I have been considering the purchase of several of the "Night “Enhancement” packs available on the Marketplace. Has anyone had any experience with any of them and what are your opinions? Some of them look spectacular. Any advice appreciated!
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I have San Francisco and San Jose. The lighting is a significant improvement in terms of what is lit and how it is lit. The downside is — and this could be a function of how the sim renders night lighting (there is a long thread that ponders the sim’s night lighting) — the colors in the lighting are very hyperreal and is pretty unrealistic in this sense.
Having Alcatraz and the SF Transbay Bridge, etc. actually lit are really nice, though.
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I think these are highly underrated. They add a depth that you don’t really notice unless doing a direct comparison
Take Chicago. I flew around default Chicago at night, and it was kind of a let down. The only light is from auto-gen building windows, its hard to see flying at night. You don’t feel like its real, it only works from a distance.
Then add DRZekeicki’s Chicago landmarks. Much better now, there is variety in the buildings, there is additional lighting, you can see flying around the city. But flying down the lake, its like there is a black hole off the city. And all the lights except a couple are all the same color. Stop and think about your neighborhood. Does everyone use the same lightbulbs? Some have LED lighbulbs, some have incandescent, some halogen flood lights. They all have a different color. So while it is better, there being no variety, and the black hole where the lake is, its better, but it still kind of breaks the immersion a little.
Now add in the enchanced light pack with DRZeweicki’s addon. (Note: If you do this, there currently is a bug in the code that reads Content Manager list to see what addons will have an effect on your flight, and it will CTD. You have to take off far enough away from the city, in this case, Chicago Executive works).
Well now, the thruway off the to the west of the city is obvious. You didn’t really know it was a thruway with default or the landmarks pack. Fly along the lake, now along the shore, there are lights that your didn’t realize were missing from houses, etc and there is no longer a block hole where the shore is. The buildings, they have different lights on them. The wharf off the city is lit up, I didn’t notice that was missing before. It feels like a more complete experience. There are things that are added that you wouldn’t even realize unless you did a direct comparison.
I highly recommend them. They definitely add to immersion.
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@tgbushman and @NixonRedgrave, funny and almost unsurprising seeing you 2 here 
I also recommend. The pictures advertised with them actually don’t quite encompass the shear scale or effect of what you really get. The way they hit you, it’s surreal and the atmospherics are jaw dropping, uncanny valley creeps in. Night flying will instantly become a more viable option and something you would want to do more often. You don’t realize how dull the default lighting actually is until you see this. If only all Autogen airports had this attention to lighting as well, it’d be amazing.
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Thanks for the advice! Going to order a couple of them tomorrow…
Steve in Kansas
Not really a ‘big city’ kind of guy, but wouldn’t mind getting Orlando and Vegas
Might look good, but if we’re specifically talking about Taburet’s packs the pricing model is quite ridiculous (usually 7-10 euros for each city with some exceptions for Night 3D packs). I generally abhor their pricing policies but this really is too much.
edit: just realized we’re talking about Dreamscenery, which I didn’t know about but doesn’t seem to be different to me. Probably worse as they’re charging 10 euros per city in the marketplace.
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Taburet and Dreamflight are two complete different things:
Taburet add lampposts illuminating strees; cover an entire country or in the case of Usa is split into 4 parts; wide coverage
Dreamscenery as far i see cover only one city for pack; and use colored lamps suspended up in the air with color
two completely different addons
Taburet lamposts image below
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Both seem to be ridiculously overpriced anyway. Plus I think that Taburet also release cities at similar (albeit a bit lower) prices, not only entire regions or countries.
Judging by some screenshots and videos they do make a difference compared to default lights, but I’d only consider buying a couple for my home city and my OnAir FBOs. But then I don’t want to support this pricing model, it’s bad precedent, it’s a matter of principle.
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They’re too expensive for what they are. I don’t mind paying between £10 and £20 for a city scenery pack that includes properly modelled buildings with enhanced night lighting - there’s loads out there from various people, Sydney, New York, Las Vegas etc etc. But £10 just for the lighting on its own is too steep.
I’ve noticed with the huge popularity of FS2020 and the fact that us flight simmers are more then willing to part with money for even quite simple scenery enhancements there are a few people around out to make a fast buck from it all. There’s a bit of a gold rush on. Over on flightsim.to there’s a gradual move now towards premium paid for content.
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For those of us on Xbox, we don’t really have any other choice than that which is available on the Marketplace.
It would be lovely to have other options, but we don’t.
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Plus I think that Taburet also release cities
Show us a City only lights product made by taburet
The answer is ‘it does not exist’.
I have quite a few night enhancements now and yes I do think they are worth it. They make flying at night enjoyable for me, especially having a few in the same general area.
No, the same company. They just have a different name on the MS Store. Compare all the entries in simmarket, with what is in the ms store, and you will see it’s all the same cities. Every week, about 10 of their addons gets brought over.
Sadly, I actually love these packs, but I’m so torn about the one of my second home.
I lived in Johannesburg for a while. I’m happy to see Johannesburg get some love. But it has to be one of their most boring packs based on the photos. Everything in Johannesburg, all the landmarks, are flat On the ground, or just wrong. There just wasn’t any of the city landmarks to light up. Anyone that buys this pack but isn’t familiar with Johannesburg is going to say “Wow. What a boring city”. So it breaks my heart more that most the city just ended up satellite sketchings on the ground. In the sim, the entire skyline is reduced to just two buildings, and one of those, the hillbrow tower, ends up in the sim as the worlds skinniest high rise (it’s a broadcast tower for the SABC).
I don’t blame dreamscenery. I’m glad they tried to give Joburg some love. They can’t help it that most the city ends up textures on the ground in the sim….
I’ll stand corrected. I wasn’t filtering for MSFS. Most of Taburet’s night addons are for cities indeed, but for other titles and not MSFS. I still don’t approve of their pricing model, but at least it makes a little more sense and I may be tempted to check a couple of their countries.
That’s how I feel about the southern hemisphere in general. I’m hoping for an Africa world update. I managed to land the 170 on Table Mountain and wondered how amazing an enhanced Cape Town with lighting would look from up there. I’m a Neill Blomkamp fan so of course I’d also love to see his home Jo’burg looking its best.
Cape Town fared a bit better. Johannesburg and Durban there just is no skyline at all in the game. Johannesburg has only two buildings in the game, and it has a wonderful skyline. Johannesburg CBD is where the fight scene between the hulk and iron man was filmed for Avengers Age of Ultron.
By the way, three more weeks until I can fix this. One of the guys on flightsim.to has hand crafted most the building for Johannesburg, Durban, Cape Town, and port Elizabeth to ORBX level quality. I can’t wait until home looks like home
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I wanted to revisit this statement I initially made.
I connected my Series X to a 1080P display that doesn’t support HDR.
No HDR made a very big difference in the way the lighting appears. The coloring looks way less hyperreal and dazzling.
I’m significantly more impressed with these enhanced packages now that I’ve seen them sans HDR.
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Have you ever managed to use the HDR calibration tool on the console itself? That kinda thing can help dial things in and keep the highlighting in check. I find tweaking the saturation and contrast up a bit, keep your brightness around about halfway and no more otherwise blacks start looking greyed out. I have a high back light to and this is what governs how intense the picture comes through. I also play in Dolby Vision so that probably comes to the table a lot to. Standard HDR can be over the top with the highlights for sure, DV tends to keep things more tame and quite docile at times for me.