Night lighting on the glareshield panel
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One of the things where the 146 annoys me a bit is the night lighting, specifically on the glareshield panel. Surely with panel- and console floodlights on + all the integrated illumination, at least a little of that light should reach the glareshield.
Finding buttons, or flight director switches is quite tough in the dark. Of course it is basically impossible to reproduce the real world experience, but I think some improvements are possible.
You can turn on the entry lights or leave the cockpit door open for some illumination, but that is obviously not ideal. Only kind of useable workaround is turning the sill lights on and aiming them towards the glareshield, which is kind of awkward.
Not a lot of light is needed - just a little bounced light from the other light sources in the cockpit.
Clip from a 146 here (though retrofitted with newer main panel instrumentation). Still very dark, but slightly easier than in the sim to (and that is with no floodlights turned on in the vid).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4UCjee6jzY
One thing I notice, is the two course knobs having the same sort of outlining as the alt knob has.
All the videos I have seen also indicate that integrated lighting is quite a bit "warmer" than the very neutral colour we have in the sim. The overhead "piano keys" also seem be primarily hit by edge lighting, where the sim version has them looking more like having integrated lighting glowing through transparent keys. -
Thank you for your detailed feedback. We have logged all of this on our internal bug/feature request tracker and it'll be looked into ahead of a future update to the 146. I'll leave a few comments below and a few of your points.
With regards to the glareshield lighting, please see the following photo: https://www.jetphotos.com/photo/6255039
In the real aircraft with all of the panel lights switched on there are no light sources that illuminate the glareshield and as we're using the same light sources in the simulator, the glareshield appears just as dark in the simulator. I suspect it was designed this way on purpose so that there is as little light as possible on the glareshield, and thus less glare on the windscreen. The combination of the integral panel lighting, eye adaptation and muscle memory will likely help in the real world, but I appreciate they may not be factors that can be translated across to a simulator.
As has already been discussed in this thread, the SILL lights can be used to illuminate the glareshield, as can the ENTRY lights. However, even in the following photo which was taken with the ENTRY lights switched on, or with a camera flash (or both), it can be seen that the glareshield is still much darker than the rest of the cockpit: https://www.airliners.net/photo/Orionair/British-Aerospace-BAe-146-300/1311992/L?qsp=eJwljc0OgkAQg1%2BFzFkP/oQDN/AB9OALTHYb2IjOZmYSJYR3l4Xb1zZtZwrycfz8OWVQQwbWMNCBMiu/jZqZXpi%2BonFl6jR5sqFqoWKZA6quxfF0rUthEJcbO3rRiZr6QCbq3YoUV7cNAdkRaffvGqElgoXtrS/v54LQx64uZTYmyyNvK3BOIy3LH5qaO4A%3D
So even then, with the cockpit entirely illuminated, there isn't much light hitting the glareshield.
With regards to the overhead "piano keys", in the real aircraft, I believe there are bulbs behind the switches on the overhead panel that illuminate them from behind. The light from these bulbs can also leak around the outside of the switches due to gaps in the panels or chips on the panel surface. This is a difficult effect to recreate in a simulator, not only just from a visual perspective but also from a performance standpoint. If we were to add as many light sources as would be required to replicate the overhead panel lighting 1:1 it would lead to significant FPS issues in the simulator, so the method we have used is what we consider to be the best alternative based on our past experience with other projects.
Hope that gives a bit of an insight into the current night lighting. We will be evaluating all of your feedback again once we start work on the next 146 update.
Mark - Just Flight
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@Mark Thanks for the detailed response
Certainly looks quite dark I agree - perhaps it shouldn't be brighter in game. Just a tiny amount brighter would certainly makes things a bit easier at times though - always tough to fully recreate what an eye captures on a photograph or in a simulation.The two course knobs having a light-outline helps make the overall darkness not a problem, as you can still easily find the knobs.
In the same vain, the top of the frequency knobs on the left seem to be slightly lit from the NAV-frequency display. Just that slight light would also help in finding inner/outer knob. No problem with darkness if you still have some way of locating things.Fully understandable that it is though to reproduce the piano keys perfectly in the sim. Was more just an extra little detail I noticed when looking at real life videos.
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Looking at patch notes from the RJ it sounds very promising.
Overhauled cockpit lighting using colour samples from new reference material and added "bounce lighting" on panels
Adjusted amber annunciator colours using colour samples from new reference materialI haven't bought the RJ yet, but look forward to seeing how the improvements look.
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The annunciator colour and lighting improvements that are included with the recent RJ update will be making their way to the 146 in a future update. We are planning to bring a significant update to the 146 that will add a lot of the improvements we have developed in the RJ, and the lighting will be part of that.
Mark - Just Flight
