My post was not advocating for or against. I just thought it made for an interesting comparison. My phone picture was taken with manual settings.
Without knowing what part of the world that other picture was taken, it’s hard to do a full comparison, but if those are supposed to be sodium lamps down there in the MSFS 2024 screenshot, I think that the color temperature is too pale. I also think that there are too many lights and that they are too regular.
I don’t have MSFS 2024 yet (I bought the Limited Collector’s Edition, which means I’m one of the first to order and one of the last two get it), but judging by the screenshots in the below Wishlist topic, I think that airports are way too bright and way over-bloomed from the air:
https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/airport-night-lighting-is-too-bright-and-looks-like-fsx/668025
Anyone who’s a pilot or who has been in a plane and looked for an airfield at night knows that they’re tough to find. You have to look for the patch of land where there is no light. (And identify them by the rotating beacon, which I understand still only has a view distance of a few nm. In 2020, approach lighting is visible from space but the beacon is visible only 3 nm out or so. That is flat-out wrong, and they didn’t take the time to fix it.
Here’s the bug. 409 votes, it’s in the bug tracker, and they didn’t fix it: