Runway lights at night in career mode

Bug Reporting Hub User Interface & Activities
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1

Using the template below will greatly help the team reproduce the issue and ease the process of fixing it. Before posting, search for an existing report. If you are not sure it’s a bug, please first report in User Support Hub.

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Feel free to delete this quote section after adding your appropriate tags.

ISSUE DESCRIPTION

Description of the issue:

In career mode, night flights, most runways don’t have any lighting at all. Some of the runways are completely unland-able

[PC Only] Did you remove all your community mods/add-ons? If yes, are you still experiencing the issue?

Yes

FREQUENCY OF ISSUE

How often does this occur for you (Example: Just once, every time on sim load, intermittently)?

Almost all night flights in medium cargo career mode

REPRODUCTION STEPS

Please list clear steps you took in order to help our test team reproduce the same issue:

  1. Any career mode flight at night with medium cargo mission

YOUR SETTINGS

If the issue still occurs with no mods and add-ons, please continue to report your issue. If not, please move this post to the User Support Hub.

What peripherals are you using, if relevant:

[PC Only] Are you using Developer Mode or have you made any changes to it?

Using sim update -1 beta

[PC, MSFS 2020 Only] Are you using DX11 or DX12?

[PC Only] What GPU (Graphics Card) do you use?
rtx 3060

[PC Only] What other relevant PC specs can you share?

MEDIA

Please add a screenshot or video of the issue occurring.

Limitless Screenshot 2025.02.03 - 18.48.36.81
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Limitless Screenshot 2025.02.03 - 18.49.36.40
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[END OF FIRST USER REPORT]

:loudspeaker: For anyone who wants to contribute on this issue, Click on the button below to use this template:

Do you have the same issue if you follow the OP’s steps to reproduce it?
•

Provide extra information to complete the original description of the issue:
•

If relevant, provide additional screenshots/video:
•

1 Like
2

Do you have the same issue if you follow the OP’s steps to reproduce it?
• Yes, flying career mode cargo missions, the night departure and arrival airports are overwhelmingly from and to airports that have no runway lights

The sim should filter out any airports without runway lighting if the departure and arrival are going to be at night

3

Its a shame that most runways in vip or cargo medium.missions has not lighting at all. Not even a single light. This is fake. Landing a pc24 on a short unlighted runway in bad weather? Why?

2 Likes
4

Do you have the same issue if you follow the OP’s steps to reproduce it?
• Yes

Provide extra information to complete the original description of the issue:
•Nothing extra at hand other than to confirm that for medium cargo night missions there are no runway lights on when coming into land making it impossible to see and runway and completely unrealistic.

If relevant, provide additional screenshots/video:
•

5

Seriously. how is this still an issue?

1 Like
6

Until they add more filter like runway lights and lenght in career mode, this issue will persist

7

Every runway has lights.. they’re just not on in the game lol

1 Like
8

There are plenty of runways, even entire airports without lights in the real world, many of which are used in career mode. Whether the sim is accurate the current state of lighting is questionable as it seems to use a lighting database that’s as much as 15 years old. But I’ve also seen it be flat-out wrong, anyway. Regardless, the statement that every runway has lights is not true.

9

Are you sure about that ? :joy:

10

As was said that is not true.

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Example of what would have lights…

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28M in MSFS 2024…

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28M in XP 12…

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11

I tryied to land the C208 on a small runway with no lights. In combination that the aircraft light only goes for a very short distance made a landing impossible.

12

Please fix this… it’s really frustrating.
Possible solutions:

Setup the missions to only plan night flights to lit runways.

or

Add somthing to the EFB to indicate airport lighting. Allowing pilots to decide if they are going to try to land at a dark runway.

and\or

Add the ability to plan for and then fly to an alternate airport when the primary is unsafe, without failing the mission.

13

I agree completely that the lighting and notification thereof is not up to standards. I don’t know why they’re not including the information, but some of it may be due to apparently pulling in the lighting database from FSX. It’s that old. So in many, many cases it’s not going to match any current database or chart, which would be a good source of truth.

Alternatively, they could probably read the lighting info directly from the scenery file and create their own database - not sure why that can’t be implemented.

Note further that some of the lighting will be hit and miss as bespoke scenery, including that of the World Hub (past and future), and third-party sceneries are injected with correct lighting.

Lastly, one other workaround is getting the new PCL app from Veroroutes (got mine at Simmarket). The caveat is that it only works where there is pilot-controlled lighting IRL, mostly nontowered or part-time towered public airports in a handful of countries (see map). But the database is kept up to date, so you’re pretty much guaranteed to have PCL lighting where PCL lighting exists, which is the majority of those types of airports, and it’s a fantastic addon for realism, anyway.

14

im trying out career mode and i ran head first into this issue, unbelievable

i just got one of those aviator perf thingies and a reputation hit for a bad landing, which was an absolutely impossible landing because everything was pitch black

17

Using the template below will greatly help the team reproduce the issue and ease the process of fixing it. Before posting, search for an existing report. If you are not sure it’s a bug, please first report in User Support Hub.

3 tags are required - add them in the tag section next to the title above:

Feel free to delete this quote section after adding your appropriate tags.

ISSUE DESCRIPTION

Description of the issue: In the career mode on a cargo medium mission ( night ) and I’ve got to the arrival. There were no lights on the runway I crashed once then aborted the mission after wasting nearly two hours of my life!

FREQUENCY OF ISSUE

How often does this occur for you (Example: Just once, every time on sim load, intermittently)?

REPRODUCTION STEPS

Please list clear steps you took in order to help our test team reproduce the same issue:

  1. Dept ( LFGW RW 29 ) Arr ( LECL RW 02 ) Load aircraft follow departure procedures etc

  2. I ocassionally speed up the sim rate once

  3. When you arrive at LECL to land it is dark and there are no runway lights and no clear lights to help you land. It is also VFR rules which is maddening

YOUR SETTINGS

If the issue still occurs with no mods and add-ons, please continue to report your issue. If not, please move this post to the User Support Hub.

What peripherals are you using:

[PC Only] Are you using Developer Mode or have you made any changes to it?

[PC, MSFS 2020 Only] Are you using DX11 or DX12?

[PC Only] What GPU (Graphics Card) do you use?

[PC Only] What other relevant PC specs can you share?

MEDIA

Please add a screenshot or video of the issue occurring.

18

Regardless of weather a runway should have lights or not, they need to fix the visibility of the runway when you have your plane lights on. Turning on your lights washes out everything from the cockpit to the point you can’t see anything