Unrealistic airport lighting distances

Lighting in runways are ridiculous bright. Please consider to revert back the originals

1 Like

The rotating beacons for airports should be visible for a much greater distance at night. (Weather permitting). On a night flight, it’s typically the rotating beacon that’s the first thing one sees from far away that tells you where the airport is - not the runway lead-in lights…

1 Like

My main issue that it is hard to see the approach lights until I am very close.

adding my vote.

I am locating airports by the chasing rabbit… not the airport beacon.

Also the light orbs IMO are too ‘fat’ and look cartoonish. They could all be reduced by 50% in diameter.

One of the greatest visually immersive areas of an accurate approach lighting is the key when one transitions from instrument to visual for approach. I find that MSFS developers need to consider investing in improving this for better realism. Aircraft, Navigation lighting and city lighting tuned to each light emitting power (candela) in the overall light scene.

Examples:
Omni-Directional Approach Lights (ODALs) – The strobes on approach.

  1. Cruising at FL390 day or not should not allow for Omni-Directional Approach lights (ODALs) to be seen.
  2. These ODALs have limited candelas (15K-5K) which is essentially the same as the old “candlepower” unit. The sun brightness is estimated an estimated equivalent to the light emitted by, or 3 octillion candles.
  3. ODALs have a limited view angle around 8 degrees vertical and 360 horizontal. So, you have to be low if you are close to see them

AI Aircraft nav lights seen even is situations were the AI aircraft is between you and the sun…

Unidirectional lights which are used in the approach landing system these tend to have a minimum of 30 degree horizontal beam and 10 degree vertical beam significantly off these angles will start to lessen the brightness and ultimately any light seen from them

I hope the team can invest time into making lighting more realistic.

3 Likes

Devs need to be made aware of these issues!

1 Like

+1 to this topic, airports are too easy to locate, especially when they’re in the middle of a city.

There’s a combination of two effects:

  1. lights too bright and omnidirectional
  2. paved surfaces (like taxiways and runways) artificially glowing even without these lights (kind of like a Sepia mask is applied to the airport).
1 Like

Absolutely, I too have noticed this. The taxiway and runway surfaces has an artificial glow as if the sepia texture is also applied on the airports. When we see from above or from a distance, we can clearly spot the taxiways and runway surfaces. Usually they should be dark unless otherwise illuminated by some light source, but in the sim all paved surfaces at the airports are self illuminated. This might be due to the already existing sepia texture in the sim.

1 Like

Agreed; I remember in my flight training that airports at night in the middle of the city can be seen as the “black hole” of no lights in the middle of the nightscape (except, of course, the terminal and main aprons, which would be floodlit). Toronto Pearson looked like a missing jigsaw puzzle piece was taken out of the GTA. Chicago O’Hare was visible from cruising altitude at 3AM as its own silhouette against the brightly lit Chicago suburbs with a bright terminal in the middle.

You can’t spot Midway in this picture, but you can ■■■■ well see its outline. Near the top left you can also see O’Hare’s bright terminal (and surrounding shadow):

Without runway or taxiway lights, it would be impossible to see the ground, even if light pollution illuminated the night sky around the airport.

3 Likes

I’m still seeing this bug - especially in daytime where I don’t see the beacon until on final and it goes from nonexistent to full brightness.

Those beacons really annoy me, because I can see them often at around 20 miles plus. It is the same as the airfields and in Europe at least, visibility is usually limited by weather, even in summer, with slant visibility down to a few miles.

Just bump as it is annoying

Agreed, why was this closed? Has dev added this to their fix list ? ,

1 Like

not sure if they have it to the list but runways are just to easy to find. Also one can see the blue taxiway lights miles up in a clear night, makes no sense. most approach lighting is directional for a purpose and tightly focused to a specific angle.

2 Likes

This has been now open for 6 months, and continues to be an immersion killer.

2 Likes

Agree with everything in here. One of the more annoying issues I personally think at the moment. Voted!

2 Likes

Keep up-voting this topic. Absolutely bizarre approach lights from unrealistic distances kills night flying immersion - especially with pilots on the dev team. Someone needs to go night flying over there.

3 Likes
  • Taxiway edge lights are everywhere.

I guess the AI which creates the default airports might be a bit sensitive and it puts edge lights into the middle of taxiways !

It should be improved. We can’t buy or use handcrafted airports for every single field. I can’t imagine the community folder /volume) in these case. Default airports should be more operative (Layout - quality of details precision and etc)

2 Likes

Airport beacon lights in front of the plane do not appear until I get within 3 miles. But when I look behind as I am flying, I can see then up to 20 miles away. It would be helpful if when approaching an airport the beacon light could be at least 10 to 15 miles away.

4 Likes