Taxi and runway lights blurry

JetWash1023 · May 4, 2025, 6:18am

# ISSUE DESCRIPTION

Description of the issue: There has been a change to the airport lighting in SU2. All airport lighting seems to have grown significantly in size and now blurs at distance. PAPIs now look very bulbous, too large and very bright. It’s like some sort of depth of field blur is being applied to airport lighting in SU2

Did you experience this issue before you joined the Beta?

No

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

No. Not relevant.

# FREQUENCY OF ISSUE

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

Always

# REPRODUCTION STEPS

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

Load an airport at night

# 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.

Ultra Settings

What peripherals are you using, if relevant: Not relevant

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

No

[PC Only] Many issues may be due to an outdated graphics card. Please state your Graphics Card Driver Manufacturer (NVIDIA, Intel, AMD) and Version: Again, not relevant

[PC Only] What other relevant PC specs can you share?
9800x3D, 4090, 64GB RAM

MEDIA

Please add a screenshot or video of the issue occurring.

SU1

SU2

#### [END OF FIRST USER REPORT]

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:
•

GeeStoerty · May 4, 2025, 6:33am

Definitely very bad at the moment.
There is a similar post here, maybe it matches what you mean:

JetWash1023 · May 4, 2025, 6:46am

It is, but I wanted to demonstrate that it was a definite change between SU1 and SU2, so something has been done intentionally to change it, not for the better. Sadly the forum is downscaling my 4K screenshot to 1080p so you lose a lot of the detail.

The PAPI’s look particularly bad imho

SmotheryVase665 · May 7, 2025, 1:10am

Another example. This on final to Rwy 28 at Port Said (HEPS). The green threshold lights are particularly bad - almost as if the pilot is suffering from myopia:

Expand to see basic PC specs:

Item	Setting
CPU	i7-12700K (no overclocking or undervolting)
RAM	32 GB 5200 MHz DDR5 CL40 RAM
GPU	Intel Arc 770 (16GB, v32.0.101.6314)
OS	Windows 11 Pro 24 H2 v26100.3194 + all OS updates.
MSFS Edition	MS Store Premium Deluxe
Build Version	SU2 Beta v1.4.18.0
3rd-Party & Community Addons	None

No performance-improving applications are installed (e.g. for CPU or GPU improvements).
Neither the Intel Arc Control Service or Arc Control App is running.

Expand to see graphics settings

Item	Setting
Display Mode	Full Screen
HDR10	On
Full Screen Res	3840 x 2160
Anti-Aliasing	TAA
Render scaling	65 (Resolution: 2496 x 1404)
Frame Generation	AMD FSR 3
Framerate Multiplier	2x
AMD FidelityFX Sharpening	150
Exposure Compensation EV	-1
VSync	Off (N/A)
Frame Rate Limit	100% MRR (N/A)
Dynamic Settings	On
Frame Rate Target	40
-	-
Global Rendering Quality	Custom
Terrain LOD	400
Off Screen Terrain Pre-Cache	Ultra
Displacement Mapping	On
Buildings	High
Trees	Medium
Plants	Medium
Rocks	High
Grass	Medium
Object LOD	200
Volumetric Clouds	Ultra
Texture Resolution	Medium
Anisotropic Filtering	4x
Water Waves	Medium
Raytraced Shadows	On
Shadow Maps	2048
Terrain Shadows	512
Contact Shadows	High
Windshield Effects	High
Ambient Occulsion	High
Cubemap Reflections	256
Raymarched Reflections	Medium
Light Shafts	High
Depth of Field	Off
Motion Blur	Off
Glass Cockpit Refresh Rate	High
Characters Quality	Medium
Traffic Airport Quality	Medium
Air Traffic	Medium
Road Traffic	Medium
Sea Traffic	Medium
Fauna	High

Expand to see other settings

Item	Setting
Online Tab
Photogrammetry	On
Aircraft Traffic Type	AI Offline
Live Weather	On
Multiplayer	On
Multiplayer Servers	West USA
Show MP aircraft in close proximity	On
Rolling Cache	On @ 16GB
Bandwidth	Unlimited
Advanced Options
Developer Mode	Off

A68yoSniper · May 7, 2025, 2:46am

I normally fly during the day but decided to fly at night for some reason yesterday and was shocked at how bad these lights look after what now 6 months.

Don’t they have anyone with professional competency to get these things right.

I wrote most of the code for a large simulator and the lights were the easiest part.

Are they all just French Graphic Artists! Is this supposed to be “Impressionist” lighting.

Good Grief.

FloridaWingsGS · May 7, 2025, 3:05am

I feel like it may have something to do with Xbox players. I cant comprehend another reason why they are deliberately making the lights look so bad.

A68yoSniper · May 7, 2025, 3:31am

Yeah, but you know base code is generally recompiled for different machines. I have an Xbox and should look at it there. My tag comes from playing COD WWII.

Anyway, in reality when you are flying about, the runway lights are much more understated except for the approach landing systems including the “rabbit”… which is done well at SFO.

This is my handiwork:

Now of historical interest but most of the actual research has stood the test of time.

