I was watching Q8Pilot’s livestream and he pointed to lighting at dusk (horizon) which in his opinion looked strange. I got curious and wanted to ask your opinion on it. Is this realistic?
https://youtu.be/rnSJey9BxYA (Skip to 1:07:25)
I worked as a photographer specialized in astrophotography and atmospheric optics.
And yes, that is quite realistic. What you are seeing is the shadow of the Earth projected on the horizon.
Your image may or may not also show a phenomenon known as the “belt of Venus” that has nothing to do with Venus but shows a pink/purple band on the horizon opposite where the sun is setting or rising.
MSFS is quite good with atmospheric optics but lacks variety, all sunrises and sunsets are very similar and that is what is not very realistic.
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So it is in fact realistic. I guess Q8Pilot needs to do more research before calling it strange. Thank you Luis 
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Yes. Absolutely. I was recently thinking the same thing. MSFS sunrises and sunsets are realistic and beautiful, but after a while the lack of variety gets boring.
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It would be cool if the user could tweak this. In FSX I have REX Textures and this has many different sky shades that the user can deploy. Seeing the same ‘over the top’ sunrises/sunsets in MSFS gets to be very ‘sameish’ after a while…
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The sunsets are always ridiculously over the top - like something you’d get in the Serengeti. We don’t often get those vibrant red/oranges that the sim depicts here in the UK. It would be nice to get a bit of variety so when you are in Africa you get an African style sunset, and when you are in the UK you get a very subdued sunset. I suppose that’s asking too much!
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Exaggerations in this sim include but are not limited to: sunrise/sunset lighting, icing, frequency of rainbows, lightning, ground effect, wave turbulence…
I could go on, but the bottom line is Asobo have made this sim a hyperrealism showpiece. Afterall, they have a pricey product to sell.
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They’ve done a lot of work on it, we have a special topic on this forum, for people enjoying it
Check out reality…
https://www.google.com/search?q=sunset+photography&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X
The sunsets in MSFS are not really over the top imho, I think (with clear skies) there could be some more variation in hue… it’s not always yellow orange red, it can be violet azure purple too. The color depends on atmospheric conditions far away from where you are… maybe the weather model has an horizon as well… like trees… but I can’t look under the hood. What I do know MSFS is quite famous for its sunsets !!
I’m hoping ray tracing will help. but I may not understand the purpose of ray tracing.
Real sunsets (and all times of day) vary with whats in the sky (what, how much, where, grouped in what way). The thing about a sunset or sunrise is that theres a lot more of that ‘what’ and ‘how much’ for the sun to be seen through and it lights up all the varying quantities of varying collections of stuff to varying degrees.
A clear sky sunset will be quite simple with maybe just a little yellow while a hazy sky might be lit completely with varying intensity of varying color.
Clouds really make most sunsets and the cloud lighting (at sunset) in MSFS isn’t right at the moment but its the current simulated model and I expect it’ll improve over time.
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Help against…
And raytracing… dream on. The particle model involved would be so complicated (AND too large !) to let that run properly. Maybe a “still mode” would be appropriate - I would love to have that feature… just let it take 5 seconds and click.
So wrong… sunsets are never simple… Atmosphere is not simple… even when it’s clear sky, the surroundings play a huge role. A sunset behind a mountain looks completely different from a sunset on the sea level horizon.
Isn’t right… Could you show a picture please ? to me it’s not really clear what your issue is…
I think the sunsets are done exceptionally well, but as mentioned already, they do lack a bit of variety.
I’m no meteorologist, but I imagine that atmospheric temperature, pressure and humidity all affect the particulates in the air and thus the colours we see.
It would be nice if setting different temperatures/pressures would subtly affect the hues.
I believe changing the aerosol density already affects the visual look somewhat.
Not a critical feature by any means as the sunrises/sunsets are brilliant as they are, but a bit more variety would certainly be welcome in the future!
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I like the sunrise/sunset in MSFS in general but as other people already pointed out, it’s mostly the same dramatic transitions. Because of this, in the last year, I took some photos of more interesting sunset I’ve seen and would like to re-create them in MSFS one day
IMHO, the biggest challenge is to retain (relatively bright) blue sky during a sunset in MSFS which usually depicts it dark and red/orange-ish
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Dream on @MegaRiceBall734 … what you’re showing there is RL magic ! #1 beauty but a bit weird, I wonder if it’s some camera effect or light shaft that gives the orange-dark contrast, there’s a reflection on the right… #2 is great, could be done with the current model (elongating clouds) and #3 and #4 would be done with a fractal particle model, please specify your parameters ( 
) , #5 is looks enhanced, ref this website, you don’t want it to be that sharp in MSFS… and #6 this last image you show… beautiful… that red !! it can be done with the current model: add a new high level cloud model.and let the evening sun shine through… and I really wish we will have trees like that some day !! with snow… fantastic.
Hey thanks for your detailed reply!
As you said, the clouds are achievable in MSFS for some of the pictures I took but I always find it almost impossible to have sky light blueish at the same time. It always looks dark purple/grey for some reason.
The problem is sometimes they’re not spectacular enough … lingering brightly lit contrails crisscrossing a slowly darkening sky is something to behold
Keeping in the blue… right, that is tricky. There’s a small time window it will still be clearly blue. I tried add some aerosols to the Weather dialog to have another gradient… not straight along the horizon. Below are three pictures… Florida afternoon and two moments in the evening. I put high level clouds, and added aurosols 8.4
18:00
20:35
20:55
btw more clouds make the blue disappear earlier… sun shining through grey clouds…
This last photo of yours… tried to mimic that horizon… below is november same place… that red is clearly high level clouds, but I can’t keep the zoom on 50… this is 25% so I’ve to put low resolution here, to get things right… but I can’t get it as red as your image…
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The sunset in the picture with the darkened area where the cursor is looks exactly that way in real life. I’ve witnessed many sunsets from 39-41,000 feet and they look really close to that.
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It would be much more realistic if the stars would disappear with the light getting clearer. This point is really bad. But the stars magnitude at night are just very nice.
André
I like your 20:35 screenshot the most, and if there could be more blue to the sky that would be perfect .
Well I guess there’re still 9 years left for MSFS to improve from where we are, which is already great
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I have been playing with the sim too much. I am starting to think the real sunset looks fake.
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