answered KSAN Invisible tile; faulty night lights

[Officer25]

I have the current latest version of KSAN, which includes the recent update adding SODE compatible jetways.

 

The first issue I have to report is one that has been present for a long time. Many users of KSAN may not notice because it is not in the typically used region of commercial airliners but there is a tile near the back of the airport that appears as an invisible triangle that will show through your aircraft. Not sure what could cause this but this image shows a) where it is and b) what it does.

 

Additionally, the night lighting at the airport is practically not visible at night. The runway lights, approach lights, taxiway lights, etc, are extremely dim and simply cannot be seen. Reference the picture below. Notice NAS North Island in the background and how its lights are clearly visible at night. The dynamic lighting configuration setting has absolutely no bearing on this and I believe it may be another whole issue in itself that that checkbox does nothing I can discern. My Prepar3D settings do have dynamic lighting enabled.

[Nick Cooper]

Hello,

I cannot reproduce your first shot.

Do you have tacpac installed at all?

[Officer25]

Yes, I have TacPack installed. Interesting you can't reproduce it... I will try a reinstall and see what happens.

[Nick Cooper]

I have seen this problem with aircraft visibility reported  elsewhere and

in most cases, it has been tacpac that is behind it.

Before you reinstall, try it without tacpak.

[Officer25]

Oops, I have already re-installed the airport and the issue still persists. What could TacPack be interfering with to cause this issue? TacPack is a vital addon for me and if I so had to chose between ORBX KSAN and TacPack (Which I hope I don't, and compatibility can be rectified) I would have to chose TacPack.

[Nick Cooper]

Hello,

on the assumption that tacpak is the cause and given your passion for it, then I would suggest

that one small square that is easily avioded could easily be overlooked.

 

If tacpak is easy to temporarily disable, it might be worth your while to do that

and check that it actually is the cause, in case it is something else.

[Officer25]

Okay, I see this is more a problem of TacPack than ORBX, so I will go over to their support to resolve the first issue of the invisible triangle. What about that night lighting though? I can't even see it!

[Nick Cooper]

I'll leave that for the developer to comment, I see the same as you do in that respect.

[Officer25]

Awesome, let's see what he/she has to say.

 

As far as the previous issue it is indeed caused by TacPack and there is a setting in their configuration panel called "experimental directX features" that is used to produce imagery such as forward-looking infrared camera photographery, night vision, and other items that is the culprit. I will see what their developers say. Nonetheless, it is a bug that is solely experienced with payware ORBX scenery (not anywhere seen in default scenery) and thus it cannot be discarded as simply caused by another addon. For now though I will serve as the middle man in case they form any questions regarding that issue.

[Matteo Veneziani]

Hi,

 

first i don't know for the first visual problem, i have never seen something like this and i'm not able to reproduce the " bug ". 

secondo for the night lightining, you don't see the runway lights? from the screen i'm not able to understand the problem, could you provide some more screens of the problem please?

anyway i see runway lights and everything look normal in my sim.

[Officer25]

Thanks for being quick to respond.

 

Did you read the above posts? We concluded that the problem was a product of TacPack and not an issue entirely of your fault. I didn't expect you to be able to reproduce the problem and for now it can be postponed until more information can be provided.

 

This imgur album includes more pictures describing the night lighting issue. Mind you, this is with dynamic lighting disabled, as I find it has a drastic impact on my performance on an already quite limited system. Just because dynamic lighting is disabled doesn't mean it should look like this, please reference how visible NAS North Island's lights are and how they could be used for a night landing while San Diego Intl's cannot.

 

https://imgur.com/a/BBT3RCj

[Matteo Veneziani]

6 hours ago, Officer25 said:

Thanks for being quick to respond.

 

Did you read the above posts? We concluded that the problem was a product of TacPack and not an issue entirely of your fault. I didn't expect you to be able to reproduce the problem and for now it can be postponed until more information can be provided.

 

This imgur album includes more pictures describing the night lighting issue. Mind you, this is with dynamic lighting disabled, as I find it has a drastic impact on my performance on an already quite limited system. Just because dynamic lighting is disabled doesn't mean it should look like this, please reference how visible NAS North Island's lights are and how they could be used for a night landing while San Diego Intl's cannot.

 

https://imgur.com/a/BBT3RCj

Hi,

 

from your images there is nothing wrong .  Also i do not understand if for " light " you are refering to runway lighting?

if yes again is totaly normal, the runway lights are visible not over the runway, but on the approach due to mipmaps of the texture. Because the runway lights are custom and not made from stock p3d lights this effect is normal.