Fornax4188 · May 9, 2025, 2:02am

At least “feedback logged” now

Ploodovic · May 9, 2025, 1:04pm

Because of Xbox players, they are deliberately making the lights look bad? Would you elaborate on that, because I struggle to see the logic.

xStLaurenDon · May 9, 2025, 2:25pm

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

hobanagerik · May 9, 2025, 2:41pm

I’m not sure when this has crept it, or indeed if its an SU2 beta issue specifically or not, but there is something odd going on with the lighting. I have documented this elsewhere, but duplicating that here in its own thread.

Street lamps have a large halo around them, and it probably applies to other light sources too.

Here’s a drone cam shot at night, zoomed in. You can see the point where they change from star shaped lights to circular halos. That distance is probably affected by LOD.

It looks a blurry mess at any kind of range, really, unless you are right on top of them, and even then I think that star effect is probably overdone.

Here’s the same shot with TLOD changed from 200 to 400. No difference.

I then turned dynamic settings off, which I have posted at 50fps due to head tracker use, and anything lower than that feeling horrible, and only noticed a 4fps drop, so I may stick with TLOD 400 for a few flights to see how I get on with it.

Noticed how the lights of the city in the distance seem sharper.

It’s not an artifact of the drone camera either. Here is the external camera, zoomed all the way in with mouse wheel, with the plane shifted to be in line with the lights. You can see the halo lights appear in the middle distance.

If I had to guess I would say this is an attempt to improve brightness at range by effectively pixel doubling, making the lights appear larger. But the lights in the city beyond are plenty bright. Can we not have those instead?

I was about to post another image comparing those above with street lights, then observed something really weird that I cannot convey without video, so bear with me as I record a short clip of something truly odd!

After a few seconds there is an additive effect, like the lights are being drawn over multiple times and the lights get larger, and brighter. You move the camera, or even rotate it, and they reduce to point lights again. Is this maybe a TAA thing I’ve never seen before?

Whatever it is its horrible, and possibly also affecting performance negatively.

I just realised what it reminds me of. If you are using the spray paint tool in a paint package, and you just hold the button down, the paint will keep building up until you get a circle, and it kind of looks like tha when you see the lights brighten, and get larger from their roughly pinpoint source.

SmotheryVase665 · May 9, 2025, 5:33pm

I agree. Both the blurry and star visual effects make it look like the pilot has myopia (blurry lights) and Astigmatism / Cataracts (star effect). Hopefully both will be removed in a future update.

GeeStoerty · May 9, 2025, 7:56pm

Weird thing about this “bug” also:
I use the addon “enhanced runway lights” since FS2020, where the stock runway lights were OK, but the addon made them really good.

But in FS2024, even the updated addon version cannot improve the visuals properly. It’s still this blurry mess most of the time… awful…

fenflame8562 · May 10, 2025, 2:40am

I just removed ‘Enhanced Runway Lights’, it was causing 75% fps drop in SU2 Beta at certain addon airports. KBVY, EGPH and EGPF were particularly bad. I rarely have any major issues, just a lucky combination I guess, but did a back to back test and it was def. the enhanced runway lights causing a major performance issue. I actually found them to be too obstrusive too because some of the airports the lights are not well aligned so you can end up with those tall lights in the middle of a taxi path, which looked worse than the stock lights.

GeeStoerty · May 10, 2025, 8:42am

I had the same performance issue in FS2020 with the Addon on big airports (EDDF for example), started after a Sim Update. Even had to uninstall it there.

But in FS24 so far performance seems good for me. But does not solve the blurry lights.

dectenor1 · May 14, 2025, 3:32am

Looks absolutely atrocious with these massive blobs for the lights. This is with no depth of field or anything.

Yet another big regression from MSFS 2020 and earlier versions of MSFS 2024.

PHSepp796 · May 14, 2025, 8:16pm

I think we need a different approach instead
My thinking is yeah it maybe overdone and seems bulblike, but i have noticed
also that it is related to previous over exposure to brightness
They added “exposure compensation EV” in general graphics settings
which imho is a good thing, however for taxi and runway lights the settings i use in daytime
(-1.05) is when evening turns into night a bit dull, but when i move the slider over to the + side (0.7) is fine for me notice it is still bulblike but now i use the slider for AMD FidelityFX sharpening
And turn it up (i use 160 for now) than these lights change.
So to me it is new feature which has to be combined concearning these two sliders for it seems to me that they work together.
Only thing i see Asobo needs to tweak on their side as it seems for the customers wish the disadvantage is to much for it is nessesary to change sliders setting on the brinks between day and nighttime.

Setting exposure 0.7 sharpening 160

Setting exposure -1.05 sharpening 160

These offcourse are examples and you have to tweak them for which fits best to your monitor(s)

Also it affects citylights and lightpolution this could be that night is not that black everywhere
I think it adds and contribute to realism

Regards Sebastiaan

A68yoSniper · May 14, 2025, 8:37pm

Do not usually fly and night but this is totally unacceptable…

Fornax4188 · May 15, 2025, 4:02pm

Not fixed in su2 live .20.

We need to re-report this then in the non-beta forums, even if it is ‘feedback logged’?

SmotheryVase665 · May 15, 2025, 5:10pm

No, this is not needed. as per this post:

We’ve closed new topic creation in the Sim Update 2 Beta forums, as bug reports should now be submitted in the general
Bug Reporting Hub
section. However, existing topics will remain open for replies for one more week. If your issue is still unresolved, has been fixed in the release, or you have any other updates, we encourage you to reply in those topics.