Runway lights very bright

and of course, lights during daytime is kinda “disturbing” too…but well…

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On many major airports, especially in Europe, active runway lights are always on.

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In real life all the lighting is soft and warm, our monitors are bright and high contrast. Except maybe the sun itself, when you look straight into it, of which some people were also complaining here to be “too bright” in the game.

Which sim has realistic lighting for you at night?

Haven’t used x-plane since quite some time, but it was pretty impressive.
Due to the ugly default scenery I almost only used it for night flights.

DCS isn’t too bad AFAIR, but that’s also quite some time ago that I’ve used it.

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I saw a V-1 Simulation youtuber, apparently a IRL airbus pilot, totally blown away by the night time landing in KLGA Breath Taking Graphics | REAL Airbus Pilot | Microsoft Flight Simulator | FBW A320 | - YouTube

I didn’t see a night time landing, this was dusk.
Agreed, skies at dusk and dawn can be breathtaking realistic, but the runway/airport lighting doesn’t match the rest of the very nice overall lighting simulation.
Furthermore the FBW A320 apparently has way better landing lights than the default aircraft.

Where you flying over Trace Adkins house?

yep, thats the runway lights i m knida looking for…like on the video…
is it a graphic setting i missed ?

11 years of short-haul (in Europe) and 6.5 years of long haul and I honestly don’t think that’s correct WRT to lighting.

Runway lighting is only ever really used in poor visibility, it certainly isn’t ‘always on’.

I totally agree that the airport lighting in FS2020 needs a lot of work. The lights are far to big, far too bright, often haphazardly laid out and almost entirely incorrect.

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Looks like you are simply flying in different parts of Europe than I used to fly in.

Really? Especially on short final at ~2:09:12 these large edge light blobs look terrible.
If yours are looking even worse than it must be your graphic settings.
What resolution are you using?

Pretty much every country in Europe over a long period of time. Runway lights being always on is not normal. Elements of the lighting might be on (threshold perhaps) in good weather but even that is unusual in my experience.

Maybe the procedures have been changed since I’ve stopped flying a few years ago.

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Check out this video, 10 minutes in. You can see LHR during the day in good weather with no lighting. This is certainly the overwhelming case in my experience.

This one on the other-hand shows it in worse weather at 31 minutes in. Standard Cat I lighting, ALS, threshold, centre, edge and touchdown markings.

What you can’t see are a million bright blue blobs delineating taxiways as in FS :laughing:

I see you’re ex-mil. Perhaps the military is different maybe?

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taxiway lights, taxiway edge lights and runway lights are still an issue in colour, intensity and brightness and currently are all far from realistic in the sim. the developers should bring some immersion to it to reflect real life feel both day and night.

Slightly off topic but I also personally believe that the physical model of taxiway edge lights should also be improved, they just look like a piece of plastic stick, LOL.

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I find the runway and taxiway lights in this game very cartoony. They are like internally lit beach balls. During the daytime they are way way unrealistic and make it very easy to find the airport doing low and slow GA.

I have flown IRL in California where I got my PPL (IMC) and it really surprised me as to how tough it can be to spot the airport even on a super clear happy VFR day - specially those nestled in dense urban areas.

If we could have the option to turn off lights that would be awesome. See this video from 19:24 (just press play Ive marked the spot)

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What resolution do you use?
All lights ‘only work in1080p’ (to put it a bit dramatically).
In other resolutions (4k, (super-)UW) lights are a blurry mess and get overly bright where they intersect.

See this: Blurry lights on ultra-wide/4k resolutions
and vote pls if you have this issue.

I get what you mean, the night runway lights are really bright. However daytime they are not. Spot the runway:




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