South Oak Co just released an amazing little addon that gives us a very nice aurora borealis. I picked it up on Simmarket for just under $9 and it only takes 14mb of space. It’s a nice, subtle effect that moves and changes. I’ve not seen the real thing in person, but this addon definitely looks the part - highly recommended!
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Awesome!
In my experience with the real northern (and southern) lights, the stronger the effect, the more definition you can see. It moves very slowly, but when the lights are more intense, a stronger pattern emerges. The ones I’ve seen move like a curtain. And as it gets more intense, the colors go from green to the other colors you might see in the pictures, like reds. I do see that the predominant color in their screenshots is green, which would be true to my experience. But, I don’t live in that zone where you see it often. I’ve only seen it a few times in my life.
Would be curious to know how people who have real-life experience with it like this product. (Of course, MSFS 2024 will have the aurora, so unfortunately, a lot of people may hold out on buying this.)
Speaking of the southern lights, their official title is: Aurora Borealis: Northern Lights. Judging by this picture from simMarket, it does appear to be a north-only product:
I wonder if they will release a separate one for the southern lights (aurora australis).
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I just grabbed it for 6 euro after discount.
I would suspect the Southern Will come next and be another paid version (much like their birds which were regional).
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Thanks for the reminder, that looks really awesome. I’ll definitely buy it. Have all their birds already and love it.
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I just purchased and it looks quite beautiful in VR.
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Hi! Please help… I just purchased and downloaded the ZIP file. There are no installation instructions. How do you install into MSFS 2020? Thanks!!
Cancel that. Figured it out…
The video recording doesn’t do it justice, but this makes flying from the US to Europe so much more entertaining.
Well done – little additions to the sim, like this, are what make the sim sparkle in my opinion.
Love this addon. It’s very enjoyable.
But wish South Oak would significalky reduced the extremely exagerated frequency (i believe it is scheduled for every second day) in the seasonal coverage region. In this region it barely appears irl. In 20 years I’ve never seen it there!
But flying several night flights into ESMS and having the sky covered in green (which does look really nice) every single landing felt extremely unrealistic after a few days.
One night per month between 55N-60N would be a good compromise. It’s still very unrealistic, but increases the chances of seeing aurora there “once in a blue moon”.
Does anyone know is South Oak is active on this forum?
You could edit the XML files to alter the chance of the auroras to your liking. I believe they are in subfolders \SimObjects\Airplanes\southoakco_auroraborealisX\model with X being 1 through 4.
No editing and no subfolders on xbox. 
But thanks for the (pc) tip anyway. 