Ugly runway lighting FSDT KIAH

[captain420 3,099]

Does anyone know why my runway lighting looks like huge blobs? This is taken at FSDT's KIAH in P3D v5. If I recall correctly it was the same in P3D v4 all the way back to FSX. Why are runway lights so ugly at night.

free image hosting site

Edited May 6, 2020 by captain420

[DylanC 181]

That looks way off!  Do you have ORBX Global Base Pack as well?  If so, you may need to re-verify the files.

[captain420 3,099]

Do you have this airport as well? Could you show me what yours looks like? Yes I do have OrbX Global Base, but that's installed outside of my main P3D folder so it didn't overwrite anything.

[JasonPC 173]

Yeah those runway and taxiway textures do not look right.

[captain420 3,099]

What is it suppose to look like?

[bbain1187 118]

Mine has always looked like that. I think it's just an old scenery.

[Benjamin J 751]

FSDT has its own light textures for all I know, so don't be distressed by these lights looking different from default - they are in fact supposed to be different because they are not default! While I haven't looked at KIAH in a while, I'm pretty sure the PAPI lights at FSDT KLAX are similar to those. I think that's just what FSDT lights look like, at least in their older sceneries...

But, if @virtuali is around, perhaps he can answer as well?

[JasonPC 173]

33 minutes ago, captain420 said:

What is it suppose to look like?

Now that I look at my upload I think it's the image compression that makes it look worse (my photo looks a bit different from what I am seeing in-game). Lights look right though.

[captain420 3,099]

That's how mine looks, it's just the angle that makes your less obnoxious. Not sure why the runway lights look so ugly. 

I really wish lighting would be consistent throughout, this method is just downright sloppy. Why can't airport developers stick to one type of lighting. There's nothing more uglier than flying from one airport that has one set of lighting that differs from airport to airport. Why can't the developers just use the default P3D lighting? These "floating runway lights" look terrible. I don't know how these lights have made it way back from FSX until the latest version of P3D v5. Generation after generation and the we still get lighting from FSX brought into the new P3D. Ridiculous.

Edited May 6, 2020 by captain420

[JasonPC 173]

2 minutes ago, captain420 said:

That's how mine looks, it's just the angle that makes your less obnoxious. Not sure why the runway lights look so ugly. I don't recall seeing these kind of lights with default airports. Could it be FSDT is using custom lighting?

They are.

[mitsos 6]

Captain420
Are you using "tomatoshade" ?
...because some settings in "tomato" program can somehow,
change the looks of it. Changing the shaders, you know?
Lighting settings, particle settings and so on....

[virtuali 4,419]

Back in the day, a scenery using "default" runway lights was considered to be low quality and freeware-like.

And, with a scenery that is supposed to work with FSX, P3D 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5, it's basically mandatory using custom lights, because it's the only way to prevent ground flickering, fighting and layering issues with ( again ) a scenery that was originally made FSX and is STILL available to FSX users.

And that's not the only reason. The most important reason to use custom lights, it's because it's impossible to match the custom light fixtures to the default lights eventually coming from the AFCAD, both on the taxi sidelines and the one in the pavement, because the ones in the AFCAD have just a fixed spacing, while the custom one we place are placed where they are in the real airport. 

The only way to be precise, is to model them together, 3d fixture ( papi, etc. ) and the light itself, which is NOT made as an attached effect because:

- FSX, P3D1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 have slightly different formulas to attach effects to objects, P3D4 and 5 are more precise, the others not so much

- Attaching thousands of Effects will just destroy the frame rate, while custom lights as a single triangular mesh are very fast.

- With custom lights we can also control their behavior, allowing for example the FAROS, THL, REL, etc. which is not possible with standard lights.

About the lights being too big, it's because they are made with a texture trick, which is affected by MipMapping, and not all simulators reacts to MipMapping the same way, and even on the same simulator, the effect changes depending on the video card settings.

And, P3D V5 renders colors more bright and saturated, which give the illusion of bigger lights *because* MipMapping IS affected by this. We tuned them down for KLAX but, obviously, we cannot update all our sceneries at the same time.

 

[captain420 3,099]

Thanks for the explanation. Well I really hope that 3rd party airport developers can improve on the lighting somehow. Because it looks really bad, especially with P3D v5 being a modern flight sim with lights looking fomr last gen. One thing that has always bothered me about FSX and P3D is how ancient the lighting system is compared to X-Plane. It's hard to find one sim that can do it all, but with MSFS 2020 around the corner, it's looking like a winner for me and has most of the bells and whistles of nextgen stuff straight out of the box already.

[virtuali 4,419]

In the meantime, we published a Live Update yesterday, which makes runway/taxilight smaller in KIAH and KLAX.