Landing and taxi lights shafts at night causing an unrealistic foggy haze

At nighttime, powerful lights such as landing and taxi lights create a blindingly unrealistic light haze in front of the aircraft that makes it difficult to see through. The effect is similar to lighting up fog or flying in clouds but my flights do NOT involve these conditions at all. These flights are CAVOK conditions where humidity is even low and visibility is in the 10’s of kilometres.

The effect has to be achieved in the graphics world as painting a kind of grey light shaft that emanates from the light source but real life is nothing like this, again, except maybe in very foggy conditions.

Here are some examples:

Lighting off:

Lighting On:

Lighting Off (the city below is clear and crisp in appearance):

Lighting On (the city loses its detail and is ‘ironically’ hidden behind “light”):

See related report: ATR taxi light at night (looking always like fog)

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I am getting this in almost all live weather conditions. Only if I select clear skies manually then the issue is not there.

Looks like switching on the landing lights makes the black areas bright but leaves white areas alone, which is creating an uniform haze.

In the above 2 images the runway number 20 should appear brighter with lights on, but to me it seems like same brightness with lights on or off.

Hi!

There is a setting for “Light shaft” in MSFS.. just set this to OFF, and problem should be solved :slight_smile:

Freddy

As a temporary workaround, possibly yes (I actually think I tried this before but it made no difference, however don’t hold me to that).

However the excessive light should be fixed and should realistically only appear in highly humid conditions such as fog or cloud (where it actually does work and is pretty cool and realistic). This has already been reported as a bug (see the post from DementedCorn327 - Landing and taxi lights shafts at night causing an unrealistic foggy haze - #2 by DementedCorn327). I just hope it gets traction.

In my experience this has been dramatically toned down in SU 4.

Using SU4.. still to much effect for me, so have set Light Shafts OFF.

Freddy

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I don’t see any difference between the different Light Shafts settings Low/Medium/High/Ultra. All look the same, seems to be a bug for me.

Also commented here:

I would disagree with you. I’m on SU4 and here’s what I see with “Low” Light Shafts (whatever that’s supposed to mean - low auqlity, low amount - it’s not clear).

Preset is “Clear Skies”, hence no humidity, no fog, no clouds.

Lights off:

Lights on:

Lights off:

Lights on (the right side is particularly insane):

Here’s a video I took on the ground where already there were light sources from airport lights, vehicles etc. and still these lights just explode and grey everything out.

I thank you for this at least Freddy… OFF is the best, most realistic setting.

The ground is well lit but every molecule of air around the ground is left well enough alone. This is perfect.

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Ohhh am I glad I found this thread today. Turned light shafts off and such a huge improvement. I was never able to understand why even in completely clear skies it seemed like I was flying through fog!

See related report: Aircraft Light cones dont change with humidity!