Hey there everyone!
While I have never used the SDK, I’m not afraid of trying of course. I wanted to know if there’s a reasonable way to improve night lighting in MSFS. Just increase brightness of all existing lights at night.
A known issue is that MSFS 2020 tends to be on the dark side (particularly in airports, but that’s another story since several airports literally lack enough lights).
The videos I saw show how to improve night city lighting by adding new lights to existing areas (for example adding lights in a parking lot). While this is feasible, seems to be very time consuming if you want to fix big areas.
So, I wanted to ask two questions:
- Is there a way to just make all existing lights brighter in 2020? Perhaps there’s no mod to do this (I checked and while I’ve seen several improvements for specific cities, haven’t found any “global” mod that just renders all lights brighter) but if this could be manually done, I’m all in.
- Is there any tutorial that shows how to add lights, from start to finish? All tutorials that I have found either are missing steps (like building packages) or just assume that you’re well versed in modding.
Any help will be greatly appreciated!
Thanks as always,
Seb
If you’ve ever checked out X-Plane at night, one big difference you will see is that X-Plane has point light sources, and every light source in MSFS has a halo of light on the ground. From the air this makes each light source look kind of blurry, and X-Plane look sharper.
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Yup, I have X-Plane, both 11 and 12, and really like them, but MSFS for GA/VFR had much better ground details.
And yes, X-Plane night lighting is much better. But overall, I’d be kinda happy just by trying to get the existing MSFS 2020 lights brighter, and then check (my guess is that will be enough).
I’d really want to know if there’s a way to do that before just starting to edit scenes and add lights.
Thanks as always mate!
Seb
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If there is way to globally increase lighting intensity in the sdk, i never found it. I recommend searching for Patriot Six on you tube. He has several tutorials laid out like a walk through from start to finish including building the package and moving it to your community folder. He has a video specific to what you want to do. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAouRTNVHe0.
Good luck, it will be a massive project.
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Actually those were the tutorials I was checking, and basically he adds lights (generally quad lights) everywhere he wants. For example, he added 16 in a single parking lot. It’s feasible, but very time consuming if you have a big area to work on, hence I was wondering if there was a global way to make every light brighter (could have side effects, but of course, I’m willing to risk).
Also, if you can recommend another tutorial to learn the whole process of packing the mod would be great. I guess in order to make the videos bearable Patriot Six generally refers to another video for some sections, which I haven’t found in all cases.
Of course, if this is the only way… well… let there be light. Quad lights 
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