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→Airport lighting in poor weather.
John Denker (talk | contribs) |
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==== Airport lighting in poor weather. ==== | ==== Airport lighting in poor weather. ==== | ||
In real life, there are many circumstances where airport lights, | |||
the | including approach lights, are turned on during the day. At tower airports, the lights are turned on during conditions of low visibility and/or low ceiling, and also turned on if requested by the pilot. For details, see [[http://www.faa.gov/ATPUBS/ATC/ATC.pdf FAA Order 7110.65p]]. | ||
The code to turn lights on and off is in simgear/scene/tgdb/obj.cxx. (Formerly it was in tileentry.cxx) | |||
* All along, runway and taxiway lights have been on during the hours of darkness, as determined from the angle of the sun. | |||
is | * As of version 0.9.10, runway lights and taxiway lights are turned on automatically if visibility less than 5000 meters, day or night. Apparently this is based on flight visibility, not on surface visibility (which would be more appropriate). Consequently, as you descend through a haze layer into improving visibility you can watch as the lights turn themselves off (which is not appropriate). Also: apparently the code treats a subset of approach lights as part of the runway lights, so that subset comes on also. The remaining approach lights appear to be permanently off. | ||
* There is still no code to turn on the lights depending on ceiling. | |||
At non-towered airports, the lights are usually pilot-controlled, | At non-towered airports, the lights are usually pilot-controlled, | ||
via radio. | via radio, no matter what the weather. Presently the code treats them the same as towered airports. (Arguably this should be considered a wish-list item rather than a bug. [[User:Alfozavr|Alfozavr]]) | ||
It is important to get the lighting right, because it affects both the | |||
legality and the practicality of performing instrument approaches | legality and the practicality of performing instrument approaches | ||
in marginal conditions. | |||
==== Holes in the ground. ==== | ==== Holes in the ground. ==== | ||