P3D v4 Comanche configurator has no landing lights

[Thundercat710]

And I can't see anything during the nighttime. The two wing lights come on when I turn on the Landing Lights switches, but they don't shine much on the runway. I thought there was a light on the gear of this plane, as well? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Mike D.

[Thundercat710]

"landing-lights illuminate ground" in the Lighting tab has been verified as checked, also

comanche by Mike D, on Flickr

[Michal - A2A]

Does it happen on any airport? Does the dynamic light works in other aircraft? Do you have dynamic lights enabled in the settings?

[mallcott]

And I can't see anything during the nighttime. The two wing lights come on when I turn on the Landing Lights switches, but they don't shine much on the runway. I thought there was a light on the gear of this plane, as well? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Mike D.

Sim?

[Thundercat710]

p3d v4
other planes runway lighting works, but not my a2a (c182 and comanche) runway lights
dynamic lights enabled

a2a planes are installed in a different folder than the p3d root folder

should the a2a configurators for v4 have the option to modify lights? right now they only offer gps customization

[Thundercat710]

Just for the sake of it, I disabled Dynamic Lighting in the settings, and whaddya know, the lights started working. Went back into the settings, re-enabled Dynamic Lighting, and off they went again.

Loaded a different plane (RealAir Turbine Duke v2) and that plane's landing lights worked, with "Dynamic Lighting" enabled and disabled

comanche lights by Mike D, on Flickr

[Michal - A2A]

should the a2a configurators for v4 have the option to modify lights? right now they only offer gps customization

No, we've removed landing lights customization in P3D4. Default dynamic lights in P3D4 are much better than anything that's available in FSX.

We're using default fx light, maybe it was overwritten by some addon?

Could you swap your fx file (Prepar3D v4\Effects folder) with this one and check again? Backup yours first.

http://a2asimulations.com/public/temp3/fx_landing.zip

[Molly - A2A]

FYI, the RealAir landing lights work because they're using the (now old-school) style of lighting that basically uses a modelling trick to emulate an actual light effect. In other words, the dynamic light option has no bearing on that method. Now in P3D v4 developers can actually add real lights to an aircraft that properly light up the environment (hooray, we're not stuck in 1998 anymore! lol)

[Thundercat710]

fx file overwritten with the one you provided. Here are my results. First picture is with dynamic lighting enabled:

comanche dynamic on by Mike D, on Flickr

And now with dynamic lighting disabled:

comanche dynamic off by Mike D, on Flickr

[Molly - A2A]

Looks like it's actually working fine, even in your first screenshot. The effect is a bit subtle but it's there. Part of the problem is you're on black asphalt which is making them harder to see, butyou can tell they are lighting up the grass off on the sides. Do some low passes over the runway at 200' above or so and you should definitely tell they are on.

Also you might have your brightness set a bit too low if you have HDR turned on.

[Thundercat710]

Must have been that I was using too extreme of a PTA 2.51 profile. Reverted the shaders and p3d config files back to normal, and the light brightness is higher now. Of course, now the whole game itself is far too bright, and you don't even need the lights to see in the dark, but oh well

[Michal - A2A]

I'm not familiar with PTA, I don't use it by myself.

Default landing light is a bit too subtle indeed, but this way we can keep old style landing light when dynamic lights are disabled.

[Thundercat710]

Since I don't personally know how bright the lights of the real plane are at night, I can't complain too much

Thanks for the assistance!

Mike D.

[Lewis - A2A]

It does look like your PTA preset is so dark to the detriment to the sim if its causing issues with the default new dynamic lighting present in P3Dv4

thanks,
Lewis

[Oracle427]

For an example of just how dark things are with both the landing and taxi lights on in a 172. I shot this some years back and like to reference it to show just how dark it should be. FSX has always been way too bright at night for me. When I turn down brightness to make the outside world realistically dark the clouds remain nice a grey/white when they should be completely invisible. It's my biggest gripe with the FSX sim engine these days.

http://youtu.be/SnCELIO_9Ts?t=8

http://youtu.be/SnCELIO_9Ts?t=497

Note at 8:43 in the second link when I turn off the landing light and strobes leaving only the taxi light on.

This airport (N07) has very bright runway lights and the restaurant was also very bright at the very end of the video. You don't see much unless it is about 20m directly in front you. I've been told that the 20m distance provides just enough time to observe the deer before impact.