Night lighting issues still present - The community solutions

A classification method for light intensity would be interesting to see.(Who am I kidding, even the early builds randomised lighting would make me happy) Of course everything depends on the quality/resolution of the data and some places could be rendered falsely completely dark if the resolution is too low. Some other methods could be used on top of the light classes, like having lights around buildings - business districts or using any probabilistic equation with land classes. If they used this data(combined with other methods I referred to) to classify their light placement for the whole world, we could eventually have an extremely realistic representation of VFR nighttime conditions for the whole world.

You can check this out too, if you haven’t already. Light pollution map. VIIRS 2019 night light data. I am using this site for a few years now to find dark areas, following the newly released VIIRS global maps. They have a meaningful classification of light intensity(Radiance in10^9 W/cm^2 * sr )which essentially can be used to measure light pollution over specific areas. The map has some data glitches here and there, but it is very accurate and hi res in most places.(polar regions and seas contained most of the glitched areas,sometimes ship lights etc) , but realistically using these data for light classification in the sim , wouldn’t yield visible artifacts) . The other problem , would be the “spread out glow” measurements of medium light intensity. There is a glow around large metropolitan areas and heavily lighted industrial districts, which can be seen also in the Black Marble database. An AI algorithm can eliminate most of the excessive “glow” regions, by finding the right light clusters(given the right analysis sensitivity and value thresholds) ,which essentially are light sources and not atmospheric glow.

Finally another thing(or two) I’d like to pinpoint.

  1. It seems like they use the Black Marble map for their sepia masking and the light pollution simulation (cloud illumination,atmospheric glow) as well. They could get rid of the artificial(unrealistic) ambient light you see when going over large cities(suddenly clouds in the horizon are very bright if it’s not overcast) , if we really wanted the most realistic nighttime conditions. The sim already has a basic exposure adaptation mechanism in place. The atmospheric light pollution could and should stay constant and not changing unrealistically depending on where you are. If you watch some clouds in the distance over a city for example and you were some kilometres away from any village or a place with light pollution(a dark place), those clouds above the city would appear pretty bright, reflecting any light from the city beneath. If you went closer and closer to the city, the cloud brightness wouldn’t change, but by the time you enter the first avenue or highway with hundreds of buildings and lamps around, the clouds can even become nearly black. This is how the eyes adapt in different light conditions. Of course the sim hasn’t got any extremely adaptive and intelligent way of adjusting screen(pixel brightness percentage) exposure , but right now the adaptive ambient light looks totally off. The only exception , is when it’s totally overcast. Its only then that the ambient light is not so visible. In the photos below you can see what I mean. Testing location , London without a moon in the sky , ultra settings. Moving from further out, towards the city centre. Some may like this ambient light feature, others don’t.



  1. Today I also located a weird bug(no clue if it is new or not) and I hope I am not the only one. The clouds around me(a square shaped area ) were darker than the clouds far in the distance. To replicate this bug , moon has to be high in the horizon. The problem may be connected to moonlight.

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