THERE SHOULD BE NO HUGE BLOBS OF LIGHT MASS!
Yes, there has been improvement on a few things, and thanks a lot to the devs for listening and getting it done quickly. Light blobs aren’t quite as gigantic from 30 miles away anymore, and the worst of the early bloom has been dialed down a bit. That’s appreciated. But the core problems with night lighting are still there, and MSFS really lags behind in this area compared to other sims like X-Plane 12. Directionality is missing. Fixtures fail to load. Ramps are too dim. Stars are too bright. It all adds up to a night environment that doesn’t feel believable!
The runway lights are especially bad!
The airport lights in 2024 look like they were ported over from FSX (huge blobs of light without any directionality), the procedural placement is unreliable, post-processing can’t be adjusted anymore, and many core lighting behaviors don’t match what you’d expect from a modern sim. There are no realistic bulbs or fixtures at airports. The lights still look like flat 2D blobs with an unnatural glow, floating in space without a physical source. It breaks the immersion every time you see it.
The most frustrating part is this: a lot of these problems are known, reported, and still not fixed. Some of them were even better in MSFS 2020. We had over 2,000 posts on the forums about lighting issues, begging for improvement—and now some things have regressed. And worse, we’ve lost the ability to tweak and fix many of these things ourselves because core settings have been locked down.
Well the MSFS engine is capable of much more. Once again im gonna mention X-Plane, which runs on a completely different tech base, handles night lighting in a much better way.
Maybe open up the lighting engine more to third party input? Expose atmospheric parameters, open up control. Let users adjust the shape, spread, range, and directionality of light sprites. Let us override default scatter behavior, or hook in new logic for when and how light fixtures load in. Let third parties implement smarter systems.
1. Airport Light Sprites – Too Big, Too Bright, Too Flat
Runway and taxi lights still show up as flat, glowing blobs—too big, too bright, and visible from angles and distances that make no sense. They don’t behave like actual light sources.
The lights don’t look like they’re attached to a real fixture. There’s no depth, no falloff, and no variation. It’s just a glowing disc. This breaks the illusion immediately.
These lights are supposed to be small, focused, and directional—not giant blue orbs glowing like someone dropped LEDs on a fog machine.
In MSFS 2020, light scaling and bloom were a bit more restrained. In 2024, it feels like a step backward again.
There’s also a blue hue to some of the taxiway lights that feels too intense and unrealistic, further distancing the visuals from how these lights appear in reality.
Edge and taxiway lights are excessively bright and bloated, becoming visible from distances far greater than in real life. Typically, such lights are only discernible when a few miles from landing.
2. Missing Directionality – Lights Glow in All Directions
Real-world runway and taxi lights are directional. They’re designed to be visible only from certain horizontal and vertical angles. For example, FAA L-852T taxi lights are only supposed to be visible within a narrow band—roughly 15° to 90° horizontally, and 1° to 6° vertically.
In MSFS 2024, lights glow at full brightness no matter where you’re looking from—above, behind, head-on. That’s not how they work in real life, and it looks wrong. From above, you should barely see them.
Right now, airport lights in MSFS look like floodlights. In reality, they’re more like carefully aimed flashlights.
A MORE REALISTIC INTERPRETATION
THERE SHOULD BE NO HUGE BLOBS OF LIGHT MASS!
3. Ramp Spotlights – Still Way Too Dim
This one’s been broken for years. Ramp areas are dark, sometimes pitch black. These are the areas that, in real life, are flooded with bright white light for safe operations. But in MSFS, the ramp lighting is weak, orange-ish, and barely illuminates anything.
You shouldn’t be able to see the runway lights better than the gate where your aircraft is parked.
Large, powerful spotlights exist at real airports to illuminate these zones for crews and passengers. In MSFS, it feels like the lighting system forgot that these lights are the most intense on the airfield.
Ramp spotlights are BRIGHT! Even at the nightest of nights, in real life it often looks like a nuclear bomb went off on apron. You should not have any problem seeing anything, everything is lit up and nothing should be in the dark.
4. Beacons – Either Missing or Way Too Dim
Airport beacons are essential for identifying airports at night. In MSFS 2024, they’re either completely missing or so dim they may as well be.
This isn’t just a minor issue. It directly affects situational awareness and usability, especially when flying VFR at night.
Previously before the initial fix, every airport in MSFS had lights you could see from 20 miles out. That is fixed, but you still cannot spot the actual beacon that’s supposed to be doing that job.
5. Fixtures Missing – Floating Light Orbs
Sometimes the light shows up, but the fixture doesn’t. You’ll see the glow, but there’s no visible structure or object emitting it. It just hovers over the ground like a ghost.
This issue seems tied to asset streaming and slow internet connections. It didn’t happen in MSFS 2020. Now it does, and it’s random.
8. Stars & Milky Way – Unrealistic and Overpowering
The skybox in MSFS 2024 is still low-res, and the Milky Way + stars are way too big and bright. You’d never see this level of star detail from an airport ramp, especially near any city.
In fact, it’s so bright that if this were real, you’d have to turn off all your cockpit lights just to see the stars like that.
Stars should twinkle faintly in the background—not look like glowing ping-pong balls.
Also, there’s no way to change or mod the skybox now. Why not let the community fix this?
9. Bring Back the user.cfg Controls and give people more customization control
MSFS 2020 allowed users to tweak post-processing options like bloom, fringe, vignette, and more via the user.cfg file. In 2024, those options are gone. Why remove something useful? Give users the tools to make the sim look the way they want it to—especially since the defaults clearly don’t work for everyone. If a full lighting rework isn’t on the table right now, that’s okay. But can’t the system be opened up a bit more? Expose more parameters. Let us adjust things like light sprite size, intensity, directionality, fixture behavior, skybox replacement, atmospheric scatter, and post-processing.
