It’s the original data / low res brightness map used for the Sepia Mask, uniformly illuminating large areas in dull brown.
(edit, too slow, info already posted 
)
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Thanks anyway 
True about the head / tail lights on vehicles… IRL, some roads further away appeared brighter than others due to headlights from incoming cars, also other light sources such as store fronts etc that contribute to the luminosity. In the game, it seems that they tried to recreate this effect using street lamps, and adding more floating orbs.
However by saying that, currently we can only look at night photos and videos that don’t necessarily represent what our naked eyes will see. Many of us flown at night before (either as pilot or passengers), admiring and enjoying the night scenery, but never really scrutinize the details… Until MFS update 5, lol…
Yes headlights seen face on when flying low will definitely shine brightly, and if during rush hour traffic, easily outshines the streetlights. But from above / steeper down angle, the effect is less noticable.
This is something I’ve missed in the sim from day one, due to ancient “car tech” pretty much straight from FSX.
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That would be a nice effect if possible but until they reach that point, if they reach it, we could have highways and medium traffic roads lit as they really are…like when there is no traffic at all…
And from there if they can manage they can add this effect which will bring extra brightness.
Think they have to be a little careful with vehicle lights as part of the night lighting – on rural roads with few vehicles it will be very obvious that the vehicles are stationary. That will not look good. Maybe relying on lights on the moving road vehicles is what has to be done.
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This is exactly what X-Plane 11 is doing: cars do emit light, poles do light the ground, and you can see traffic and density clearly varying depending on the road “size”. Cars also do move at a realistic speed with no stutters, and you can even spot from time to time faster moving cars with alternating blue/red light atop… this is really immersive, and any approach over a highway is instant WOW effect.
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How nice this photo is… Reminds me of the lighting we had, with less lights in the distance…my detail settings however were set medium to low when the screenshot was taken…
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Yes… If they just use the one we have prior to update-5 (i mean the night lights, not sepia)… Then use it as a base, they can add more light sources, such as vehicle head/tail lights, bright retail areas etc to make it more realistic.
Maybe light draw distance needs to be lengthen a bit before it blurs out into the night background?
In X-Plane they do have moving cars that emit lights… But the problem is (same as MFS), the draw distance for those vehicles aren’t far away… So after 3kms or so maybe, they disappeared! But the street lights remains seen much further than that.
I understand this is for performance concern… I think devs need to figure out how to simulate vehicle lights from further away, without sacrificing performance much… Maybe creating “faux” vehicle lights? Maybe “moving lights” that turns to cars etc when we get near it?
Is the problem maybe the sim doesn’t take into account atmospheric / air density effects on night light visibility properly? I mean when we fly higher, the air will be less dense thus high altitude flights can see lights much further(?) And space starts about 100km above the earth (with air density gradually decreasing), thus if we see satellite photos looking straight down, night lights for entire city will be much clearer then if we see it when flying 2k-5k feet in a GA plane?
Edit: Space starts about 100km, not 8km as I originally wrote.
I think that is absolutely the case. Once live weather injects aerosol parameters, 6 weeks/months/years from now, night lighting could suddenly look quite different.
Have a look a this video at around 1:05. He’s using a drone and they are distinguishable but not so over the top bright.
Have a look at your left screenshot and compare the yellow highroad lights and see how dimmer they look in comparison to the red ones…
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Some beacons in the video seem to strobe and rotate. That would be a nice touch in the sim.
It’s great
Show us how it looks now as well
Flying at night just is an immersion breaker to me. No lights at houses and rural roads with strings of lights. I love the daytime eye candy but night flying is out for me if this is what I get. And this is on ultra settings.
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Same here at Ultra, it looks nothing like real life.
They nailed daytime but night is horrible
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Just flew again in France (near Monaco) just to check out the ocean… So glad they’ve fixed that weird wavy pattern thingy in the ocean. Then started a night flight out of Melbourne to convince myself is it really THAT bad? Paused the flight at about 2,000 feet and looked around… Yep, it’s THAT bad!
I tried to turn off the “bloom” in the Display options, and it does nothing to those big light orbs…
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I am flying now in Xplane just to make a comparison.
This is the same area in both screenshots.
What I like in Xplane better?
Look how more natural the size of the light bulbs look. It doesnt seem so uniformed, however there is less variety in lights (although there are mods who can change that I think)
The overall brightness is not close to real life, since in real life the city is much brighter
(MSFS is better in that way)
Overall what seems to be the problem here? If I would compare Xplane with MSFS before the change I would have a clear winner with no second thought…
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