natbrain

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.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding this, but I have the impression that beta testing this time will be shorter than it was for the -400. Is that correct?

Thanks. I followed the tutorial before, but I now realized I started skipping steps. I realized I allowed the IRS to align while the APU was powering up, so I'd only align one FMC, and then I'd press AVAIL to turn on the APU. On the 737, I often align the IRS while the APU is powering up, and it's fine. But on the 747 it's different. I should've taken the tutorial one step at a time. Appreciate it.

For the first time when buying a product, I actually read and followed the manual. I wanted to make sure I was doing everything right. However, whenever I takeoff, once VNAV kicks in, I immediately get a "no land 3" message. I followed all the instructions (unless I missed something) in the manual and yet I still have this error. I've flown United, China Airlines, and El Al thus far. I flew China Airlines twice and actually, I didn't get the message once. But all other times I got it. The QRH explains what it is, but I haven't yet found any solutions yet. I do import my own flight plan from vroute. It doesn't actually affect the flight though, as I can just clear the message, but it does get a bit irritating constantly getting that message. Does anyone have any solutions?