Aircraft lights drawing distance at night
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Hi,
We recently done several night flights and we observed a quite annoying “bug” about the other aircraft’s lights when at some distance.
I perhaps need to make more tests to find out the exact range at which the lights are not drawn anymore (making in the facts the aircraft disappear) but it looks like that this distance is smaller than the distance at which the object is not drawn.
When the lights appear, we can clearly see separate green/red lights which implies that the F-16’s wingspan is already several pixel wide on the screen. That means that the jet would probably have been visible for a while during daylight.
This seems unrealistic as the lights are much more noticeable at night than a jet in front or rear sector during the day.
Is there a slider to set the drawing distance of the objects during day / night ?
Thanks in advance,
Regards.
PePe
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Hi, I agree and disagree on this, I don’t know if the red/green lights would be seen from longer distances, but the strobe lights should, and the landing lights too.
No sliders afaik.
Regards
F -
I noticed this too and is a problem when landing and not using nvgs during overhead break.
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Worthy topic.
Landing lights are clearly seen on the ground/runway upon approach but once your down they don’t appear to illuminate the air frame that has just landed in front of you as much as I would expect.
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Worthy topic.
Landing lights are clearly seen on the ground/runway upon approach but once your down they don’t appear to illuminate the air frame that has just landed in front of you as much as I would expect.
Funnily enough, only last night I flew a night mission, and got to think the landing lights are basically crap. Taxiing they do not light the taxiways and runways nearly enough to be useful, and when NVG is turned on they make a great big “blocking” patch right in front of the HUD rendering it useless. Not sure how ATC liked me driving round with no landing light and NVG, but I could see where I was going at least.
Would love to see landing lights similar to the FSX one I use for the 737, really convincing the way it lights up the taxiways.
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Hi.
I was mainly writing my question with the navigation lights in mind.
We did had this problem of lights that disappeared at small range when flying in formation during night.
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Recently discussed briefly here. (Post 1271 - 1277)
Apparently, lights and other effects would either take too much of a hit on your FPS or require graphic code changes, which is why it is like it is now, and probably won’t change in the near-future.
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How about the code for the runway lights? They can be seen from long distance (30nm) and they seem to, to me atleast, not use the same “distance code” as 3d objects. Or else they wouldnt be seen from that distance?
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For nav lights that is a problem of LOD
…
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For nav lights that is a problem of LOD
So if we would just set the LOD “change trigger” to a bigger distance, the nav lights would be visible longer?
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So if we would just set the LOD “change trigger” to a bigger distance, the nav lights would be visible longer?
no that would kill FPS just for nav lights !!
does the LOD1 has nav lights ?
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This is a temporary solution, probably sustainable for most systems even if it’s not optimized at all (draw a complex model when you barely can see less than 5 pixels…).
The best one would be to add the nav lights to all LODs.
That would be smart as, by night, you see a bright spot as soon as the aircraft is “visible” (understand : bigger than a pixel).
Back in OFP days, lights were taken from a “configuration LOD”, so that they were drawn at any distance and then shown as long as the object was visible.
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Hi,
Is there a way to have this topic worked on for the 4.33 ?
ie. reviewing the 3D models to add the nav lights on the LODs where they could be missing ?
Thanks.
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Up ?
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Sad…
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Its not nav lights which are missing……
Basically, a light can be good at a certain distance and not another. Let’s say we have a LOD0 up until 500 ft. If you want the nav light to be ok at 450ft, you will have a blinding light when you are at 100 ft, preventing any flight in formation. So ATM, you have to compromise. And not matter what, you will have a “light step” when switching from one LOD to another. The only way to make it true to RL is to have automatic light scaling, but this requires code and can be complicated. So I’m afraid you will have to live with it for the moment and use your NVGs more.
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Thanks for the heads up.
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Sad…
well his probably not doesn’t mean actually no. He could mean that it’s already done and no need to work on it.
Just saying.
The obvious is that it will be as is. -
Its not nav lights which are missing……
Basically, a light can be good at a certain distance and not another. Let’s say we have a LOD0 up until 500 ft. If you want the nav light to be ok at 450ft, you will have a blinding light when you are at 100 ft, preventing any flight in formation. So ATM, you have to compromise. And not matter what, you will have a “light step” when switching from one LOD to another. The only way to make it true to RL is to have automatic light scaling, but this requires code and can be complicated. So I’m afraid you will have to live with it for the moment and use your NVGs more.
I don’t think he means the light effect that make the wings green/red, but the light bulbs. There’s no need to have the light effect work from far distances on the wings, but one should perhaps see the bulbs from further distances, I don’t know how bright these lights really are.
But the landing light bulb should be seen from a longer distance imo. These “lights” would just be textures?
And the strobe…Regards
F