Aircraft light visibility is too short

[Rolds]

Here you see a couple images of an aircraft with its external lights on and a signal flare activated through triggered actions for comparison. In general, aircraft lights are only visible from a few hundred feet away. The signal flare on the other hand is visible from miles away. Everyone has seen aircraft with their running lights on at night, visibility in miles is accurate as that is the point of the lights. It would really help with night flying if aircraft lights in DCS had realistic draw distances. I feel like there must be a simple fix, just make them work like the signal flare!

[twistking]

On 8/8/2025 at 3:10 AM, Rolds said:

I feel like there must be a simple fix, just make them work like the signal flare!

The only complication would be that positional lights (red/green) would need some occlusion checks for aircraft that are only rendered as a single pixel. Still not rocket science, but makes it a little bit more involved than just a flare, which can just ignore occlusion in practice...

I absolutely agree though. Limited light visibility not only kills immersion, but makes night flying extremely difficult for older aircraft. Finding your wingman without GPS and HUD indicators can be near impossible. It's a real shame and needs to be fixed.
Also there need to be options in the ME to define light usage for AI units.

Also check out this thread!

Edited 1 hour ago by twistking