landing lights

[avbuff00 1]

neither landing lights or taxi lights illuminate; all applicable boxes are checked in set-up kevin okeefe

[avbuff00 1]

more info ; the lights themselves illuminate they don't illuminate the runway

[scandinavian13 5,192]

48 minutes ago, avbuff00 said:

neither landing lights or taxi lights illuminate; all applicable boxes are checked in set-up kevin okeefe

P3D? If so, you must use Dynamic Lighting.

[katsa 13]

On 28/11/2017 at 10:25 PM, scandinavian13 said:

P3D? If so, you must use Dynamic Lighting.

I have the same problem, but I don't want to use dynamic lighting because it's terrible fps eater. Landing lights has been problem in P3D v3 too. Why can't you just fix them? Other commercial aircraft addons I have purchased have working landing and taxi lights, so why can't 737 NGX have them? Don't mean to be rude but I have waited several years to be able to make night landings with my beloved 737.

[downscc 1,327]

21 minutes ago, katsa said:

I have the same problem, but I don't want to use dynamic lighting because it's terrible fps eater. Landing lights has been problem in P3D v3 too. Why can't you just fix them? Other commercial aircraft addons I have purchased have working landing and taxi lights, so why can't 737 NGX have them? Don't mean to be rude but I have waited several years to be able to make night landings with my beloved 737.

Hi Kati.  There is nothing broke to fix.  Your display settings and the scenery developer have much impact on the performance of your simulator.  Dynamic lighting is a very different technology from the legacy lighting, and is effectively baked into the modeling so it's not as simple as selecting between dynamic lights or legacy lights.  I recommend you do things such as not use SSAA (2xMSAA works great on my 4K screen) and try different settings such as frame rate limits.

[katsa 13]

10 hours ago, downscc said:

Hi Kati.  There is nothing broke to fix.  

Yes there is. I have "Landing Lights Illuminate Ground" checked and "Dynamic Lights" unchecked. I should see landing lights from cockpit, but I don't. In every other plane they work ok, but not in PMDG 737 NGX.

There was a problem with light landing lights long before the dynamic lights were introduced. People in PMDG must have known this. Yet they didn't bother to fix it. Of course it would be nice if all scenery makers made their products properly (and fps friendly) and we could use dynamic lights with them that looks much better, but that doesn't change the fact that 737 NGX has a bug in their legacy landing lights (of which I think are now removed from 64-bit version, because no old work-around works any more).

Kati

[Olympic260 415]

1 hour ago, katsa said:

Yes there is. I have "Landing Lights Illuminate Ground" checked and "Dynamic Lights" unchecked. I should see landing lights from cockpit, but I don't. In every other plane they work ok, but not in PMDG 737 NGX.

There was a problem with light landing lights long before the dynamic lights were introduced. People in PMDG must have known this. Yet they didn't bother to fix it. Of course it would be nice if all scenery makers made their products properly (and fps friendly) and we could use dynamic lights with them that looks much better, but that doesn't change the fact that 737 NGX has a bug in their legacy landing lights (of which I think are now removed from 64-bit version, because no old work-around works any more).

Kati

If in P3Dv4 you have dynamic lights turned off then the lights will not illuminate the ground. You need to have it enabled in order to work. What problem was there with the landing lights? I am flying the NGX since Beta and never experienced any issue with the landing lights in FSX or P3D.

[katsa 13]

1 minute ago, Olympic260 said:

If in P3Dv4 you have dynamic lights turned off then the lights will not illuminate the ground. You need to have it enabled in order to work. What problem was there with the landing lights? I am flying the NGX since Beta and never experienced any issue with the landing lights in FSX or P3D.

Hi Chrish,

Have you ever tried any other airplane with dynamics lights turned off? Their landing lights DO illuminate ground, while yours not.

In P3D v3 landing lights did not show when you started your flight in day light but landed at night time. The way you sometimes could make them work, was to start the sim at night time and then turned the clock to day. In FSX, this worked as I recall.

What I think is that Prepar3d's graphic engine is just very flawed. It shouldn't be so hard to show a couple of dynamic lights with GTX 1070. For example, at the gate of Orbx's ESSA my fps drops by 2-3 frames by every *single* light I turn on in 737. i.e. all lights turned on the drop is about 10+ frames. The drop is less if there's no so many objects to be lit. While taxiing it's about 1-2 frames. I don't use SSAA.

What I am trying to say is that because the dynamic lighting is what it is, I'd like to be able to use legacy lights as a backup option in low fps conditions.

Kati

[Olympic260 415]

1 minute ago, katsa said:

Hi Chrish,

Have you ever tried any other airplane with dynamics lights turned off? Their landing lights DO illuminate ground, while yours not.

In P3D v3 landing lights did not show when you started your flight in day light but landed at night time. The way you sometimes could make them work, was to start the sim at night time and then turned the clock to day. In FSX, this worked as I recall.

What I think is that Prepar3d's graphic engine is just very flawed. It shouldn't be so hard to show a couple of dynamic lights with GTX 1070. For example, at the gate of Orbx's ESSA my fps drops by 2-3 frames by every *single* light I turn on in 737. i.e. all lights turned on the drop is about 10+ frames. The drop is less if there's no so many objects to be lit. While taxiing it's about 1-2 frames. I don't use SSAA.

