Author Topic: Airport taxiway/runway light glow too large  (Read 3636 times)

mistyblue

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Airport taxiway/runway light glow too large
« on: June 04, 2018, 10:40:34 pm »
I was just on a commercial night flight recently and paid close attention to the taxiway and runway lighting and how it appeared.  Generally it's more of a small point light versus a giant glow.  But in P3D (v4) for some reason the lights are generally always overblown.

Doing a lot of flying out of FSDT's KIAH one thing that really stands out (besides the large glow of all the taxiway/runway lights) is the green taxi line lights.  They start out large from further away and as you approach them they suddenly get smaller, and then when you're right up on them they suddenly shrink again to what I feel should be the right size (to my eye, anyway).  

All that said, is there a way to reduce the FSDT lights to more of a point/small glow, and also a way to prevent the three stages of lighting and just utilize the smallest iteration for all the lighting?  I know you can reduce default airport light size in the sim's .cfg but that doesn't apply to custom lighting (if I am not mistaken).  Would this take a modification to the textures?

mistyblue

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Re: Airport taxiway/runway light glow too large
« Reply #1 on: June 06, 2018, 01:58:09 am »
Ok, let me try this another way since I get the feeling this post is going to be ignored because "it has been asked too many times."

Does this look right?  In the screenshot (KIAH) you can see the close up lights look more appropriately sized, but the farther taxi lights and runway lights are way too big.  They should be more point lights in the distance.


virtuali

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Re: Airport taxiway/runway light glow too large
« Reply #2 on: June 07, 2018, 12:10:08 am »
You took a screenshot that seemed to be made on purpose to show the worse possible position, and it affects runway lights only. Taxilight do decrease in size correctly.


mistyblue

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Re: Airport taxiway/runway light glow too large
« Reply #3 on: June 07, 2018, 01:12:58 am »
I'm sorry, my intent is not to offend.  I really like your products.  I have bought MANY of them, some multiple times (for multiple computers) and will continue to do so.  Please take this not as an insult, but as a request for help/request for improvement.  I am attempting to either to fix an issue if it is something wrong on my machine, or point out that if this is by design then it is not very realistic with the hopes that we can make it better. 

What you consider the "worst possible position" is an actual unedited screenshot of what I am seeing out the window sitting on a taxiway in my ProSim 737 (at KIAH in this instance).  If it looks bad, I'm sorry but it is what it is.  The oversized lighting does affect BOTH taxiways and runways as you can see.  I get similar effects along all taxiways and runways around KIAH.  At other FSDT airports, runway and taxi lights are also too large by varying degrees.  However, at default airports I have been able to tweak the lighting to be much more realistic (IMHO) with reduced scalar values in the P3D config and a modified halo.bmp. 

On the taxiway center line lights, at KIAH at least, they do incrementally decrease in size 3 times as you get closer. Real world lights don't do that last time I checked ;)

I know the P3D lighting system is still far from perfect, and compromises often have to be made for the sake of performance and overcoming limitations.  These are also older airports that don't take advantage of Dynamic lighting either (will that happen?).  Not sure how much is FSDT and how much is P3D.  I just feel like there HAS to be a way to make it better, is there not?  I'm asking because I don't know but I don't like to give up so easy.

If it helps, I am running the latest P3D v4 on an GTX 1080ti across a 1920x1080 projector and have experimented with various HDR settings (on/off, large bloom/small bloom, etc).  Nothing seems to make an improvement.

Thanks!

virtuali

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Re: Airport taxiway/runway light glow too large
« Reply #4 on: June 07, 2018, 02:36:41 pm »
No, the "oversized" lights are only in runways, taxiway are fine, as you can see in my screenshot.

You just cannot expect a simulator with such a limited light engine would look exactly like the real world.

Our custom lights, even if you think it might be "oversized", are surely more realistic and visible than the default system, which is *far* too small and not as standing out as real runway lights, which are basically the most visible thing of the whole airport. Real world lights even have a lens to magnify the effect when you are aligned to the runway, and they must stand out more than anything else.

Yes, there's always room from improvement, and it's definitely possible to get better result, once we drop support for FSX, but surely we won't go back to the dim/invisible small default lights.

mistyblue

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Re: Airport taxiway/runway light glow too large
« Reply #5 on: June 07, 2018, 04:17:24 pm »
I guess we’ll just have to wait and see then.  For now what I’m hearing is this is the best you can offer.  Message received.