P3Dv4.2 loss of dynamic lights and ACFT flood lights

[trisho0 23]

What is Dynamic Lighting? I don't see a difference with scenery lights in P3Dv4.1 regardless if Lighting Settings option has activated or not the feature Dynamic Lighting. Maybe because I have the HDR off? Even though, tested with HDR on and off, no dynamic lighting differences. I meant no scenery lights differences.

What to look at from scenery lights if "Dynamic Lighting" is active? How to tell if the light is dynamic or not?

[somiller 694]

On 3/3/2018 at 10:08 AM, GEKtheReaper said:

Are these lights also from UTL?

https://youtu.be/KSuadPGJfHM

 

I think you are mistaken the lights of the F22 due to poor quality of the video. But honestly, if you have read the thread, or at least the last posts, you would have seen that without UTL that front F22 light can be seen all the time ;)

Gerald,

It's interesting in this above video at about 0:28-0:29, when you pan left, when the lighted tail of the aircraft in the left, background comes into view, your lights go out. You can also see this at 0:35 when you're panning up and down...every time the lighted aircraft tails in the background come into view, your lights go out. I still think Simbol is onto something regarding numbers of DL and the whole DL culling thing.

Regards,

[natbrain 10]

On 2/21/2018 at 12:31 PM, GEKtheReaper said:

Hello guys,

i "suffer" from the loss of mentined lights under certain camera view angles.

I can 100% reproduce the issue on e.g. default EGKK (Gatwick) or even with the free scenery of Gatwick offered from UK2000!

The loss of lights happens only if the camera (or ACFT itself) faces an angle between 270 and 360 degrees and I can reproduce it on the ground as follows:

On default scenery: place the ACFT on STAND 130 (the plane faces S) and look with the camera in an external view towards the N or slightly toward NW. Moving your view up and down I loose the ground reflection of all the lights: e.g Nav lights. Looking from another angle e.g. from the tail, everything shows correct.

In flight, turning in circles above the ARP, my flood lights will always turn always off if my plane faces between 270 and 360deg.

 

Can somebody test this?

Best regards,

Gerald

Hi, I'm going to revive this by saying I too have experienced the same problem. I saw this thread on the p3d page too. My lights were also disappearing in certain angles until I reduced my AI traffic to 50% or under. At one airport, I even had to reduce it to like 15%. I normally have the traffic at 60-70%. I read that the disappearing dynamic lights is due to the fact that p3d is trying to limit how many dynamic lights it has to render, in order to optimize performance. I also read that someone was dealing with a disappearing spotlight and was able to fix it by editing the spotlight parameter in the p3d.cfg file. 

SO, that gave me an idea to try that out myself. If you go to %APPDATA%\Lockheed Martin\Prepar3D v4\Prepar3D.cfg, and open the p3d.cfg, you'll see two parameters under the [GRAPHICS] heading: MAX_POINT_LIGHTS, and MAX_SPOT_LIGHTS. I'm not sure what the difference is between a point light and a spot light is, but, by default, in my v4.1, those are set to 250. So, I jacked them up to 800 and 700, respectively. All of a sudden, my lights were no longer disappearing, and I was able to return my AI traffic to my normal 60-70%, and even at the airport where I had to reduce the % to 15% was working at 60-70%. So clearly, the disappearing lights problem is due to a setting that limits the maximum number of lights that program can display at any given picture, and for good reason, because dynamic lights are often heavy on performance. Obviously, you don't have to set these numbers to 800 or 700, but you get the idea - try increasing these numbers and toying around with these until you find an acceptable balance between performance and traffic %. I have a GTX 1080 TI so the increase in dynamic lighting didn't really hurt me, but it might for you if your hardware isn't as strong.

I tested this in my own aircraft in P3D V4.1 I used the PMDG 737 and the PMDG 777, dynamic lighting enabled in both, using 65% AI traffic at FSDT KLAX. I turned on all the aircraft lights at once, so landing, runway, taxi, strobe, nav, beacon, wheel well, and logo lights were all on. Cockpit lights on also, Tested both in VC and spot view.

Edited May 12, 2018 by natbrain

[honanhal 1,420]

On 5/12/2018 at 4:11 PM, natbrain said:

SO, that gave me an idea to try that out myself. If you go to %APPDATA%\Lockheed Martin\Prepar3D v4\Prepar3D.cfg, and open the p3d.cfg, you'll see two parameters under the [GRAPHICS] heading: MAX_POINT_LIGHTS, and MAX_SPOT_LIGHTS. I'm not sure what the difference is between a point light and a spot light is, but, by default, in my v4.1, those are set to 250. So, I jacked them up to 800 and 700, respectively. 

