Help with landing lights on RealAir planes

[Guest thriller1]

I know there are some threads on this already, but I have already tried to fix this problem using the fixes listed there. I tried changing to the Default FSX landing lights AND using the High Intensity lights, and unchecking the landing lights option in the Advanced Options tab, as well as various combinations of the above, but to no effect.Has anyone else tried these fixes and failed? If anyone else can think of something to try, I would certainly appreciate it!Thanks!

[JSkorna 137]

Hi,If it happens with default lights, what does RealAir say about this?Happy Holidays,Jimhttp://www.hifisim.com/banners/hifi-community-sigbanner.jpghttp://www.hifisim.com/

[Kwacker 0]

Hi,I have the same problem and have tried the same suggestions as above without real success. However, I do find that using the High Intensity lights with the Realair SF260 that the landing lights are there - they are just very weak - so much so that you have to flash the lights on and off and view from outside the aircraft (on a dark night :-) ) to see the illumination on the ground....I have contacted Rob at Realair about this (who like HiFi provides great support) and I hope he does not mind me repeating his response here : "Please contact X graphics. I believe they have a version that fixes this problem. Our lights work absolutely fine with a standard copy of FSX." I think Rob is referring to the High Intensity fix - which for me unfortunately is not really a solution.Any help much appreciated. Maybe Rob can also chime in on this forum as it seems HiFi and Realair may have to get together on this one.Thanks!

[robert young 2,897]

Hi,All our current aircraft work perfectly well with a STANDARD copy of FS and FSX. We really cannot be held responsible for what other third parties do. Our landing lights, which are strictly in accordance with Microsoft's own SDK, also work perfectly with a standard copy of FS and FSX.I think what is happening here is this:We felt that the default landing and taxi lights in FS and FSX were miles too bright compared with real world. We therefore dimmed our Landing Lights commensurate with our real world observations of lighting in the aircraft we designed, but having dimmed them they are STILL plenty bright enough. I would guess that X graphic's own standard lights are also dimmer than the default lights, and perhaps in addition use a slightly different system. The result is that our aircraft lights show as "double" dimmed. But this is never reported by NON X Graphics users. Our customers without X graphics report that their landing lights are perfect, and BETTER than standard ones.Chris e-mailed me some time ago and in recognising this problem kindly said that he would alert his customers to a fix which rendered our lights back to what they were "out of the box". I do not know the details of this since I am not a customer of X graphics, but I took what Chris told me in good faith. As far as I am aware, Chris has assured me that he has very kindly taken steps to make sure that our customers can find a version of X graphics that returns our landing lights back to how they were intended.So I have no issues with X graphics or with Chris. He seems to have bent over backwards to help.However, we are constantly being blamed for the apparent lack of lights, whereas we are absolutely positive they work fine. I can therefore only suggest that X graphics users contact Chris to ask for clear guidance about this.Please be aware that there are literally hundreds of addons out there. We cannot spend every minute of every day chasing up these addons, which often change other perfectly good aircraft in ways that we cannot possibly track, and if we did we simply would get no work done, thus letting down our core customers.From what I understand X graphics HAVE provided a solution to this problem and we have been assured that somewhere on the HI Fi site there IS a version of X graphics that addresses the alleged "dim" or "no" landing lights.Thanks for this opportunity to explain.Best Wishes,Rob Young - RealAir Simulations

[JSkorna 137]

Hi,Just to add to what Rob has stated, the fix is to use the High Intensity light set and we did work together to come up with this fix. If that is unacceptable, then the default FSX lights work and you can tell XG not to ever over-write these, on the Options/Advanced Options Screen under Lights and Sounds.Thanks,Jimhttp://www.hifisim.com/banners/hifi-community-sigbanner.jpghttp://www.hifisim.com/

[Kwacker 0]

Hi Jim,Unfortunately both the High Intensity light set and restoring the default FSX lights do not appear to work for me and I think the person who posted first above. The best I can get is about 1 candle power using the High Intensity lights.Maybe I am doing something wrong - could you post or repost instructions for both just to be sure I'm not missing something. Also, maybe my default FSX lights have been overwritten sometime - could someone post the original file (I think it is just a small bmp file - correct?) or confirm where I can find it on the install discs?Thank you.

[JSkorna 137]

Hi,For our lights: under Lights n Sound--Landing Lights there are 3 possible sets:High Intensity GoldHigh Intensity WhiteHigh Intensity XeonChoose one and submit to FSX while FSX is closed down.To restore pre-XG textures:On the Options screen click on the Restore Backup button.We cannot post MS files and I am not sure where they are on the disks as I don't have the disks.Thanks,Jimhttp://www.hifisim.com/banners/hifi-community-sigbanner.jpghttp://www.hifisim.com/

[Kwacker 0]

Hi Jim, thanks.OK, I've been back and rechecked everything again with the Realair SF260 - with the same result.The High Intensity light set does improve things i.e. I can actually see some landing light illumination but unfortunately it is so feint that it might as well not be there. I have to turn the landing lights on and off to be sure they are there.... I certainly can't see a difference between Gold, White and Xeon High Intensity.All the other Landing Light options in Lights n Sound (including X Graphics default) are just invisible.By contrast if I switch to a FSX default Cessna with any of the above, the world is lit up far more brightly as it should be.I therefore attempted to restore the pre-XG textures using the XG utility as suggested but this does not help as it seems it is reloading one of the XG texture files - the FSX original must have got overwritten at some stage. :-(The only way around this that I can see is to reinstall the FSX default "spotlight.bmp" texture file. Unfortunately I can't do this as I seem to have overwritten it... Anyone any idea how I can recover this? The FSX install disks are all compressed and I really don't want to have to reinstall FSX to replace one 40kb file.

[JSkorna 137]

Hi,Delete the file and run the Repair Install from DVD 1.Thanks,Jimhttp://www.hifisim.com/banners/hifi-community-sigbanner.jpghttp://www.hifisim.com/

[robert young 2,897]

Hi Jim,Thanks very much for this tip to your customers. I hope now that X graphics users, and our users, can get the landing lights they want with your excellent product.Best Wishes,Rob Young - RealAir Simulations

[Kwacker 0]

Thanks Jim,I've successfully recovered the original FSX spotlight.bmp file via the method you suggested. I had thought of trying to do this but was hesitant to repair to pre-SP1 configration for fear of unintended consequences as I was patched to SP2. I guess it was not a surprise then that after repair FSX would not run - continued restart messages. However, I patched to SP1 and then repaired Acceleration (i.e. SP2) and everything now seems to be back to normal.Now I have both the original FSX lights and the High Intensity XG ones available. My preference is the FSX lights as these seem slighty brighter but the difference is small and both lights are a lot dimmer than say the default Cessna Grand Caravan for example. However, I'll go with this as I think Rob indicated he had taken a lot of trouble to make sure the intensity is real world.I've now also adjusted my monitor settings a little which has definately improved things as well.The whole world of night flying the SF260 is now open to me!Huge thanks to both you and Rob at Realair for wonderful support and your patience in helping me sort this out. All this over the holiday period as well - which confirms to me the quality of the HiFi and Realair operations.Happy Holidays!

[JSkorna 137]

Thanks everyone!Happy New Year!Jimhttp://www.hifisim.com/banners/hifi-community-sigbanner.jpghttp://www.hifisim.com/

[robert young 2,897]

All's well that ends well ;)Rob - RealAir