FSX-MS Poor Lighting Effect

[paulwilko10 0]

Can you please give me an idea on why the lighting on the ground looks so pixelated?

I have the settings at 2048 for Textures, using REX and most of my Graphics are set at least high.

I have turned ASN off incase it was a fog effect but no change and is the same at all airports.

 

I also see poor clouds at night with a similar effect

 

Thanks for any help

Paul

 

[charliearon 3,017]

Have you tried turning off Light Bloom in your settings?

[paulwilko10 0]

Thank you but Yep, that is one of the things I tried as I read about that somewhere

[cmpbellsjc 2,960]

Paul, the reason the ground lighting looks like that is just a result of the 3D landing lights used in that aircraft and the way the ground textures were made for that airport you took the pics at. I get the same effects with the PMDG NGX as well at some addon airports. Unfortunately there is nothing that can be done as it just a combination of two different addons. You'll notice the effect less at some airports including default airports, but it just comes down to the way the ground textures were made for that airport.

 

As far as the clouds, I can't really speak to that but you need to make sure your set to 32bit colors in the Windows display area and make sure 32bit it selected in the FSX UI where you pick your screen resolution.

[paulwilko10 0]

Paul, the reason the ground lighting looks like that is just a result of the 3D landing lights used in that aircraft and the way the ground textures were made for that airport you took the pics at. I get the same effects with the PMDG NGX as well at some addon airports. Unfortunately there is nothing that can be done as it just a combination of two different addons. You'll notice the effect less at some airports including default airports, but it just comes down to the way the ground textures were made for that airport.

 

As far as the clouds, I can't really speak to that but you need to make sure your set to 32bit colors in the Windows display area and make sure 32bit it selected in the FSX UI where you pick your screen resolution.

Thank you

 

As it happens, I have only tried it at two airports, LOWI and EGKK, both payware. Will be interesting to see on a default airstrip even though it won't be totally default as I have REX textures.

RE: 32BIT, I know for a fact FSX is set up correctly, not checked the Windows side of things, but will certainly look at it later to double check.

 

Thanks again and I will report back my findings :-)

 

Paul

[metalmike 34]

I doubt this is the actual reason for it, but I noticed that appearance when switching back to DX9 from DX10.

[cmpbellsjc 2,960]

I doubt this is the actual reason for it, but I noticed that appearance when switching back to DX9 from DX10.

No need to doubt it, go search the FSDT forum or the PMDG forum and you'll see the question asked and answered by the developers as that being the reason.

 

It was never really an issue before the NGX came out as only a hand full of addon aircraft were using the so called "lotus style" landing light that are part of the aircraft model. As a result of these types of lights and the way they interact with ground textures is the reason you get that effect at night. As test, switch to a default aircraft that uses the older style spotlight.bmp for the landing lights you won't get the same effect shown in the screen shots.

 

That's the only real downfall of having the volumetric style landing lights is the way they look on the ground, but the effect can be different from airport to airport depending on how the ground textures are made.

 

 

Post edit:

 

Mike this should remove some of your doubt. Here's a quote from Ryan with PMDG regarding the reason I was explaining.

 

The effect will never be perfect - remember we're doing something here (3d lights) that FSX isn't even supposed to have. The effect depends a lot on the underlying texture - it's not actually "light", it's a modification of that texture seen through the "lens" of a thin texture above it that's modifying the look. We did the best we could given the limitation of FSX. If the sim supported true dynamic lighting ala other games you wouldn't see problems.

Granted the original poster isn't using the NGX, but any plane that uses 3d style lights will exhibit the same behavior.