Better Runway Marking Reflectivity at Night

Official Microsoft Flight Simulator Wishlist
1

After a few recent night flights (including some in rain and limited visibility), I was noticing how hard it is to see the runway and taxiway ground markings both on the ground and on short final. They are very dull and hard to make out in the sim and this is not how it often is at real airports that apply retroreflectivity to their runway markings (which is also used in many roadway markings).

Examples:

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Airports certified under 14 CFR Part 139 (US) are required to meet standards of marking retroreflectivity. This is generally accomplished by adding glass beads to the paint of the markings, which reflects an approaching aircraft’s landing lights back up to the pilot. The standards for the retroreflectivity are described in AC 150/5370-10H, item P-620 (begins on page 521 of the PDF that is accessed via the link). A table of the minimum retro-reflectance values can be found on page 533 of the PDF.

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I am not sure how many airports outside of Part 139 to which these methods are also applied. This includes rest-of-world, where I assume larger airports have similar requirements, but it is outside my area of expertise aside from that it is mentioned ICAO 5.2.1.7. A list of FAA Part 139 certified airports can be found here: https://www.faa.gov/airports/airport_safety/part139_cert/part_139_airport_certification_status_list

Here is a video showing how the beads are applied to the epoxy paint: https://youtu.be/6Ak6BYfS-JE?si=uuVjO0RCCghkou-E

Here is a seminar (it’s pretty long) with several examples of markings with and without (or with faded) retroreflectivity. (17:38 is a good demo, also 29:45): https://youtu.be/h36-vg7k-Qk?si=xExnhpr6qwZt1MvM&t=1059

The wish is for an enhancement that would allow runway markings to stand out better when hit by aircraft lighting. It would be nice to have this as an option in the SDK (including the World Hub) as well.

4 Likes
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I would love better paint reflectivity as well. Thank you for including the standards documents. If the developers do implement your suggestion, these documents should be of great assistance.

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I hope the developers consider your suggestion as it is a valid request and one that will make our sim even more realistic should the developers decide to implement this.

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This is really interesting. Based on the way textures are constructed in MSFS & the SDK, not sure how feasible something like this is but would be really cool

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To be quite frank, I think there need to be runway and taxiway edge reflectors as well. A lot of smaller airports use them instead of lighting. A somewhat emissive surface might suffice - the same could be applied horizontally to the pavement textures. I don’t know enough about how that works, but aren’t there glass and metallic properties that might be more reflective than others?

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Yes, you can make textures more or less rough and more or less metallic, and you might be able to hack together a material that sort of does what you’re talking about, but I don’t think it would be quite the same. I don’t think it would reflect back to you properly.

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Big airfield manager energy, I like it. Honestly, I never even thought about that in sim but now that you mention, you’re totally right.

After an airfield paint project, you can really tell the difference with a new retro-reflective bead application.

1 Like