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lights

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lights

Postby SP77 » Fri Feb 02, 2018 1:42 am

does anyone know why most all of the planes have lights but when your in the cockpit its pitch black in front of you, especially if your flying
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Re: lights

Postby Thorsten » Fri Feb 02, 2018 7:20 am

Largely because while in physics, light is a property of the illuminating object, so once you switch a lightbulb on everything in range gets lit, in real-time 3d rendering light is a property of the illuminated object, so it's complicated to get it to work properly - someone either needs to do the work for a deferred workflow and declare illumination volumes or create lightmaps for the cockpit.

And if you want good accuracy, that can be a lot of effort (like running a raytracer over the cockpit mesh offline) - which simply not every aircraft creator wants to dive into.
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Re: lights

Postby starry guy » Wed Feb 07, 2018 8:54 pm

Lighting at night on an aircraft is for other planes to see it. The pilot does not need to see the navigation lights on wingtips and fuselage. And it is better for t he pilot's night vision to have no bright lights shining into his eyes. The instrument panel instruments are lighted with dim red lighting at night. That also preserves night vision. Check to see if you have turned on the instrument and switches lighting when flying at night.
It is only pitch black in front if there is no moonlight on terrain or water, no stars, no artificial lights. But approaching populated areas and airports, there should be lots of lights to be seen by the pilot.
The function of physics of light propagation and when rendered by the computer has nothing to do with what your question is about.
A company I was an engineer for designed and sold special lab light meters to do many functions. One of them was to calibrate aircraft instrument panel lights for proper night illumination levels and colors.
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Re: lights

Postby Thorsten » Thu Feb 08, 2018 7:56 am

The function of physics of light propagation and when rendered by the computer has nothing to do with what your question is about.


Since the question was asked in a FG specific subforum, one may assume that it's not about real planes. Then again, not all users take care to check what a subforum is about.
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