Yes, I agree. On the other hand the lack of navigation beacons would have posed a serious risk for coastal home traffic, and I am pretty sure that within the first month from its declaration of war, USA kept applying peacetime rules, as far as ship's and coastal illumination was concerned. See the following wikipedia article on the subject:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Happy_Time

also, thinking out loud, if we accepted lit buoys, why shouldn't we accept operational lighthouses? :hmm2:

I don't know about the other countries, in the Soviet Union was the total blackout..

EDIT: Fairway lights were switched on short period during the passage of ships..

If needed, here an interesting link about French light houses during the war (in french): http://www.cairn.info/revue-guerres-...4-page-109.htm

To resume, light houses activity was normal untill German invasion in France. Then they controlled all light houses activity by a progressive black out (mainly to avoid ennemy plane bombing), only lightning those light houses when they needed it, for krieksmarine and merchant convoys leaving/entering zone.

That makes me think would be nice to have no working light houses ingame, but after a radio asking they should work for our need!

Good to know, thanks Volodya :up:

Time to dust off my school French :D

I am afraid that would be unpossible to do. A compromise could be like this:

- USSR lightouses: unlit during the whole conflict.
- French lighthouses (including French colonies): lit during the whole conflict (assuming that BdU was informed about our movements)
- German lighthouses (including Nazi occupied countries): ditto
- US lighthouses: lit until January-February '42
- neutral lighthouses: lit during the whole conflict
- British lighthouses: ?
- Italian lighthouses: ?

What do you think? The point is: can objects placed with object editor be set by date? :hmmm:

An excellent online resource on world lighthouses: :up:

http://www.unc.edu/~rowlett/lighthouse/

Brings me to an other thing we don't have in game: the light-boats :yep:
They were used in all Europe from long time, and even during WW2 (with restrictions posted above).
Even Germans had ones. Still 2 in France nowadays!
They were usually 40m long, and at anchor near high shallow waters or rocks emmerging.

http://www.mandragore2.net/dico/lexi...u-feu-2-gd.jpg

http://www.magnautic.com/upload/scar...arnenez-xl.jpg

http://phares-et-feux.fr/NORD/Dunker...0CPA%20002.jpg

http://phares-et-feux.fr/NORD/Dunker...adre%20big.JPG

Sandettie and Ruytingen were effective in 1940 for sure...don't know about others.
Seems they were all red painted.

Maybe one day in SH5! :D

If we can find the right ship model, equipping tem with one of those lights wouldn't be a problem :yep:

P.S: just discoered that SH5's lighthouses are 2 times bigger than a standard lighthouse :-?

A third one in activity in 1940: The Dyck

http://www.nicospilt.com/dia/dia0822_groot.JPG

What would be needed? Plans?...i think only pictures are avalaible...

Excellent pictures :up:

I was rather thinking of ready-to-use meshes. I am still not skilled enough for creating complex 3d models from scratch, but I can create 3d meshes or touch up existing ones, and I am discovering the secrets of UV mapping :)

P.S: do you have any ligh-boat measure?

What do you think of this, with some touch ups for making her to resemble more closely the ships portrayed in your pictures? :03:

http://img390.imageshack.us/img390/8327/lgh01na9.png

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/down...do=file&id=805

Looks quite good to me :up:
Maybe we could find an SH5 existing merchant boat with closest mesurements as original, and hull shape too.
A boat as Sandettié, was 47.5m long, 7.65 weidh, 3.50m draft, displacement 450 tons.

:hmmm: Seems the closest SH5 one would be this one for lenght and everything...

http://img15.hostingpics.net/thumbs/...2Lightboat.jpg

http://i39.tinypic.com/i36sqt.jpg
The objects have to go on land but there are ways around it . Ships beached , Ships run aground , Planes etc etc .
http://i42.tinypic.com/dgtqmg.jpg
http://i42.tinypic.com/nb82tc.jpg
Place the shipon water no problem . Build the sea floor up with the terrain editor . Place the ship on the raised seabed . Lower the seabed with the terrain editor .
No fps loss . Can you collide with it ? Yes . Can you destroy it ? I havnt tried .
http://i39.tinypic.com/6xx9hf.jpg
Sunken block ships
http://i40.tinypic.com/2ee946x.jpg
http://i41.tinypic.com/2j31w87.jpg
The game did drop to 55 fps from 58 fps when close to all these ships .

Funny I tried the same thing yesterday evening, but had the issue when placing a ship next to a pier and then leveling up the terrain, the pier get overflodded and iI had water behing the pier. Can't post a screen at the moment but will do later today if the problem still persits.

Might have to try further and play a little bit around with the terrain object editor.

As I'm playing around with all the 3D stuff i.e Silent 3ditor, Goblin, TDW Goblin, exporting Meshes Importing to Blender.

As the only 3D Software I have justed so far was Cinema4D and that is a few years ago I searched for a few Blender Tutorials and funny to say found a beginner one in order to create

GUESS WHAT: A LIGHTHOUSE :yeah:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASjzZv2PSBc

Placing ships with the object editor will stop them being ships and make them objects instead:D

They will not be date related, so will be there at all dates

They will not belong to a country and thus will not update as the country war state changes - also no flags.

Z- ships are only in ports that lag when there are many objects (piers/houses/etc)

:salute: