Author Topic: Lights at this airport  (Read 6152 times)

camrad1983

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Lights at this airport
« on: January 06, 2019, 01:42:57 am »
I've noticed in your latest sceneries all lights are like this.
I'm on the serious note, do you want me to take you up in Cessna around some major airport so you can see how real lights look like? This is some acid withdrawal dream looks like.
Same with runway surface, I mean can I use default lights and runway surface over this?
I'm seriously thinking to return these products (there are plenty latest ones like that)
Just use default lights at least, so we can control them in cfg. This is by far not realistic at all.
Disappointing.
https://c.radikal.ru/c20/1901/a6/0316a4b40ef6.jpg
« Last Edit: January 07, 2019, 11:06:53 am by virtuali »

virtuali

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Re: Lights at this airport
« Reply #1 on: January 07, 2019, 11:16:19 am »
I'm on the serious note, do you want me to take you up in Cessna around some major airport so you can see how real lights look like? This is some acid withdrawal dream looks like.

Those surreal colors are not obviously caused by our lights, but your usage of some extreme and unrealistic tweakers, like PTA or Tomato Shaders, which are supposed to "improve" the look of the sim but, of course, we designed the colors with default settings, if you tweak them, anything can happen.

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Same with runway surface, I mean can I use default lights and runway surface over this?

No, because they would look like an old flat FS9 scenery. The runway now has a proper normal map but, again, if you tweak the shaders, the end result might look too much compared to what we made, which was of course tuned assuming no customized shaders.

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I'm seriously thinking to return these products (there are plenty latest ones like that)

It's normal all latest sceneries use the latest advancement in rendering so, at least, now that we are not the only ones using normal mapping on runways, users might stop assuming we were the weirdos doing strange things (we was the case when we were the first, as we usually are for everything) or that this is a "problem" of the scenery that must be fixed and, instead, might start questioning the usage of tweakers that change the rendering from default, usually exaggerating colors and effects, which might work ok on a default scenery only.

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Just use default lights at least, so we can control them in cfg.

The whole point of using custom lights, is they are not tweakable/ruined by tweaks, which was a problem of using default lights.

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This is by far not realistic at all.

And, of course, our custom lights are also controllable and allows things like the FAROS system, the THL lights, which are all featured at Dallas in real life. Realism, of course...

camrad1983

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Re: Lights at this airport
« Reply #2 on: January 11, 2019, 08:18:39 am »
Surprisingly, I'm in this industry since 1998 and know what I'm talking about. I have Sony 900F calibrated and nothing extraordinary in my sim as far as tweaks. We are talking about that lights in this sceneries are 5 times bigger than they are suppose to be in real life and mud "surface" that looks like 6 inch gravel runway. I haven't seen any, ANY surface ever, even from smallest C152 that you can distinguish that way is portrayed in your last scenes. Sir, I fly more than 10 years as a pilot and god knows how many years as a passenger and I assure you, lights in airports (unless you are looking at picture from camera) are small. They are so small, that from 1000 AGL airport looks likje a black spot and is hard to find (except terminal lights) Like 5 times smaller than in you scenes, and different color. And never you see any rough surface like that.
Anyway, I figure you will find 100 more excuses to keep that unrealistic textures. My question is:
Can I change it to default lights and runway texture myself or I will return those.

virtuali

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Re: Lights at this airport
« Reply #3 on: January 11, 2019, 10:52:56 am »
Surprisingly, I'm in this industry since 1998 and know what I'm talking about. I have Sony 900F calibrated and nothing extraordinary in my sim as far as tweaks. We are talking about that lights in this sceneries are 5 times bigger than they are suppose to be in real life and mud "surface" that looks like 6 inch gravel runway

You are discussing two things:

- Bigger lights

- Runway textures with normals


About lights:

Then you should know that, on a PC monitor, things like lights and eye perception are impossible to represent as they are in real life, especially at nights, because of the limited resolution so, if we modeled a light with their real dimensions, it would disappear/become too dim way before it's supposed to and, of course, the whole point of runway lights is to be visible from far away so, obviously, since both cannot be had, it's more important to optimize for the distance, at the cost of not appearing realistic when close. We already do custom mip-maps, which is a way to reduce this problem, but they are not so controllable as we light, since they go in power of 2 sizes, so the distant ones are very low res anyway.