What I am trying to say is that because the dynamic lighting is what it is, I'd like to be able to use legacy lights as a backup option in low fps conditions.

Kati

Kati,

It has been communicated in the past that our planes will only use Dynamic lights in P3Dv4. The legacy lighting system has been dropped completely on that platform.

As for the issue this is the first time I hear it, and definitely. have not see it happen here. In P3dv3 are  you running and shader modifications or other similar programs?

[Ephedrin 418]

6 minutes ago, Olympic260 said:

As for the issue this is the first time I hear it, and definitely. have not see it happen here. In P3dv3 are  you running and shader modifications or other similar programs?

I had this too on v3 but very occasionally and not only with PMDG. Also with the Q400 which still has that problem. I hadn‘t checked if it was related to PTA or anything else. 

 

Kati, there has been a long thread about the dynamic lighting in the A2A forum and also here at PMDG. The lighting system has changed a lot since v3 and offering the option to switch around between lights is far from any economical calculating. I would require different installation files and a hugh effort of coding. It‘s LM to fix this, not PMDG. And it seems TO ME, that this isn‘t that easy, otherwise it would have been included into the 4.1 update. And to be honest: only people with older graphic cards suffer from DL. Only few people with a GTX 10** complain. My gtx970 is several years old and even I can use DL with MSAA 4x without any issues. We simply can‘t expect a 2010 car with a touchscreen. Might exist, but unlikely. Same for graphic cards.

[anden145 2,273]

32 minutes ago, Ephedrin said:

Kati, there has been a long thread about the dynamic lighting in the A2A forum and also here at PMDG. The lighting system has changed a lot since v3 and offering the option to switch around between lights is far from any economical calculating. I would require different installation files and a hugh effort of coding. It‘s LM to fix this, not PMDG. And it seems TO ME, that this isn‘t that easy, otherwise it would have been included into the 4.1 update. And to be honest: only people with older graphic cards suffer from DL. Only few people with a GTX 10** complain. My gtx970 is several years old and even I can use DL with MSAA 4x without any issues. We simply can‘t expect a 2010 car with a touchscreen. Might exist, but unlikely. Same for graphic cards.

+1

Dynamic Lighting are here to stay.

Deal with it and turn down settings accordingly if you're suffering from bad performance, but don't blame PMDG for the issues with this. The Dynamic Lighting are working as they should and you should have minimum performance hit, if you just stick to running MSAA. I don't have issues with Dynamic Lighting and many others aren't either, if they just set their settings to match their computers hardware.

Terribly sorry, for being so blunt here... 

[Ephedrin 418]

The thing is, P3D is a professional flight education platform, not a game. Of course it is mainly used as pure entertainment, but that‘s not its purpose. And when using a professional simulator it can be expected that the hardware matches the needs of the program and not vice versa. 

I also can‘t approach Las Vegas or LA at night with the 747 or FSLabs A320 and I doubt people with a gtx1080 have a great time there... there are issues to be resolved by LM, but PMDG have just used what is given and that works as P3D allows it to.

[katsa 13]

1 hour ago, Olympic260 said:

Kati,

It has been communicated in the past that our planes will only use Dynamic lights in P3Dv4. The legacy lighting system has been dropped completely on that platform.

As for the issue this is the first time I hear it, and definitely. have not see it happen here. In P3dv3 are  you running and shader modifications or other similar programs?

Ok. I had not heard that the legacy light support was really dropped on PMDG, although I suspected that it might be the case.

But you're all right. There is no way going back. Dynamic lights are what we all expect from the modern sim. I can only hope that LM can improve it fps-wise in the next upgrade or so.

I have few shader mod's from PTA. Nothing demanding and of course I have tried turning them off. They are not the issue here. I don't blame PDMG of any performances issues either.

 

 

 

 

 

[katsa 13]

1 hour ago, Anders Bermann said:

+1

Dynamic Lighting are here to stay.

Deal with it and turn down settings accordingly if you're suffering from bad performance, but don't blame PMDG for the issues with this. The Dynamic Lighting are working as they should and you should have minimum performance hit, if you just stick to running MSAA. I don't have issues with Dynamic Lighting and many others aren't either, if they just set their settings to match their computers hardware.

Terribly sorry, for being so blunt here... 

To make it sure: I don't blame PMDG on any performance issue. I was only hoping to have a quick fix in my tool box.

But who to blame when FPS drop by 8-10 when I turn on two landing lights on a plane? Even when I don't have any shadows or reflections turned on. Some thing isn't clearly right. That should never happen with a modern GPU like 1070. I need to investigate this more, but FPS hit doesn't seem to occur on every airport and not everywhere. Can there be something wrong with the objects/models/textures that are currently lit by those lights?

[downscc 1,327]

8 hours ago, katsa said:

Can there be something wrong with the objects/models/textures that are currently lit by those lights?

This is why I said your display settings and scenery developers have a major impact on performance.  Mir of Flightbeam has posted a very informative description of how scenery and dynamic lighting come together.  For example, many developers have over the years used the technique of multiple layers of sheets or planes to create a realistic rendering of concrete runways. This now means that every light ray must be calculated in a manner that takes the surfaces into the calculation. This gets messy when the scenery is not compiled with P3Dv4 SDK tools.  RSR commented on this a while back: