Hi

 

I'm not sure if anyone can help but some of my addons, mainly freeware have runway lights that only appear when you are less than a mile away in a gradual way. So basically when I'm landing I may not see any lights at night but when I get very close they start appearing. They switch on from the front and gradually make their way back up the runway.

 

It could be the addon doing that or something I need to do, graphic wise.

 

I hope this makes sense, but any ideas?

 

Thanks

 

 

 

It could be the addon doing that or something I need to do, graphic wise.

 

By add on do you mean a non stock AFCAD file or do you mean a add on scenery containing scenery objects and such?

 

First in order to make sure it is a problem with add on airports check at a stock default airport to see if you have the same problem. If you do the problem is in your settings.

 

If this only happens with a specific add on airport with scenery objects including runway lights then those lights would be assigned a 'sight distance' in the model before it was compiled and nothing you could do to fix that. That said, the most common method even for pay ware airports that have a photo real image of the runway it to use a AFCAD runway that lays underneath the photo image texture. That hidden runway is not visible but the lighting is. That leads back to your FS9 settings.

 

As an example, in my FS9 I can see the runway lights of all airports that have lights from at least 6 nautical mile out if not more. Check in the FS9 GUI / Settings / Display / Scenery / Special effects detail and set that slider to high if it is not. Then click on the Hardware tab and look for 'Hardware rendered lights' and make sure that slider is set to 8, that is the max setting.

 

Yes, your question makes perfect sense, don't worry. See if what I have provided helps and please let me know the results. I do have another thought or two but they are a bit more of a remote possibility. We'll look into that if necessary.

 

Regards,

Mel