Flying into Cold Lake during the day when real-weather gave me a snow storm. I noticed that the runway was nearly invisible and I thought that in the real world the lights would be on.

Anyway you can get FS9 to put runway lights on when visibility drops below a certain distance?

John

I no longer have FS9 installed but am now running FSX. Your observation intriqued me, so I ran a small test at the local airport.

Runway lights in clear visibility come on at dusk.
With my tests, types of weather made no difference on the lighting: snow, rain, overcast, etc. On visibility it did. They remained off at visibility of 3 miles(4.8 km) , and came on at vis of 2 miles (3.2 km).

Again this is FSX, but I cannot believe that it is different for FS9 But I can understand what you are saying, because in FS, 2 mile vis looks like you are just off the runway end, and the default runway lights are less visibile then the default FS9 ones.

While I was holding in slew mode off the runway, and made a change in the vis from 3 mi to 2 mi, it took the sim about 10 sec to make the change to lights on. That is with no traffic running, or much else to effect the frame rates.

Hi Rick

Thanks for the reply. It does seem that its not a real as it can get! 2 miles at F-18 speeds is bit too short!

Cheers

John

Kinda makes you appreciate ILS doesn't it.