Have a look at a screenshot that I just took…
I am doing some test flights during night ( I dont do normal flights these days because I am very dissapointed, usually I was doing only dusk/night flights) and this screenshot is taken over wind turbine generators at 30.000 feet… (the red lights) . The light bulbs are extremely big for this kind of altitude and they look so unrealistic.
I have flown over this area a dozen times in real life with commercial flights at 10.000 feet or probably less ( its near the airport so I quess its less than 10.000 ) and I dont see them…It would take an effort to notice them.
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Here’s early alpha from almost a year ago, compared to the release candidate, up until update 5.
I came across these 2 pictures posted by Grinde81 and thanks for posting the early builds shot.
And I must say the early builds night lighting looks just awesome.
No sepia mask and lights are visible at far distances (obviously in clear weather conditions) as IRL, also considering the distant lights-few are visible and few are not as if blocked by any obstacle which looks realistic unlike the current uniform necklace like light of constant intensity both near and far away & most importantly without any break ;
And then proper light distribution both in terms of intensity and positioning ; everything was just absolutely promising atleast at lower altitudes, if not perfect (I am unaware what was the state at higher altitudes then).
I dont know who suggested to change this during testing phase and introduce sepia mask and all that stuff & bring it to the launch/current state in the sim !!
The early builds state of night lighting should have been used as a foundation to improve upon in a proper way.
From what I observed and felt atleast by seeing this picture, Except the overall increased intensity which has brought back the vibrancy in some areas like cities, I now really wish if Asobo could take us back to that early build night environment.
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what makes you think the night lighting is incorrect here ?
Do you have photos of similar views in similar meteo conditions to prove that this is worse than before ?
This guy says exactly the opposite of you: Terrible night lighting after patch 5
And the reason is people have their own taste and/or experience of night lighting which is entirely dependent on the local country, habits (perhaps they turn off the light sooner), and the local atmospheric conditions. If the air is hazy, the lighting will be entirely different than when the air is dry. So unless Asobo implements that, there won’t be a right solution. And even then, people who are not aware of that will complain. So now, if Asobo implements that correctly (which btw adds more computations, and thus will have an impact on the FPS, and thus other peopel will complain), they will also have to release a video to explain the algorithms used.
So in pretty much all cases, it’s a lost battle.
I had the same idea! And to specify in detail:
- after classify based on NASA light map, a second between urban and rural area.
- in rural area based on road type only some street lamps very close to AI building
- only use the Reflexion bitmap as base for LOD textures applied on far distance, but resharping, not that much blurry
- turn sport ground spot lights randomly on/off, based on size … at the moment, every single sport field is fully illuminated
- take traffic density in city for car brake lights
1 Like
Ok i did another test, this time in a bigger city.
Los Angeles landing.
it looks horrible ! 
Light bulbs and generally points of light look fuzzy and huge. There is no sense of depth and distance. They also aren’t crisp and piercing, with a small halo around them as they were in the early builds. The draw distance still isn’t as it was, but it is much better in the latest patch. Also there is no randomness and light trails look extremely artificial, with the early builds there was a lot of randomness and it looked much more organic. Also if you look at the distant beach on the upper right part of the screenshot, there are almost no lights visible. On the plus side of things, now buildings look better at night in general.
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I agree that before the latest patch city and town lighting looked much better. The comparison screen shots really emphasise this. But before the update it did look a bit dim, which may be why Asobo changed it.
But I think one issue that isn’t being addressed here is that from an aircraft window, you rarely see street lights themselves, just the effect of the street lights on the ground or buildings. Street lights shine down, not up. Lights in areas like sporting grounds are more likely to be seen from the air as both the light itself and the light they cast, as they tend not to be angled straight down. In the extreme distance you might just see the street lights themselves from the air, but this would most likely be hidden in the general background lighting.
So I think the brightness is not the issue. Imagine MSFS if the actual street lights themselves were not visible (or even just less visible), but they light they currently cast remained the same. While other lights like traffic lights, sporting arena lights, building lights, vehicles etc were visible as both the light itself and the light they cast. I think this might give a very realistic effect.
I think the before patch lighting looked better because the lights themselves were dimmer, and they were less obvious. But I think Asobo moved in the right direction with the brightness of the light they cast, they just need to hide the street lights themselves.