 

Regards,

[Officer25]

Even from the approach the lights are extremely dim... how can I use the stock p3d lights so that I can actually see the runway? This custom effect is, in my opinion, horrible and does not work as you intend it do. The lights that are 20 feet in front of your aircraft shut off due to your weird mipmap effect. This results in being unable to see parts of the runway even when landing on it. The lights do not blend in with the surrounding area. They are not usable to identify the airport from afar regardless of viewing angle. 

 

These lights are a step back from what p3d natively offers and I assure you something surely is wrong. 

 

 

[Officer25]

Matteo Veneziani,

 

Please continue with this thread. I thoroughly enjoy your airport during the day but it needs attention when it comes to the night. I paid for a product that downgraded my simulator at night and I would greatly appreciate it if you could continue looking into this.

 

Your scenery has another bigger problem that I will address once this has been resolved. It will require work on your end, please do not expect to be able to just neglect your customers when they identify issues. Your airport cannot be landed on at night due to the extreme dimness and poorly written mipmap effect (with dynamic lighting disabled in configurator). I see with dynamic lighting enabled, which has a significant performance impact, the lighting works as intended. With this setting disabled the lights do not reflect standard P3D lighting solutions found at the other airports.

 

The airport looking normal in your sim is not a reasonable conclusion to the issue I have raised. 

 

I can include more screenshots if desired comparing what the stock airports look like and how yours looks at night. Unfortunately the stock airports are more sightly and yours looks extremely out of place.

[Matteo Veneziani]

8 hours ago, Officer25 said:

Matteo Veneziani,

 

Please continue with this thread. I thoroughly enjoy your airport during the day but it needs attention when it comes to the night. I paid for a product that downgraded my simulator at night and I would greatly appreciate it if you could continue looking into this.

 

Your scenery has another bigger problem that I will address once this has been resolved. It will require work on your end, please do not expect to be able to just neglect your customers when they identify issues. Your airport cannot be landed on at night due to the extreme dimness and poorly written mipmap effect (with dynamic lighting disabled in configurator). I see with dynamic lighting enabled, which has a significant performance impact, the lighting works as intended. With this setting disabled the lights do not reflect standard P3D lighting solutions found at the other airports.

 

The airport looking normal in your sim is not a reasonable conclusion to the issue I have raised. 

 

I can include more screenshots if desired comparing what the stock airports look like and how yours looks at night. Unfortunately the stock airports are more sightly and yours looks extremely out of place.

Hi,

 

The airport doesn't have any problem at night. The mipmaps effect is normal and you can see this " effect " in all airport with a custom runway lights.

I don't think the fact you can't see the runway lights from top of the runway is a problem and in any case i don't have to do nothing because is a normal " issue " of custom runway ligths. Is not possible to use default runway light because default runway lights don't respect the real layout of the runway lights as the custom lights do. 

From your screens looks like you are using a weird pta setting at night, you should try to play with it, because PTA can affect the light visual.

 

anyway to make sure to don't have problem, i suggest to make a fresh re-install of the airport.

 

the screens is how looks like the airport in my sistem and i don't see any problems,

 

but anyway if you like to have bigger lights

 

[Matteo Veneziani]

 i have a little bit make the lights bigger, only for you.

 

copy/ paste the files inside ksan/texture folder.

 

also i have attch a quick fix for DL.

 

copy/paste fx_ORBX_KSAN_DL01 and fx_ORBX_KSAN_DL02 inside p3d/effect folder.

 

regards,

 

 

KSAN-RWYTXLIGHT_GREENLIGHT_lm.dds

KSAN-RWYTXLIGHT_GREENLIGHTled_lm.dds

KSAN-RWYTXLIGHT_REDLIGHT_lm.dds

KSAN-RWYTXLIGHT_REDLIGHTled_lm.dds

KSAN-RWYTXLIGHT_WHITELIGHT_lm.dds

KSAN-RWYTXLIGHT_WHITELIGHTled_lm.dds

KSAN-RWYTXLIGHT_YELLOWLIGHT_lm.dds

KSAN-RWYTXLIGHT_YELLOWLIGHTled_lm.dds

fx_ORBX_KSAN_DL01.fx

fx_ORBX_KSAN_DL02.fx

[Traveller]

Hi Officer25,

With this above new set of files provided by Matteo, could you please post some screenshots, so we'll see how it went?

 

Cheers,

[Officer25]

Thank you for continuing this thread. I appreciate the time you took to try to resolve the problem.

 

I understand the motivation behind these lights is to make it the most accurate representation of the real KSAN. In my opinion, night lighting in FSX or P3D will never be a realistic representation of true life. Look at roads... they are literally just brightened surfaces at night with balls of light places throughout the vector line data.

