Night lighting issues still present - The community solutions

Yeah I think the Dev QnA actaully confirmed my fears, its just the sepia mask pushed out pretty much and the lights get drawn further out… Nothing about the light differences and sizes etc. You would think a thread with 1272 replies would be a good read into what people are actually thinking.

4 Likes

You all forget that there’s also su7…and sepia mask ‘‘removed’’ is not a minor thing…
Let’s wait…shall we ?

There is a third option which makes sense since the last Q&A: this topic doesn’t present any excellent suggestion at all. It is not dissimilar to the questions asked in the Q&A today: how many of the 10 most voted were asked… It is very simple in fact: the more time we spent in these forums talking between us, the less chance they see us using other games and simulators! But I now doubt they are reading this. It is filtered out by people who’s job is to manage the community, which already depends on their capacity to comprehend what it is we are talking about, which I don’t doubt they can on many things, but they can’t be seriously understanding it all otherwise they’d be more valuable helping coding things at Asobo’s. I mean how many people understand what I’m talking about sometimes :slight_smile:*


*don’t condemn me too soon though, to my discharge, I’ve been used to directly talk to the lead developers of all simulators we’re selling products for, during the last 20 years, except FS2020…

4 Likes

If that’s true that community “managers” are the one who filters feedback and giving it to devs, then it would be their job to understand and comprehend what we are saying here… I mean this thread has existed since last year and it was way under 500 replies… before it grows to 1000, then now 1276. If they’ve been following us, even a quick read through the post and looking at screen shots we are all attaching here, will enable them to construct bullet points of the issues here to pass on to devs.

  • Night light orbs too big, fuzzy, doesn’t decrease with distance. Users prefer smaller and sharper “point lights” light orbs that gets smaller with distance (THIS IS THE PRIMARY POINT).
  • Need more light sources other than street lights. Buildings on lower LODs need to have illuminated windows or some sort to create more randomness at distances.
  • Need more variety in light colours, brightness, and placement (to avoid night lights from looking to uniform)
  • Sepia looks weird as, makes the ground glow. Need to find better alternative (note pre-computed night texture by Grinde81 to be considered)
  • Night lights continued on in an unrealistic way, after buildings and vegetation no longer drawn. This creates effect like “tron grid”. Distant “left-right” string of lights after buildings/vegetation no longer drawn, must be randomised.
  • Night lights on rural area needs to be more randomised and spaced out (if impossible to identify and remove individually per area).

That’s all I can think, if anybody wants to add more… That’s pretty much the issue with city night lighting AFAIK. Community managers can just copy and paste bullet points above and give it to night light devs to look at and address.

10 Likes

I believe if they took all them bullet points and fixed the issues, we will have a pretty realistic night time flying experience. Great post.

I can’t answer your question because I’m not even sure whether some anonymous people do have any alleged discerning ability to judge whether I’m on topic or off topic, and my help can only go so far therefore, but “We got to get this right with you guys first, and by you guys I mean the people that really have been propping up this thing for the past 35 years”

Listened to the Q&A. So far the only thing that can improve low-mid altitude night lighting (other than sepia got pushed back) is the increase in LOD / draw distance from 200 to 400. Each LOD will also appear longer (meaning higher LODs - the one that still shows window lights etc) will appear further).

This could help to further push away those “tron grid” and give more variety of lights further away from the observer. However nothing’s said about “light orbs size” which is disappointing, but let’s just wait and see.

2 Likes

Image taken from FL 40. It still has the sepia mask and it still doesn’t look good, but it’s still a promising development. I hope they fix this issue completely in S7.

I never thought that mask looked good. I would be happier if they removed it entirely, and we suffer what else that leaves behind with regard to the actual lights that are present in the scene. It couldn’t be worse, could it?

Maybe this

and this

should be brought to the attention of @OlieTsubasa443 and @Jummivana

3 Likes

Agreed, and the deep reddish transitioning to pale brown never looked good… And the stubbornes, refusing to roll back to what actually looked great puzzles me, why keep trying to improve on a broken concept for over 18 months instead of just admitting it was a wrong turn that was taken.

I’m also a lite doubtful that the REIL and “Rabbit” approach lights should be the most clearly visible light source at night from FL500 ~50km away…

3 Likes

I can’t understand either but whoever is the team that developed night lighting need to fix this ■■■■ issues ASAP.

1 Like

Can someone please bring to the attention or tag the people who are directly linked to the devs in this thread so they see it… that sepia mask needs to go! It just looks terrible and not what night time flying should look like at all. We waited sooo long for a night fix but instead it looks like we aren’t getting a fix, like mentioned above, what is it with the stubbornness of going back to the old night lighting?

I want to be able to enjoy night time flying like I do day time. Cmon guys get it together!!!

1 Like

If they remove sepia but not addressing the other issues as bullet points above (especially the “light orbs size” issue), night lighting won’t look good from either low or mid altitude. Ironically that’s a primary sticking point of this thread since Oct 2020!

Quite weird that they’re working on “night lighting” because of this thread shoots up to prominance, while actually it looks like they’re addressing another thread (terrain emits light) instead! I sincerely hope that they WON’T STOP at “long range quality fix” for night lighting.

As Grinde81 said before in this thread, short and medium range night lighting needs to be fixed also.

2 Likes

I wonder if we’re ever going to get a response to what in the world those static hovering bright red orbs are supposed to be. It’s been asked over and over again since release… Hope they finally remove them now.


.

Also, cars lightbulbs aren’t visible, but their “lightsplash” on the ground is visible… IRL, in 99 out of 100, it’s the other way around, until you are very close to the car to see the lamps effect on the ground. But then you are very close to the ground.

5 Likes

Oh yeah those red orbs are definitely another short cut to get car tail lights on the roads’ night lighting.
What they should’ve done is to update the vehicle’s night lighting so it looks more realistic. If they want to put red orbs etc, put it on intersections to simulate traffic lights! Just make sure the orbs are small, and code it so it changes from red yellow and green!

5 Likes

I hasn’t thought about that but it does make sense, to simulate cars moving away from you. Except these don’t actually move.

X-Plane’s graphics are from a generation or two back in most cases but one thing it does very convincingly are roads and traffic. Those in MSFS are like afterthoughts, barely functional. X-Plane’s autogen adds overhead and exit signs, the traffic has visible head and tail lights and moves smoothly. It’s a much nicer appearance.

6 Likes

And also omni-directional which is weird. It would’ve made more sense if the red orbs are only visible from certain angles that simulates “looking at a vehicle from behind”.
And no way tail lights are that bright illuminating large area of the road.

2 Likes

Thank you for circling out the red orbs, I could have missed them :innocent: :wink:

2 Likes