I flew over some areas during night and I have to say that I really don’t like it…Its too uniformed and reminds me of Xplane…I started this post in hope that they will see it and revert back to the one that we had…If you agree please vote for that…its a pity going backwards in reality…
I started this thread after update 5.
Now one month and a big and very constructive discussion later I’ve gathered some recommendations from my fellow simmers that I personally find more precise:
I don’t have any comparison screenshots but have a look at this two…Never…ever…I didn’t feel that night lighting was looking artificial…now unfortunately I do…
It doesn’t make it any better if settings are in ultra or low…it has the same tragic result…
By the way I haven’t noticed anything about cars…I was blown away by the intensity and the ‘‘ugly’’ feel of the general lighting…
That was my first impression- X-plane flashback. I hated it. I hate this more. Why can’t they just look at some photos or videos to see what night lighting looks like?
Airport runways and taxiways are not visible/barely visible from altitude and distance at night either. That’s another pet peeve- being able to see bright airports from 30 miles away at 350.
I’d be happy with a tool that lets me modify the lighting myself, like we had in previous sims.
Meanwhile, it’s back to day flying for me for a while.
While I don’t think it’s terrible, it could use some more adjustment. They asked us for feedback on the night lighting in the Q&A and I feel it would be perfect if:
The red orbs gone completely (or much dimmer). You don’t see brake lights that much in real life… maybe in LA or NYC
The white lights dimmer
The bright yellow lights dimmer but still brighter than the current dim yellow lights (which are good as is)
Rural and small roads didn’t have lights at all
Airport taxiway (blue and green) lights much dimmer
Not sure if there’s a way to do directional lighting, but the papi/vasi lights should only be visible when looking down the runway, not 360 degrees miles away.
More variation in the lights in both size and brightness
Is there a config file somewhere that we can tweek for these lights?
There is also a weird “fisheye” effect going on with the moon depending on camera angle/position (same with lens correction on and off). Not sure how that can be fixed. But PLEASE do not ever change the star map… best I’ve ever seen in any game or sim!
All your suggestions are great.
As for the word terrible that i use…well when you have used to fly for the past two months in the best looking night that we have ever seen in a simulator and then you get this…and called an improvement then you get really dissapointed of the criteria of the developers who gave us something perfect and now they seem like they are slowly breaking it apart…
I dont think they got it right because except from the bright highway lights all the other street lights are never so uniformed and not always so bright…
It seems like in order to get more visible lights in the distance all the lights were brightened to an extent which to me seems unrealistic…
I will probably have to wait for a good mod because it seems that people like it that way…
I don’t mind how bright they are, in fact I like how bright the ambient lighting is now. However, I wish there was a little bit more of a haze in the distance to distort the lights. Also I agree, it seems the ground traffic is missing now.
I also like how Xplane does their ground traffic, you can see the car lights moving at night easily… make it a bit more immersive to see other "people’ going about their lives on the ground. Lights also need a little variation in color.
I am so disappointed with this update and with the direction in which the visuals in this sim are moving. First the vegetation and objects draw distance during the day, and now the X-Plane 10-ish night visuals. I’m sorry to say this, but this is not the sim I bought 2 months ago. I know that MS and Asobo are not doing this on purpose, but they are the professionals here and I would expect a better judgement before releasing these updates.