 

Your files have improved somewhat the appearance but I do not believe they address the underlying cause. I disagree with the notion that custom lights will always have a poor effect on them regarding brightness related to position. You can see that this custom object, a nimitz aircraft carrier by javier fernandez, does not suffer from the same dilemma as your lights.

 

 

Notice how when I am low to the carrier, the taxiway and centerline lights (or at least what those colors would normally represent at an airport) are visible.

Raising the altitude... (not moving lat/long)

 

You can see these lights disappear and only the important runway lighting is visible.

 

Your airport, that is not the case. The taxiway and centerline lighting is always visible regardless of position and altitude.

 

 

It is for this reason that we see the poor effect of shimmering lights upon approach. Because by nature taxiway and centerline lights are small, at a far distance, these lights only occupy one pixel of your screen. Any movement results in a shift of these lights to another pixel, which is not interpreted by the eye very smoothly (the light basically jumps to another position on your screen that is the same distance that the object is itself in diameter). There is not much you can do to resolve this, it is the nature of displaying incredibly small imagery on any computer screen.

 

This is why I say your mipmap effect is poorly written. Why are the taxiway and centerline lights visible from any position? Look at NAS North Island:

 

 

The taxiway lights are visible depending on distance to the ground of the runway. This greatly reduces shimmer when approaching because these small lights that would only occupy one pixel are not rendered.

 

So to continue... I understand the stock lighting at KSAN is not realistic or representative of the true airport. Nonetheless, the "realistic" solution you have included is immersion-breaking and draws attention away from the potential beauty of the sim at night (when using products like Black Marble, if your computer is beefy enough to run it). I know I am unique in saying this, but at the end of the day I would rather have good-looking non-realistic lighting rather than a poorly appearing realistic solution.

 

I appreciate your effort to include files that may fix the problem, but I believe you have addressed the problem incorrectly.

[Officer25]

I would also like to draw attention to this image you included as an example of how it looks in your simulator: (this is his second to last image)

 

How is this an accurate representation of real life? You are a few hundred feet above the runway and you literally cannot make out a singe light. Stock airports do not have this issue.

[Officer25]

Why is this marked as answered when it is quite clear that that response did nothing to resolve the problem? 

 

As other people have noted before, developers who implement their own lighting solutions at airports often contribute to a lack of consistency across the simulator. In newer versions of prepar3d v4, the lighting system received an overhaul and is just plain more realistic and effective than these older configurations that developers created. I don't see why these lights can't be replaced with stock lights instead of inconsistent alternatives. There is nothing that prevents a developer from replacing these poorly implemented lights with the default ones that do not suffer from the same issues that custom lights present. I actually don't see any benefit in prepar3d v4 to using custom lights, maybe someone can enlighten me?

[Matteo Veneziani]

Hi,

 

The runway lights in p3dv4 have nothing better than the old fsx runway lights, they are practically the same. All payware airport with a good level of details have the custom runway lights that have pros and cons. The pros is you can reproduce perfectly the real runway illumination and matching the runway lights pylons. The cons are you can't controll them with bad weather and are more heavy on the frames. Also adding default runway lights is not always possible because in KSAN default runway lights don't match the real shape of the runway.

 

Regards,

[Officer25]

Ok, you have made it quite clear you are not willing to help resolve the issue of poor night lighting and will do anything to avoid reworking your product. Can you instead give me direction on what I would need to do to take the steps myself to replace this custom lighting with the stock light models?

 

I am still quite amazed that you insist these lights cannot be replaced with the stock models... the layout is fine, why can your custom models not be replaced with the stock models? I don't care for "real runway illumination", in fact it's quite clear that at any angle that is not nearly touching the ground the lighting is very far from what would be real. The frame impact and the poor visibility overhead is much of a greater concern.

 

What do I need to do myself to go about fixing this?

[Matteo Veneziani]

2 hours ago, Officer25 said:

Ok, you have made it quite clear you are not willing to help resolve the issue of poor night lighting and will do anything to avoid reworking your product. Can you instead give me direction on what I would need to do to take the steps myself to replace this custom lighting with the stock light models?

 

I am still quite amazed that you insist these lights cannot be replaced with the stock models... the layout is fine, why can your custom models not be replaced with the stock models? I don't care for "real runway illumination", in fact it's quite clear that at any angle that is not nearly touching the ground the lighting is very far from what would be real. The frame impact and the poor visibility overhead is much of a greater concern.

 

What do I need to do myself to go about fixing this?

I do not suggest to make changes to the airport, but if you want i have a quick " fix " only for you ( is NOT an official update, just a small fix for you ).

First set the CP with static_aircraft enabled, close the cp and copy these files to KSAN/SCENERY folder.

