Please adjust aircraft strobe lights. They are just too dim to be seen from any distance.
Hi everyone,
I have noticed the flashing strobe lights are way too dim compared to real life. For example, when going into cloud nighttime strobe lights wont illuminate the mist/cloud around you what it does in real life… its quite common that pilots turn strobes off because of that blinking cloud.
Other thing, related to same issue, I think airplanes(lights) should be visible farther away. In real life you can easily spot airplane’s flashing lights 100km far away. When looking from ground. When you are in FL380 I believe the range is much bigger. On the other hand, I havent checked the actual ranges when a/c lights disappear, I just have the feeling the ac lights visibility range should be higher.
Altough these arent so big issues, but I find them somewhat distracting and immersion-killer. After all, those tiny things combined make the experience.
I believe things above are technically quite easy to correct. I’ve been even looking for aircraft model/config files etc for entries for lights but so far no success.
Any thoughts about these things?
8 Likes
^ what he said.
Actually, I was kind of impressed with how well other aircraft lights could be seen, but maybe that’s just me.
Here’s one for you though… I’m flying South of the SF Bay area (San Jose to Hollister specifically), it was an early evening flight, so the sun has set, but it’s just getting dark. I’m using real-time weather, and off in the distance I see a red glow in the hills above Gilroy/Hollister. Wow… I’m impressed… they’re actually showing the wildfires burning to the East of the foothills. I’m thinking, “that’s unreal.” I’m thinking, “that’s some real simulation right there.”
So after I touched down in Hollister, I decided to go take a closer look at this wildfire. I took off again and headed for the red glow (remember now, that I could see this from San Jose, some 50 miles to the North). As I get closer to this red glow, I can see a pattern to it. Well, they had to model it somehow, I’m thinking. As I get even closer, I can see large poles under the individual red lights… then I begin to see the blades of the wind turbine generators… Ahhhhh… What an idiot… I’m giving them too much credit… What was I thinking?
Yup, the glow, which could be seen from 50+ miles away, were the clearance lights on top of some 50 or 60 wind turbines up on Pacheco Pass (nicely modeled, I might add). So maybe these overzealous lights are just making up for your under lit strobes.
Jim-Sim
(Learning something new every day)
I agree, no flashing, no beaming, no immersion at night. You have my vote. 
6 Likes
Absolutely,The strobe lights,beacon lights lacks that flashy bloom effect.The ground reflection of the strobe lights and the baecon lights are also dull. This thing is properly rendered in XPlane11.
Also,In general,the illumination of all the airport ground lights (apron,runway,taxiway,papi lights)needs to be increased
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zendesk…
Nope, Zendesk is not for wishlist entries. The forum was designated for that with its voting function. It’s just annoying that people create new threads for existing topics and thus the votes diffuse without reaching the realistic demand for that topic.
This is really a limitation of the dynamic range of the Monitor (and the data fed to it).
A human can see objects in starlight or in bright sunlight, even though on a moonless night objects receive 1/1,000,000,000 of the illumination they would on a bright sunny day; a dynamic range of 90 dB
A good LCD Monitor has a 1/1000 = 30dB dynamic range.
The only real way to make the Strobe appear Brighter, is to make it BIGGER – or at least the light beam from it bigger, to light up more pixels to full ON, on the monitor.
Working on all of these 
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In case you’re still looking for a solution…
FYI, the 787 can’t be modified by the community as its files are hidden/encrypted.
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the king air also have lights problems.
Need faster strobe lights and brighter not very bright at night or day time flights.
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Hi, try this, improves the lights on all aircraft
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*.fx files are written in the same format as cfg’s, so they’re editable. That’s how I made my red flashlight. Timing and color are easily adjustable. Just be sure to make backups.
Yes, I would like to see the strobe effect in clouds as well. In real life you might want to turn strobes off in clouds or while performing a landing at night into a rather dark airfield. This should be properly simulated.
Look at this video from the developers… it was better in the beginning before it was released… Feature Discovery Series Episode 6: Airports - YouTube
I simply find that all lighting in this game looks so underwhelming. Take games as Arma 3 or GtaV as an example and all the lights look so pretty. Also the lights in Jets (Arma 3) are very intense and really illuminate everything on the ground as well as buildings and stuff. Not so much in this sim. I find it particulary irritating when watching the wing of the A320 neo at night. The strobes really have no effect and can hardly be seen from further away as well as from the inside of the aircraft.
Please fix this as this is such an important and fascinating thing when the strobes and navs just shine very bright and illuminate everything around them.
Also i cant imagine this being a huge issue to fix
The strobe light clearly visible from within the aircraft and from almost all seats
Navigation Lights clearly visible and shine very bright (also the Takeoff lights)
Once again the Nav lights make nice red stripes on the ground
And lastly the very intense flashing strobe lights
use this… Uwa’s lighting mods | Updated aircraft lighting for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 (uwajimaya.github.io)
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Thanks, tho mods seem to make the game run even more unreliable and I get lots of CTDs when adding any.
I would really appreciate if more people would spread this as I think this could be fixed easily and is a very important update as it currently really breaks the immersiveness of the whole experience.