When I made this diagram, I believe the blue circle had a radius 1000 km long. The green is double that, and the red triple that. 1000 kilometers isn’t that much distance to cover in Unturned.
Airdrops should land relatively far out of the player’s way. Otherwise, it’s too easy for people to shoot a flare off in their base, or an otherwise obscure area nobody else can easily reach, and get free loot easily. If the smoke and lights are more difficult to see from farther away, then it’s just making it easier for people to get all of the loot uncontested.
Suggestions:
Smoke is dense, and pillar-like. Affected by wind, and carried far out so players can easily see airdrops (regardless of whether or not they were called in by a flare).
Carepackages have lights, so that they’re easier to see at night. Alternatively, an easier-to-see smoke color is used at night (typically this is orange). It wouldn’t make sense for carepackages to drop at night otherwise.
Carepackages don’t drop near the player. At least, not near enough where the walking required is insubstantial. There’s a few ways we could do this.
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The airdrop occurs somewhere randomly in, say, 500–1000 kilometer radius of you. Since you called in the airdrop, you’re going to be the most prepared for it and one of the closest people to it. Once you see which direction the plane is coming from, you already know the two directions you should be moving in.
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Flares generally don’t summon planes out of nowhere. Instead, planes periodically pass through the map, albeit rarely, and using a flare gun will cause them to drop a carepackage somewhere farther up ahead. They can still drop packages normally, but using a flare gun will help guarantee that it’s near you.
Really, I like both of them. The second idea is more interactive though, and allows for some more interesting things like:
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Planes leave a white non-emergency smoke trail behind after dropping a carepackage, so that you know they’ve already dropped one behind them.
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There could be a way to distinguish type of carepackage being carried by the plane, so that players don’t feel obligated to shoot a flare at every plane. Instead, they can choose when they want to take that gamble for potentially much-needed loot.