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I love the way 3D Shockwave looks on my E-Jets! But it was no fun seeing the nose gear lights hanging in space after bringing the gear up. I started noodling around with the inner workings of FSX, XML, FSUIPC, CABDIR, and so on. This turned out to be more of a challenge than I anticipated but I finally got it!

The E-Jets control the Taxi and Landing lights using switches on the Overhead panel. After the nose gear is retracted, the aircraft nose light is covered up by the landing gear bay doors when they close. This gives the appearance that the nose light has gone off, no matter what the Taxi light switch says. Presumably, this emulates real-world aircraft, which must have some sort of cutoff switch on the nose gear to shut off the light when retracted.

Now, if you put Shockwave lights on the nose gear, they look great, right? Much better than the stock lights, I say. The conventional approach is to designate them as either type 5 (Landing) or 6 (Taxi) in the aircraft.cfg. All is good, right? Uhhhh . . . no. The bad news is the Shockwave lights will not turn off when the gear is raised. They stay illuminated until you hit the Taxi or Landing light switch on the Overhead Panel. That's why you have the "floating" light under the plane, which is just not realistic.

Here's the solution. I use light type 7 (Recognition) for the nose gear light. My payware aircraft do not use this light for any purpose. None of the overhead switches turn the Recognition light on or off. It's free for me to use. However, just changing the Shockwave light to type 7 is only part of the solution. You need a little XML code to make it actually DO something.

A2A Simulations uses a file called Shockwave_Lights.cab that contains five XML modules. When you modify the panel.cfg file (per their instructions), you are hooking your aircraft to those modules to control the Shockwave lights. I have built a sixth module (it does not replace the other five) to control the Recognition lights. I named it SW Lights_Growley_Recognition.xml (so modest) and added it to A2A's Shockwave_Lights.cab.

The logic in the XML code works as follows:
1. Check for gear down; if Taxi light is on and Recognition light is off, then toggle Recognition light; if Taxi light is off and Recognition light is on, then toggle Recognition light.
2. Check for gear up; if Recognition light is on, then toggle Recognition light.
This enables the Shockwave nose lights to be controlled by my XML routine so that after the gear comes up, the "floating" nose light . . . is GONE! Likewise, when the gear comes down, the nose light comes on if the Overhead panel Taxi light is switched on.

This solution works on FSX Acceleration, I have not tested it on other FS versions. I have it working on the following:
1. feelThere E-Jets V2
2. feelThere/Wilco Citation X
3. Flight1 ATR 72-500

I would love to hear if you have any comments on this.
Thanks, Garrett

Hey Garret, looks like you went to a lot of effort.
You could just try what is described in the manual.

Add the following to your panel.cfg file under
[Vcockpit01]
gaugeXX=shockwave_lights!SW Lights_gear, 1,1,1,1 //shockwave light

This does the trick nicely.

regards
Trev

Trev,

The SW Lights_gear module controls Landing lights and they work differently than Taxi lights. FS has separate internal events to turn Landing lights ON and turn Landing lights OFF. However, there is only one FS event for Taxi lights - toggle from the current condition (ON or OFF) to the opposite condition.

The purist in me wants a Shockwave Taxi light on the nose gear that is controlled separately from the Landing lights on the wings or fuselage. Therefore, the SW Lights_gear module doesn't help. It only gets you all lights (Landing and Taxi) ON or Off.

The complicating factor here is the Taxi switch on the panel. It gets pulsed about every second and if it's switched ON and the Taxi lights are OFF, then the Taxi light is toggled to ON again, even if the gear is retracted . . . giving you the "floating" taxi light. That is what gave me the impetus to look for the proper solution.

Computer logic is tricky. I have a love-hate relationship with it.

Thanks, Garrett

p.s. Let me know if you want to try it out.