Brilliant! Increasing the spot lights setting solved this for me (point lights had no effect).

James

[trisho0 23]

On ‎5‎/‎13‎/‎2018 at 9:55 PM, honanhal said:

Brilliant! Increasing the spot lights setting solved this for me (point lights had no effect).

James

What is Dynamic Lights?

[CFIJose 5,485]

On 5/13/2018 at 9:55 PM, honanhal said:

Brilliant! Increasing the spot lights setting solved this for me (point lights had no effect).

James

This is brilliant because it solves the problem. What did you set yours to?

I see some blinking small squares on AI with a higher setting.

[CFIJose 5,485]

The only way stop the flashing flood & other lights in the vc of the AS CRJ was to lower AI to 10%. Raising the MAX_POINT_LIGHTS, and MAX_SPOT_LIGHTS values caused other issues.

I hope that LM can address this in the future.

[Iceman2 110]

On 5/13/2018 at 6:11 AM, natbrain said:

MAX_POINT_LIGHTS, and MAX_SPOT_LIGHTS. I'm not sure what the difference is between a point light and a spot light is, but, by default, in my v4.1, those are set to 250. So, I jacked them up to 800 and 700, respectively. All of a sudden, my lights were no longer disappearing

WOW Natbrain,

I've had this very annoying problem for sometime now and stumbled upon this thread, interesting solution but it works. I have no idea what these numbers do but it did fix the problem.

thank you

IM

Edited October 26, 2018 by Iceman2

[trisho0 23]

On ‎10‎/‎26‎/‎2018 at 10:40 AM, Iceman2 said:

WOW Natbrain,

I've had this very annoying problem for sometime now and stumbled upon this thread, interesting solution but it works. I have no idea what these numbers do but it did fix the problem.

thank you

IM

Where to find those settings?

[simbol 5,819]

8 minutes ago, trisho0 said:

Where to find those settings?

Inside the Prepard3D.cfg file.

Regards,
Simbol

[trisho0 23]

43 minutes ago, simbol said:

Inside the Prepard3D.cfg file.

Regards,
Simbol

Thanks I found those settings and found:

//MAX_POINT_LIGHTS=250
//MAX_SPOT_LIGHTS=250
MAX_POINT_LIGHTS=800
MAX_SPOT_LIGHTS=700

I don't know how those settings came over there in P3D4.3

 

[simbol 5,819]

LM improve and perform changes to its variables on each release 😋.

Regards,

Simbol 

[Iceman2 110]

1 hour ago, trisho0 said:

I don't know how those settings came over there in P3D4.3

Mmm-very interesting. I did a fresh full install of 4.3 soon after its release but both my LIGHTS values in the CFG are 250. 

I use UTL AI aircraft and had noticed if I turned off the AI this would fix the landing lights turning off issue of my aircraft depending which way l was looking, as stated earlier in this thread.

However changing these values to 800/700 has miraculously fixed this problem without causing any other noticeable Lighting Problems others have said. (Yet)

Nice solution.

IM

[trisho0 23]

8 hours ago, Iceman2 said:

Mmm-very interesting. I did a fresh full install of 4.3 soon after its release but both my LIGHTS values in the CFG are 250. 

I use UTL AI aircraft and had noticed if I turned off the AI this would fix the landing lights turning off issue of my aircraft depending which way l was looking, as stated earlier in this thread.

However changing these values to 800/700 has miraculously fixed this problem without causing any other noticeable Lighting Problems others have said. (Yet)

Nice solution.

IM

Yep, the reason I didn't see lighting issues is because the new settings 800/700 instead of 250/250 according to this thread. I am still how became such value changes. I only upgraded Client from v4.1 to v4.3 and the Content with Scenery still ver 4.1

[simbol 5,819]

7 hours ago, trisho0 said:

Yep, the reason I didn't see lighting issues is because the new settings 800/700 instead of 250/250 according to this thread. I am still how became such value changes. I only upgraded Client from v4.1 to v4.3 and the Content with Scenery still ver 4.1

Well, the original values were commented inside your file so perhaps you changed them and forgot about it?

S.