 

I have turned off the custom runway lights, but also the green center taxilight ( i can't do better ), and i have added a different afcad with default runway lights ( works onyl in p3d not fsx )

 

Regards,

combined_scene_B12_DET_HOT_LC25_PARKING_EXTDET_RWYTXLIGHT_TXSIGN_p3dv4.BGL

KSAN_V2_ADEX_ADE.BGL.off

KSAN_V2_STATIC_AIRCRAFTS_ADEX_ADE.bgl

[Officer25]

Thanks a ton Matteo, those files make the runway actually visible at night. I can finally see the lighting like I can at default airports when sitting overhead:

 

 

I really appreciate you taking the time to resolve this issue.

 

Though, I still see two minor problematic details:

(For one, you said you removed the green centerline lighting. I still see the centerline lighting, it's just not green. Is that what you mean? I don't really care but just clarification because you said it would be gone but I still see it, albiet in a different color- white. That doesn't bother me)

 

1.) There seems to be an overlap of some lighting. For example, this image shows what I am talking about-- the main lighting and then smaller white lights that seem to be trying to produce the same effect and they overlap.

 

2.) The blue taxiway lighting still does not disappear when at a distance from the airport like it does in the stock airports. This creates a weird effect highlighting KSAN because it's the only airport where the blue lights are still visible at altitude.

 

Thanks for continuing with this thread and I do appreciate it. Hopefully we can iron out these last two lighting issues and move on!

 

[Officer25]

Actually, upon further investigation I see what is causing this overlap.

 

The culprit is the small light objects embedded into the runway. While these are realistically accurate, they are almost impossible to discern during the day, probably create a small frame drop as there are so many of them. I am talking about these: 

 

Could you do me the favor of including a file that removes these objects throughout the runway? I appreciate the time it took to put them in as they are realistic but they cause the overlap at night. Their absence will probably be unnoticed by the untrained eye.

 

In addition, I see the blue taxiway lighting is a result of the custom taxiway light objects used in the KSAN package. I do like these objects and I believe they definitely add to the immersion during the day because taxiway lighting is no longer just floating above the ground and is accurately placed on a mount. I understand it is probably not possible to resolve the problem of these lights being visible when they typically are not (at altitude) and will have to cope with having that light, as I believe they add more than they detract.

 

Lastly, can you disable the runway edge lighting in a new AFCAD? Your scenery already includes runway edge pole objects that is better than the stock lighting and causes overlap when both are enabled.

 

 

[Officer25]

And one final correction also needs to be made: the whole runway data for the AFCAD is a little bit too far to the west. This results in an incorrect threshold light on both ends of the runway. On the western end, you actually can't even see the incorrect threshold because the blastpad is slightly raised above the surface and "eats" the lights that would be at ground level.

 

I have edited the western end photo to show where the actual lights would be (using only one light that isn't "eaten" by the blastpad as reference)

 

[Traveller]

Well done to both.
Now, dear Matteo, when it is possible you can find a solution so that the taxiway`s green lights can also come up with this particular hotfix, I would also apply.

Cheers,

[Officer25]

It is definitely in my opinion an improvement, but be aware it also is a compromise because it does not properly reflect the displaced thresholds as far as being zones not suitable for landing when regarding lighting. After investigation, this is what I believe Matteo means when he says that this "fix" does not 

Quote

 reproduce perfectly the real runway illumination and matching the runway lights pylons

 

[Officer25]

Earth to Matteo...

 

I understand if this may take some time to resolve but can you provide an update as far as how you are progressing?

[Matteo Veneziani]

Hi,

 

this is not an update, is just a change only for you. Unfortunately i can't not do more than this because all the objects are merged in one scene. I can only make the runway lights more centered over the runway.

 

copy and paste the files in KSAN/scenery. Before copy the files put the static aircrafts actived in the cp.

 

Regards,

KSAN_V2_ADEX_ADE.bgl.off

KSAN_V2_STATIC_AIRCRAFTS_ADEX_ADE.bgl

[Officer25]

This can be marked as solved. I got far enough with Matteo's files/fixes/uploads whatever he wants to call them that I can make the last changes myself.

 

If anyone reading cares, I made some changes that moved the PAPI objects to where the lights are actually displayed on the sim. While I could have moved the lights to the PAPI objects instead to be more realistic of the actual layout, I liked where the PAPI lights are because they're quite useful in that position versus their real life position. Originally the lights were in one place and the objects were in another, which almost seemed like an unfinished product.

 

His lighting revision did not account for the blastpad or offset threshold and I was able to account for that. I guess he wasn't aware that is a feature of the default lighting that can be enabled.

 

Lastly, I removed the offending overlapping embedded runway LEDs.

 

Will upload pictures within the next few days.