Landing lights 'banding' on fuselage - any fix?

Hi. I am sure everyone must know what I mean, from the thread title. I can post a screenshot if necessary...I have tried Google for some information, but am obviously not using the right terms, as nothing relevant comes up, which seems highly unlikely...

 

Is there any way to get rid of the 'stripe/banding effect' that landing lights make on the fuselage when you are in spot view, unless you view the aircraft from a direct side-on angle? As soon as you pan laterally, the stripe effect appears. (At certain view angles, the landing lights appear to go off, as well, but that's something different of course).

 

Is there any known 'fix' for this?

 

Many thanks.

Make sure you are using a 32 bit screen resolution in FS Display options (end in x32).

Oh, sorry, I meant to add that in my original post, and forgot. I do use DXT3 textures mostly for the _T.bmp files, but I have 32-bit for any _L.bmp.. As far as I understood, that was supposed to solve the problem. But even with 32-bit _T.bmp files for the fuselage, I still seem to get the same effect..

 

Yes, I do have 32-bit set in display options.

Well, are the _L.bmp files themselves banded? Have you looked? That is a moderately common occurrence.

Sorry - this one slipped past me! Very late response...

 

No, the files themselves are not banded. The bands are obvious in this screenshot; most, probably all of my a/c have them (and always have had). When viewed directly on, no bands; at very acute angles they disappear too. At most 'normal' viewing angles they are very obvious. I always supposed that everyone had the same issue?

 

M.

Try tweaking vid driver settings, especially AF and AA, and check that no filter optimizations are enabled. Modern drivers have a plethora of options and "old" FS9 seems to have issues with some of them.

That would be complex - I use nVidia Inspector; so many options. Maybe anyone who also uses this and does not have this issue could post their settings? Thanks.

This is a suggestion, not an answer, but it will take you very little time and is easily reversed.

 

Try less pixels in your _LM.bmp file. Say go down to 1024 X 1024 and then 512 X 512.

 

Change the colour depth of your _LM file to 256 colours.

Thanks. Reduced size to 512x512; 256 colours; DXT3 or 32-bit. (I have read in other threads that this banding can be cured by making sure all lightmap bmp files are 32-bit, but that never worked for me). None of those changes made any difference, unfortunately.

 

The screenshot is a Project Airbus a320. You can see how the bands don't show when the a/c is viewed directly on, but at more oblique angles they are obvious - they move/ripple as you pan and disappear again at very oblique angles.

 

As I say, I have always had this (I am pretty sure!), across all PCs on which I have had FS9 since 2004, XP or Win7.

 

However... if I copy over one of the aircraft folders from an out-of-the-box installation of FS9 from another PC, say the B777-300, and load 'Soar Airlines' or whatever, there is no banding - which must be a clue! (If it were an anti-aliasing or similar issue, then surely these aircraft would be affected as well).

 

With my addons though, I get banding with the PMDG 737NG series, for example, but not with PMDG 747 - because the landing lights are much further away from the fuselage in the 747: if I move them inwards temporarily, in the aircraft.cfg file, the bands are clearly visible.

 

M.

Well, those are 256 x 256 DXT3 images. Have you tried that?

I just installed the PA320 base pack and the Air Canada livery (using the batch file provided) and I don't get a fuselage splash like that. The A320's landing lights are almost under the fuselage and couldn't cause a light splash on the fuselage sides above the wings like that anyway. If you have some add-on light package which is causing this, try uninstalling it.

Well, those are 256 x 256 DXT3 images. Have you tried that?

Just did - same banding

If you have some add-on light package which is causing this, try uninstalling it.

You're right!! Thanks a lot for testing this out... I am not sure what the lights programme is in this a/c - I will start from the PA lights again! The PMDG 737 may have been tweaked by a third party package from here or AVSIM too - but so long ago if so that I couldn't say which one.

I now notice that all my a320 PA a/c liveries have cabin windows lights at dusk/night/dawn which do not line up at all with the windows themselves! Do you also have that, or has something else 'broken'? One thing after another once one starts!!

check your halo.bmp for the banding problem.

 

Perhaps there is one with less shades (16)?

..check your halo.bmp for the banding problem.

 

It's definitely one of the lights, not the halo.bmp. One of my a/c, freeware or payware, I cannot recall which one now, came with a couple of shockwave lights as a bonus and removing those stops the banding. They say never look a gift horse in the mouth, but it this case it was more of a trojan one... I've removed the shockwave light and now things are OK again!

 

Thanks again.

I now notice that all my a320 PA a/c liveries have cabin windows lights at dusk/night/dawn which do not line up at all with the windows themselves! !

 

Well, if the liveries were all made by the same guy, then it stands to reason that it is highly likely that they would all have the same fuselage_LM.bmp (or similar) file! If you edit that, moving the windows around slightly, you can fix that problem. I seem to recall a similar alignment-type issue with the MS supplied default Boeing 777. But be careful, you don't want to cause any new banding :D :D :D

If you edit that, moving the windows around slightly, you can fix that problem.

 

I started doing that last night, but it's really fiddly to get them all in the right place!

 

I reinstalled the PA a320 from the setup file, and the alignment problem is still there - much to my amazement. So the Project Airbus _LM files must be faulty. (In which case, why has no one else reported this, as far as I can find??).

OK, here are six screen capture strips combined. We have (daytime (no lights) + nighttime (no lights) + nighttime (lights)) X (Port + Starboard). They look pretty close to me! Doing it "live" in FS, switching lights on and off rapidly, again showed no noticeable misalignment. Finally, doing this still another way... using Paintbrush, putting the fuselage 123 files with their corresponding _L files, again, the alignment is very good.

 

The aircraft.cfg file calls it: Project Airbus Jetstar A320-111 IAE with sharklets, with ui_variation=A320-232(WL) VFX JST. Maybe yours is a different plane?

 

Edit: The night lights, as provided, barely show up on my 12 year old laptop. So I increased the gamma on them enormously. Whilst this of course created a certain amount of "flare", so the night lit windows were now too big, the flare seemed to be evenly distributed around the windows. I could not see any offsets.

That would be complex - I use nVidia Inspector; so many options. Maybe anyone who also uses this and does not have this issue could post their settings? Thanks.

 

Well, this doesn't seem to be the issue in your case but, FTR, settings are so system dependent that even if two people have the same vid card what works for one may not work for the other. So it's often a matter of trial and error.

Thanks for that... I found and downloaded a PA Jetstar a320-200, and the windows looked pretty much OK. So I replaced the all the fuselage lm files in the various texture folders and the windows now line up just fine with the night lighting. Well, the back few windows weren't quite right, but I managed to tweak those in Photoshop and all the aircraft look good now.

 

Since I downloaded the original PA setup file and yet most (not all) of my PA a320 liveries still had this problem, I can only assume that people repainting this plane have used these files in their upload and hence the problem. But Googling it didn't come up with any hits, so who knows? Had the original Project Airbus files been faulty, it's hard to believe no one has posted a heads up.

 

settings are so system dependent that even if two people have the same vid card what works for one may not work for the other. So it's often a matter of trial and error.

 

Well, that's true, but the recommended settings posted on Simflight have always worked very well in my setup...

 

Well, whatever! I have spent some days now going from one issue to another and now that the current batch at least seem to have been sorted, I want to do some flying. Moscow to Heathrow tonight in a BA a321!

 

Thank you all again for you kind input in this thread.

 

Martin

Moscow to Heathrow tonight in a BA a321!

Martin

BA Indeed, my wife refused to do that trip by Aeroflop, as she calls it.