Lights

[Barrington]

For some reason, I see that my landing lights (and sometimes others) are sitting well above where they should be...
It seems to be with textures in default aircraft........
Can anyone shed any light on this and possibly post an solution
Many thanks

[Ian Warren]

Honestly this is one thing I have not seen before, I wonder if it is glitch with the fsx.cgf file , delete that and restart FSX and let it rebuild itself .

[emfrat]

Hello Barrington - I recently read a post on this subject in the CalClassic forum I think. (but I will look around the 'Net and get back to you)
The guts of it was, in FSX various light effects will be perfectly positioned only at specific Lat/Long and viewing angles. It is a particular problem with exhaust flame effects on piston planes, and most devs go for a reasonable compromise, to get around the FSX bug.
I don't know why, but the coordinates used in FS2004 were essentially reversed in FSX, and that doesn't help either .

[emfrat]

Well, that is something I read in the past week or so and now I can't find it
It was a detailed explanation of why it happens - it is an FSX bug - and how to minimise the problem. I came across it more or less by accident, so it probably is not in my usual haunts. I will keep looking.
I did find this in the Avsim forums:

" No, I do not think that he is referring to the beam. It's the actual "light glows" that I think he is talking about, and that's because I have the same issue. If I switch to a tower view (for example) to watch a quick replay of one of my planes landing, the lights are offset to one side of the plane. As the plane approaches, the lights slowly move towards the position that they are supposed to be in (ie. on the plane itself).

And that is a standard FSX issue.. as you move your point of view, the landing lights move on the plane. Unfortunately..Some vendors have implemented non-standard lighting that eliminates this behavior."

[Barrington]

Thank you emfrat,
Would be thankful if you could find the info as it may help.
Tried a rebuild of the fsx.cfg file but that didn't do it for me
Hopefully you may have some luck and thanks a million for the effort
Cheers

[Barrington]

Hi Emfrat,
Did you have any luck finding the doc re the lights issue?????

[SeanTK]

I'll try to find that article later too, because I accidentally found it and read through a few weeks ago myself. Maybe it's on FSDeveloper?

The short version is that it's a generally unfixable FSX bug unless you are using lights that are modeled into the aircraft and not reliant on .fx files, such as the newer Carenado products. Not sure precisely what causes it mathematically, but I believe that the problem was reduced the closer you got to the equator, and exacerbated closer to more extreme latitudes. It's primarily noticeable in tower view, though it may be slightly noticeable (if you know what to look for) in any view when observing nav light placement on the wings. Again, using light features modeled into the aircraft, rather than fx files like on the defaults apparently negates that problem.

[emfrat]

Cheers, Sean, that's the one...all we have to do now is find it again