2 different looking taxi way lights

[captain420 3,099]

I was using drone camera to do some exploring around LOWI airport. I am using ORBX version and have Asobo's version uninstalled. But upon inspecting there are 2 different taxi lights. Once I move the camera closer it looks like this 1st pic, and and I move away, it looks like the 2nd one. The 1st one looks much better by the way. Any idea why it's conflicting?

[captain420 3,099]

However, the runway lighting looks fine, no matter if you zoom close or zoom away, there's only 1 model and it looks right. I'm not sure if this is an Asobo issue or an OrbX one. Since I haven't tested other airports yet.

Edited October 3, 2021 by captain420

[superspud 450]

Runway lights and taxi lights are modelled separately, and after sim update 5 the LOD implementation became super aggressive on taxi lights, and many other things. 

The standard taxi light goes all yellow after 1-2 metres away. That one in the photo looks likely to be the alternate Asobo taxi light that you have to manually select, which is modelled better than the standard one and stays blue which is very impressive.

Or it could be Orbx's own one but it's still a bit manic on the LODs. 

Edited October 3, 2021 by superspud

[captain420 3,099]

Well if it is an Asobo issue, then I hope they address the problem with having 2 different models or LODS for the blue taxi lights. The runway lights doesn't have that problem.

Edited October 3, 2021 by captain420

[superspud 450]

At least it's not the all yellow taxi light. You can see those at any standard airport and it's very jarring. 

Many of the LODs post Xbox are absolutely horrible, airport approaches can be a rippling mass of buildings and items twitching between LOD transitions, and many are worse than that so they probably thought 'yep, job done' and will never touch it again. 

 

[Bert Pieke 7,584]

25 minutes ago, captain420 said:

Well if it is an Asobo issue, then I hope they address the problem with having 2 different models or LODS for the blue taxi lights. The runway lights doesn't have that problem.

This may well be intentional... as you move away, lower resolution (LOD)..

 

[captain420 3,099]

22 minutes ago, Bert Pieke said:

This may well be intentional... as you move away, lower resolution (LOD)..

 

It doesn't make sense though. If that's the case, why didn't they do that with the runway lights as well?

[Bert Pieke 7,584]

4 hours ago, captain420 said:

It doesn't make sense though. If that's the case, why didn't they do that with the runway lights as well?

Why does it have to make sense?

[virtuali 4,419]

It's a LOD issue and there are inconsistencies between the blue light fixture used for taxiways and the white fixture used for runway lights, I know exactly which are the files involved and why they work differently ( they use completely different LOD values for no obvious reason ), and I reported it to Asobo as soon as Sim Update 5 went in Beta, and confirmed it again to be a bug after World Update 6, but it hasn't been fixed so far so, maybe it was made intentionally, as part of the fps optimization, considering there are likely way more taxi light fixtures compared to runway lights fixtures on a typical airport so, reducing the LODs for the blue lights would probably gain some performance.

The problem will affect all default airports and all 3rd party airports that use the default library object for taxiway lights and CAN possibly fixed in two ways:

1) Asobo fixing the default library object, which will fix everything at once.

OR

2) 3rd party developers updating their airports to use custom 3d fixtures for taxiway lights, so they could control the LOD settings themselves. This won't fix default airports, of course.

For the more adventurous (an hint to freeware software authors that might create a patch and gain eternal glory from this hint, sorry but I really don't have time to do it myself...), this is the affected file:

Packages\Official\OneStore\fs-base\scenery\Global\Asobo_Props\Asobo_Props.BGL

Checking the file with an hex editor, starting at offset 0x246c7c00 and beyond, one can easily see the LOD levels are set at 70.0, 40.0, 20.0 and 5.0 for the object named Taxi_Light_02, which is the default Blue light fixture. The object named taxi_light_red_yellow, instead, use levels set at 4.5, 3.0, 0.52 and 0.51, which look way better so, I GUESS editing the blue light to have the same values ( be sure you don't change the length of the file ), the LOD should work the same as the red/yellow light.

 

Edited October 4, 2021 by virtuali

[andyjohnston.net 617]

People can find anything to complain about!

[WestAir 2,522]

4 hours ago, andyjohnston.net said:

People can find anything to complain about!

But aren't you complaining about people?

[captain420 3,099]

I don't think of it as complaining. I'm just pointing out oddities that I'm seeing in hopes of making the sim better. If it wasn't for people "complaining" bout bugs and issues, then I'm sure you wouldn't see MSFS where it is currently. So thanks to the "whiners, complainers" that things actually get noticed and eventually fixed, and btw thanks @virtuali for confirming what I saw. I have reported a few issues via their zendesk already, but they are all marked as "solved" as soon as they are submitted. So I'm not sure if I should even bother with reporting this again.

Edited October 4, 2021 by captain420

[Bobsk8 12,489]

6 minutes ago, captain420 said:

I don't think of it as complaining. I'm just pointing out oddities that I'm seeing in hopes of making the sim better. If it wasn't for people "complaining" bout bugs and issues, then I'm sure you wouldn't see MSFS where it is currently. So thanks to the "whiners, complainers" that things actually get noticed and eventually fixed.

I just can't into a tizzy over every tiny little item in MSFS 2020 being not perfect. Life is  too short for that.  

[pilatuz 141]

5 hours ago, andyjohnston.net said:

People can find anything to complain about!

Its a public forum man, people are free to post questions. Get over it?

[captain420 3,099]

45 minutes ago, Bobsk8 said:

I just can't into a tizzy over every tiny little item in MSFS 2020 being not perfect. Life is  too short for that.  

It may be a small problem to you and that's your opinion, which is perfectly fine. But for me, it's not. I'm all about details. If it doesn't bother or affect you, then what is the point of even responding?