About runway normals:

Again, what you are keep resorting to "mud surface", it's just the effect of using normal mapping on runway textures, and they are far more visible when they are lit from a very low angle, like when dynamic lights are used We tuned them in a way that would look good both at day at night, and that can look good both on FSX and P3D (this scenery is still compatible with both) and without using any tweakers, which might change the effect on light rendering and increase the contrast. And, of course, the final effect also depends on the airplane used, and the position, number and strength of the airplane landing light.

The last variable, of course, is the user. As you said yourself, later sceneries from other developers are also using this method, and you don't like it as well. That's your own prerogative but please, stop saying this is a bug or something that must be fixed, because it has been intentionally made that way, and we are no longer alone using these techniques. We are usually the first, but eventually others catch up...

Of course, we sell everything with a free Trial version, if you don't like our style, you are always free NOT TO PURCHASE. Do all the other developers you were referring to that do these kind of runway textures offers a free Trial as well ?

TRM7

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Re: Lights at this airport
« Reply #4 on: July 18, 2019, 08:15:03 pm »
I know this is an older topic and I'm late in replying, but I too have the "mud surface" reported here but I was able to resolve it (or at least have a workaround). I use P3Dv4 with Orbx Global textures, and the FSDT DFW airport.  What I found is that "Dynamic Lighting" is creating the "mud surface" issue.  It appears for me in the taxi and landing light ground reflections when I have Dynamic Lighting enabled.  If I disable Dynamic Lighting I do not get the mud effect in the landing or taxi lighting.  Of course I loose the effect of the taxi/landing lights reflecting of the buildings.

Just providing additional information.

virtuali

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Re: Lights at this airport
« Reply #5 on: July 19, 2019, 11:05:46 am »
I too have the "mud surface" reported here

You don't say if you use a 3rd party shader tweaker.

TRM7

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Re: Lights at this airport
« Reply #6 on: July 20, 2019, 08:59:39 pm »
I too have the "mud surface" reported here

You don't say if you use a 3rd party shader tweaker.

That's a good question.  With FSX I did use SteveFX DX10SceneryFixer but I don't think I'm using it for P3Dv4, especially since P3Dv4 is using DX11.  I have FSX loaded and simply installed P3D when I finally decided to go to the Lockheed simulator. I need to be able to run FSX on occasion because I don't currently have all of my payware FSX a/c purchased/installed in P3Dv4.

I'm not a Shader expert by any means so please let me know if my thinking is incorrect.

Thanks,
Ted

virtuali

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Re: Lights at this airport
« Reply #7 on: July 24, 2019, 04:02:06 pm »
Is it possible your monitor brightness is a bit too high ? Also, you can tweak the brightness settings in HDR mode as well within the sim.

TRM7

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Re: Lights at this airport
« Reply #8 on: August 27, 2019, 02:10:58 am »
Is it possible your monitor brightness is a bit too high ? Also, you can tweak the brightness settings in HDR mode as well within the sim.

No, my monitor brightness is not the issue.  I changed it to a very low level and still got the same issue in the taxi/landing light runway reflections. I also adjusted the settings in the HDR mode and the only by turning the "bloom" down to its minimum setting did I see any change, and it was only a very small change.

I also tried a couple of other test and found that I do not get this effect at KORD or KLAX (other FSDT airports I have), and I do not get this at any default airports.

TRM7

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Re: Lights at this airport
« Reply #9 on: August 27, 2019, 02:55:01 am »
Is it possible your monitor brightness is a bit too high ? Also, you can tweak the brightness settings in HDR mode as well within the sim.

No, my monitor brightness is not the issue.  I changed it to a very low level and still got the same issue in the taxi/landing light runway reflections. I also adjusted the settings in the HDR mode and the only by turning the "bloom" down to its minimum setting did I see any change, and it was only a very small change.

I also tried a couple of other test and found that I do not get this effect at KORD or KLAX (other FSDT airports I have), and I do not get this at any default airports.

With some additional testing and a closer look I find that I do get the effect at KLAX but it is only very slight.  You have to look very closely to see the issue.