Hi fellow simmers,
first post, been lurking for a while :)..
I agree, it´s probably further down the list for fixing, but since I fly for a living and have seen and landed at hundreds of airports around the world I wanted to add my 2 cents here:
Most airports have directional runway lights of various intensity that are in fact pretty much focused into the approach-direction (kinda like headlights in a car). It is really hard to spot a runway at night from the side if you are further away. For that reason they also usually have small lights on top of the directional lights to aid with keeping the runway in view while doing visual or circling approaches at night, but these can´t be seen from a larger distance. There are also flashing pairs of lights (omniderectional) at some runways to aid in spotting the runway ends (REIL). I am not that familiar with the lighting-layout of purely military airfields in the C.I.S., having used only major international airports there.
There is a misconception about the runway lights of major airports being absolutely bright and brilliant - in fact when approaching an airport within a well-lit city at night the easiest way to spot it is to look for a dark area within all the lights :). What shines out furthest is usually the flood-lights of the tarmac or loading-areas... The runway lights are usually kept to a lower level to not blind the pilots, they will only be turned up to full intensity during heavy fog.
On a related note, did anyone else notice that the reflection of the anti-collision light on the black shark seems to be clearly visible on some airport structures during bright daylight, even when the source (KA-50) is hundreds of meters away in some of the movies? That´s another thing to tone down, in my opinion, but then again, merely a cosmetic touch.
Looking forward to the revival of the study-flight-sim-genre,
Litjan