PAPI lights - can't tell between white and red

[crap_landing_dave]

First post here, so let me start by saying how much I have really enjoyed this scenery. The views are amazing and remind me of when I went to Bora Bora 6 years ago. I can't wait to complete my tour of all the airports.

The only thing that is eating into my enjoyment, and unfortunately it's eating into it quite a bit, is that the PAPI lights look basically white from wherever you are on the glide, and it's almost impossible to tell if I'm on profile or not. Dynamic lighting is off (just as a check) no change. PTA shaders set back to default (no change). Is there anything else I could check or change? If you tell me there's a DDS file I can manually redden up, I'm fine to do that. I'd love to sort it out.

Here's a couple of attachments. Never mind the awful approach, this was just spinning around to get these views...

1.jpg (203.93 KiB) Viewed 12451 times

2.jpg (221.37 KiB) Viewed 12451 times

3.jpg (181.29 KiB) Viewed 12451 times

[admin]

Try deleting the following folder:

C:\users\yourname\AppData\Local\Locheed Martin\Prepar3D v4\Shaders\

Then start P3D.

[crap_landing_dave]

Hi,

Thanks for the reply. I deleted the Shaders, restarted, and it's no different unfortunately. If I get very close to the lights (within a hundred feet horizontal distance) I can see them better. But they do not help me on the approach.

above.jpg (68.49 KiB) Viewed 12445 times

below.jpg (75.54 KiB) Viewed 12445 times

[admin]

Do the windsocks work if you set a weather theme, such as thunderstorms?

Another thing to try is the graphics settings for your graphics card. Try different types of filtering (anisotropic 16x is recommended) - they can be set in P3D and also the NVIDIA control panel or AMD catalyst control center.

You can also try updating the drivers for your graphics card. Which graphics card are you using?

[crap_landing_dave]

I have a GTX 1080, with 376.33, updated just now to 388.13 (no change). I'm running Anisotropic 16x, 2xSSAA (also tried 8xMSAA, no change).

The wind socks work great, and when I get close enough to the PAPIs and move up and down, they clearly change from red to white, and have a nice animated unsteady glow to them.

The problem is I can slew back about 500 yards and then I see just white.

Here's a close up view (very nice):

close.jpg (209.38 KiB) Viewed 12442 times

And here's the view slewed backward:

far.jpg (79.63 KiB) Viewed 12442 times

Edit: it's almost as if the intensity of the white center of those lights takes over. The lighting is perfect for everything else though. Any way it could be adjusted?

[crap_landing_dave]

OK, it looks like there's a problem with how these lights handle HDR. As soon as it's disabled, I get a pure red at any distance.

no-hdr.jpg (84.63 KiB) Viewed 12441 times

When it's on, all is white:

hdr.jpg (76.3 KiB) Viewed 12441 times

No amount of changing of Brightness, Bloom, or Saturation makes a noticeable difference to how red the lights should be at distance.

I don't want to turn HDR off, especially as I have shaders tuned to make the best use of it. Is there anything you can think of that maybe could be done locally to these lights to turn down (or off) the bright white light that comes on when HDR is active?

Thanks again for your help on this.

[admin]

Do you have an add-on that changed any of the default textures? See this post here:

http://www.prepar3d.com/forum/viewtopic ... 6&t=118259

[crap_landing_dave]

I do have Envtex, which may be an issue (no idea). The good thing for me is that I've found a PTA preset that works nicely with HDR off, so I'm going to persist with that.

Thanks for the tips.