Landing Lights Too Dim, How to Brighten Them Up?

[Alpha Floor]

Probably not a bug but didn't know where to ask this.

The external lights (landing, taxi, runway turnoff) do not illuminate nearly as much as I would expect them to. The real aircraft lights are very strong but here they are very weak while standing on the ground. During night landing they don't illuminate the runway until you're on it pretty much. Below I have all inboard and outboard landing lights on (taxi and rwy t/o off):

How can I change the intensity or beam size of the external lights? Is this an X-Plane 11 thing? I do believe external lights in X-Plane 10 was great.

[Litjan]

We do get complaints about the lights being too dim from time to time. For me the lights are pretty much like I have experienced them while flying this plane. So I attribute these reports to two categories:

1.) Reports like yours where the screenshots are quite a bit more dim compared to what I see!

2.) Reports of users that expect aircraft landing lights must be really bright because how can you see the runway without them?

Landing lights are tilted down, so they can illuminate the touchdown zone as you approach it (with 1-3 degree pitch up). So while sitting on the ground, they don´t shine very far, they are angled down 4-6 degrees! They are designed primarily to increase visibility of the airplane for others, not to illuminate a dark runway enough to land on it.

That being said, I think they could be a little brighter, but:

You can adjust the intensity in Planemaker, viewpoint. I think they are already as bright as they can go (700 meters out of a maximum of 999 meters) - so just like the annunciators in the cockpit they could be a little brighter in my opionion, but X-Plane´s lighting code does not allow that.

Cheers, Jan

 

Edited April 23, 2020 by Litjan

[Alpha Floor]

Guten Morgen Jan,

Thanks for the tip. I went in Planemaker and increased all RGB values of the external lights from "1, 1, 1" to "8, 8, 8". Now this looks more like it in my opinion:

I see your point about people thinking lights should be brighter than they really are. But I've done a few hours of night flying in a Cessna 172, practicing landings WITH and WITHOUT the landing light on, and the difference is abismal. That landing light is very strong!

In real life our eyes also adapt much better to night vision than what a simulation through a monitor can replicate. Therefore I'd rather be on the "too bright" side on X-Plane so that I can actually see something.

Danke sehr!

Jaime

Edited April 23, 2020 by Alpha Floor

[Litjan]

I will give it some thought!!

Cheers, Jan

 

[Litjan]

...and have adjusted the lights up for the next version.

[Gregthegroove]

Hi I have the same problem with the Magknight 787-9 for X-plane 11. The landing lights are pretty much non existent. It’s not like this for any of the other planes. Zibo, 737 MAX 10. The landing lights should be seen easily from the air making the runway light up very bright. You can’t see anything. I tried going to planemaker and changed the rgb values maxed out like someone did above but it doesn’t look any different. Am I doing anything wrong? I went to viewpoint/external lights and changed all the RGB values to 9.99 from 1.00. Any thoughts?