Taxi and landing lights DCS v. 2.5.3

Hello

The MI-8 traffic light does not illuminate the path ahead. It illuminates the dashboard inside.

The landing lights do not illuminate the space in front of the helicopter. Only weak light.

Without these lights, night operations can not be performed. Please solve.

I agree on the lighting problems. It's a general DCS problem though and not Mi-8 related afaik. For night operation, keep in mind that you can use your NVG.

I agree on the lighting problems. It's a general DCS problem though and not Mi-8 related afaik. For night operation, keep in mind that you can use your NVG.

thank you for answer

I use NVG but can not be seen on the dashboard. Sometimes the lights really are good

if you use NVG, dim the cockpit lights. You should be able to "estimate" the instruments. Also, you can watch "below" the NVG to see some of the gauges. So you should be able to cleary see the VSI.

If the dimmed instruments are too "dark", then you can still use the flashlight to enlight e.g. the VSI.

+1

But I'd like to go slightly off topic to elaborate for the benefit of anyone who hasn't had the "fun" of experiencing this for themselves, because it's nearly impossible to exaggerate how dreadful night flying is for Mi-8 players after prematurely forcing the deferred shading lighting engine on us. Let's break out the old 1.5.8 install for comparison purposes...

The versions in use here are 1.5.8.12823 and 2.5.3.21153, henceforth "Old" and "New" DCS.

First, here are the settings I'll use for the screenshots. They're not particularly important though, because the only one that has any significant effect for my purposes is gamma (which will be 1.8 or 3.5[maximum]).

Mi-8 will be at Batumi with default weather and time of around 00:00. Due to ground lighting being added in the New version, I've removed objects around the starting area to improve the comparison.

Here's the pilot's view at night with no external lights and full instrument lighting (except for the anticollision beacon in Old DCS): Old, New (γ = 1.[noparse]8)[/noparse], New (γ = 3.5)

On my monitor, New DCS with moderate gamma is unusable. The instrument lighting is absurdly dim and provides almost no contrast against the dark instrument panel. In addition, the blue interior provides no benefit to contrast or visibility without additional lighting, which is especially clear in the boosted gamma image. In Old DCS, the blue coloration helps to delineate the instruments even in a totally dark cockpit.

This image is New DCS (γ = 3.5) with all external lighting minus taxi and landing lights, showing the bizarre effect of external lights on interior lighting.

The visible anticollision strobe has been extensively reported, so I won't elaborate on that, but the effect of the navigation lights is equally intrusive; minus the red from the strobe, the sudden change in brightness here is entirely due to having the nav lights set to bright; when set to dim, the cockpit returns to light levels from the last example screenshot. It's strangely all-or-nothing.

This comparison needs no introduction:

Besides the extremely obnoxious and distracting effect of the taxi light on interior lighting in New DCS (which has likewise been reported extensively so I'll leave that there), note perhaps more importantly how ineffectively it performs its function; it's to the point that it's now worse than useless since the distracting effect of the bright interior detracts from the meager improvement in external visibility.

These are the external views with taxi lights on and landing lights rotated back to improve lateral visibility (New γ = 3.5)

The lights in New DCS seem to barely illuminate beyond the rotor disk. You must rely entirely on NVGs when landing in unlighted areas. Not much more to say here.

These are the F4 external views - Old, New (γ = 1.[noparse]8)[/noparse]

Since the New DCS overhead view used a high gamma, I've included this to show what I'm trying to work with here. The goggles do everything!

Last example is an animation showing the differences in appearance of the Old vs New (γ = 3.5) PTIT gauge (which I chose because it includes some color) under (respectively) both red plafond flood lights, the pilot's red light only, the pilot's white light only, and both white lights:

Because of the very dim instrument lighting in the New version, instruments suffer far more inconsistency in appearance under different ambient lighting conditions. I don't know whether or not this is realistic, but the extreme dimness in blackout conditions leads me to believe it isn't. Either way, I would expect a bump in brightness to improve the consistency, and thus readability.

(side note: you may have noticed some of the images posted are .jpg instead of .png. Imgur was giving me issues with those for some reason so I converted them. The quality should still be almost completely intact though)

The comparison is interesting. I don't have 1.5 installed anymore, but your screenshot really shows the difference from 1.5 to 2.5. It would be nice if ED could fix the lighting, but I think this should be discussed in the general ED forum? Maybe you should add the link to your post in one of the threads about the lighting?

Having a "stronger" light would be nice during many night missions (also with the Huey). If you watch some movies, then the search light is always extremely bright and it iluminates the target very well.