Buoy lights at sea

Questions & Answers
1

Hello everyone,
I need to simulate buoy lights at sea, at night. Spot lights with halo doesn’t do the trick because navigation lights don’t illuminate other things but must be seen from a long distance. I have tried simple cubes with self-illuminating shader and enable on/off the renderer to simulate the light blinking characteristics but … it needs to be a big cube to be seen from a distance and … it becomes too big when getting close.

Do you have an idea on how this could be simulated the best realistic way? The first-person is on a ship that moves close and far away from the lights. Some lights must have a range up to a couple of nautical miles (about 4 km).

Cheers,

Michel

2

I think you self illuminating material was the right idea. How about you add a script which makes the size of the glowing thing reduce as you approach it.

   var size = Mathf.Lerp(minSize, maxSize, (Vector3.Distance(light.transform.position, player.transform.position)-50)/200);
   light.transform.localScale = new Vector3(size,size,size);

This would give you a light that was the same size for the last 50 metres and was at its biggest size above 250 metres.