The separate issue of floating lights is caused by Asobo placing the light above the ground, so it can cast light downwards. In effect a street light without the pole it sits on.
Rural lighting is another issue and is caused by OSM data which Asobo appear to use for road lighting.
OSM data also includes traffic light locations, so it is very easy to add green/red coloured lights in just these locations.
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100% it looks far too uniform
The light visibility distance is still not as it was in the early builds. We need back the “early builds” lights draw distance. It was much more realistic.Few lights in the upper left corner of the early builds picture in the foothills are visible which looks great but its not there in the current state.Also the city/town lights are visible beyond the water body in the 1st picture which is not visible in the current state (2nd pic) except the road lights which might be due to the present low city/town light visibility range.
Also, no doubt the distant lighting beyond the water body looks much more realistic in the 1st picture.It has that halo effect, the tiny light bulbs are visible as it should be instead of the huge light bulbs as it is now both near and far; the random variation in intensity was there and most importantly the random but realistic positioning of lights with breaks in between as if obstructed by something at places unlike the present uniform string of pearls like lighting of large light blobs of constant intensity independent of distance.The sizing of lights were also much realistic.
A little bit increase in intensity was definitely required because as u said its true that the buildings look better now as well as cities; rest early build night lighting, if it was really like the one shown here, was no doubt just awesome enough to satisfy all.If any improvement was required,this should have been the base for further improvements instead of changing and implement a completely new night lighting algorithm.
Really after looking at the early build picture,I miss that.It looks so beautiful and realistic.
I highly wish that Asobo would increase the overall light intensity a bit from as it was in the early builds and bring the same night lighting back.
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Yeah, exactly. The more I look between these screenshots, the more differences I discover. Let’s see where things can go from now on. It was nearly perfect.
I would rather say file a zendesk ticket to Asobo by sending these 2 screenshots and providing necessary details and asking them to bring back the same early builds lighting by just tweaking the intensity a little bit.There is a high chance that while reading they might miss few comments because of so many comments in this topic.
I zoomed in so its not very clear…
They are both from the screenshots above…
First one is from the early builds
Second one from the latest build
Unfortunately I fear the lightning issue is a difficult one because there’s a lot of subjectivity in it. While there’s surely a lot to discuss for the lighting in dense populated areas here’s a screenshot from Northern Germany:
Not only is it highly unrealistic because in reality there are no lit up roads between villages but this also looks a lot like FS95 imho and is the reason I voted. I would prefer the lighting we had with the last version.
And please stop comparing the sim to videos or fotos because lights in nightshots always overexpose in those!
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@BilingualHarp7 I too agree, the lights were a bit dimmer and thats why they brightened it, which is ok, but yes the light bulb themselves are too obvious now rather than their effect or the light they cast and they are just too many in places where they should not be so much.
The size of the light blobs themselves needs to be reduced a bit and the early builds screenshot perfectly depicts the sizing, effect and the appropriate density at appropriate places of lights.
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In the real world, most highways are NOT lighted outside of rural areas. This is not the case in the sim.
In the real world, you certainly don’t see airport runway or taxiway lighting from higher cruising altitudes. They are barely visible, with few exceptions, beyond a few miles away at lower altitudes too. We see beacons. That’s it. Beacons and black space. In the sim, airports stick out like a sore thumb.
In the real world, we also don’t see big red dots from wind farms that cover the landscape like we do in the sim.
Night lighting has a long way to go.
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It is not a question of pleasing anyone. The old lighting was very realistic. It could improve in some ways, but they shouldn’t have made a radical change to something that was already pretty good. They have much more important things to do.
They should just roll it back and think about tweaks down the line. Not now.
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The lights visibility range is still much lower as evident. After few miles away, the sepia mask effect comes into place for the building/city lights. Still has that lit ground effect at distance.
I think they have only bumped up the main street lights visibility range, thats why only the main street lights now are visible from far distances and not the building/city lights.
They should increase the building/city lights draw distance also to realistic distances and remove that horrible sepia layer effect. Infact, that is the primary issue for which the “Terrain emits light” thread was created.
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That’s not what I am seeing even with the current update, unless I have the aircraft lighting mod installed, which apparently indiscriminately doubles the intensity of ALL sim lights.
They’ve been way overdone since the beginning, but since the new update they are now 2 layers of lights at different heights. Now there are twice as much, which is way too many.
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