Yeah that’s my guess as well, since when addressing that particular one in a Q&A a while back they talked about both the Sepia Mask as well as lamp visibility (also acknowledging the uniformity looking for feedback) so I’d be surprised if the didn’t see those as connected.
Two more weeks to update-7… Anxiously waiting to see whether it’s hugely improved, same-same, or worse.
But is it on two weeks time? They didn’t mention when.
Don’t worry if not better I will just update the subject of the thread to something like this…
"Terrible night lighting after patch 7" and we will keep going … 
But we should just stay positive .
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yeah we won’t stop till it’s done right
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When you say update-5 is better, are you primarily talking from high altitude point of view?
Because from low altitude, pre update-5 was better in terms of night lighting.
It seems that the issue is “high altitude” vs “low altitude”, in particular the dreaded sepia glowing terrain thing… So it’s not the “night lights”, but “lack of night lights, substituted by glowing sepia masking”.
I can only see it from end user point of view… From my end, what Asobo should aim, is to keep the “pre update-5 low altitude night look”, while looking for solutions so the beautiful night lights carried over to high altitude flight.
Currently what seemed to happen is, they crank up all the lights so it is visible in high altitude, while at the same time it looks unacceptable in low-mid altitude.
Hey if they won’t go back to pre update-5 night lighting, fine… I’m all open for improvements and “going forward not backward” thing… All I want (and many other here) is to have our “WOW” back when flying at night at low-mid altitude.
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The bloated lights on ultra wide (or triple) screen setups needs to be addressed with some sort of “Widescreen” toggle setting.
I can understand that we have different taste and we do like things differently. While I agree that the pre Update 5 had its problems, especially with the terrain emitting way too much light, I must also point out that it was far more realistic in other terms. And realism is what this simulator is (or should be) about, regardless opinions and taste on X or Y. It must be the closest to reality, which is currently not.
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Tried again just now to see whether high altitude flying really looks good with update-5 or not.
Started out from Moorabbin airport in Melbourne, 10pm local time. I just switch to drone view and fly up up and away… When i feel like it’s the ‘airliner altitude’ (no altitude indication in my drone view) it’s still doesn’t look good to me!
I mean i’m not sure what it was before (maybe light’s gone and replaced by sepia already)… But then I went further up and up until, then I can clearly see the glowing sepia is still there! They just chuck those bright lights on it! Until a certain point where those lights suddenly gone, and only glowing sepia remains.
I wonder how would it look if they significantly darkens the sepia while keeping the pre update-5 lights visible until such altitude… Will the result look better for high altitude flyer?
Nice idea. We are all night flying fanatics and we won’t stop until its done.
We would visit their office if required 
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True… Imagine when helicopters arrive for MSFS and night lighting’s still like this
Im sure the night lighting thing is not only the sepia mask, it’s sadly much more than that which kills the immersion we expect to see and once used to see.
Tried to match these to shots above Kraków, both at high settings. Although pre patch was blurry, I liked it more. Also, can anyone tell me if motorways in rural areas were lit up before the patch but had low LOD and we couldn’t see them? Or they simply introduced light to every single road?
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I hope it will be like for Japan (world update 1 / update 3), world update will be coupled with an update.
So perhaps we will have (on the 24th, not 26th) World update 2 / Update 7
When I see those two screen shots of Krakow, the areas illuminated by lights / orbs seems to be of equal brightness. But the top one (Update-5), the larger and brighter light orbs are much more prominent.
And it seems that yes… Roads in rural areas were lit up also before the patch, but we couldn’t see them far away due to LOD.
The streets lights went 2by2 along every road , sorry it’s ruined it
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might those night snapshots be from FS2002 instead of FS2020 ?
The difference seemingly comes from the fact that in XPL the lights are just colored dots and don’t really illuminate their proximity as in MSFS.
The unrealism with the current MSFS actually stem from this over luminance, if they turned the lights a bit down most part would have been solved.
As per the unrealistic uniformity of the street lights across unfathomable urban areas, a roll back will definitely is a must.
Unfortunately no. I mostly fly during the day now.
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I’m fairly confident it would(we have the same color-variation as older lights, although more overexposed look ), but not nearly as pronounced, because doubling the range would still only be a 5th of realistic visibility range.
That’s definitely the way it should be, with lights fading into “invisibility” often due to atmospheric visibility, most noticeable at lower levels but visibility doesn’t really seem to be reliably implemented at the moment. But the current lights have a fade/phasing-out , but not connected to
Here’s from 15,000 ft with the roads fading out in the distance.
(And holy smokes those red obstacle lights are overpowered, both size and visibility range)
But if you mean my comparison in this earlier post , then you can see that lamp scaling/fading isn’t implemented for lower LOD’s, which is something that should be implemented, and if possible, tuned with Sepia Mask draw distance for different LOD settings (or more preferably, a light distance/quality/slider)
Yes this is definitely possible, I did some tests generating lights using QGIS and OSM vector data (afaik, pretty much the same way Asoso have placed their lights in MSFS) , but I masked the placement using NASA’s Black Marble data, my first attempts in this post and some more tests in other posts, here and here.
Here’s a screenshot from Early alpha, late 2019 to early 2020, before it got degraded into the “pre-update5” version.
And here’s the release-build that many ppl want back without understanding/caring about sepia mask and vanishing lights at a 10th of the distance of what’s usually seen IRL. Looks like there’s been a power outtage!
Imagine having built on the first version instead of looping in a full circle like we have now, almost a whole year “wasted”, but hopefully the devs will go back listening to look at facts instead of all those emotion-based ones.
This could’ve possibly have been due to all the hyperbolic, non-specific & non-constructive complaints similar to many of those in this thread, mostly by non-pilots,
Instead of “rural roads shouldn’t be lit, try to mask those out” and “more variation in brightness is needed to break uniform appearance”, a majority said “waaay too bright, nothing like real” .
Ok, then there seems to be a very fine line between acceptable and “unacceptable”
Pre-patch and post-patch, the difference is not always “shocking”, “horrible” nor “unacceptable”.
Brussels still looks quite good at dusk, especially now when lamps doesn’t disappear after just a fraction of real life visibility. Lamp power and bulb size could definitely be toned down. But “unacceptable”, come on. We gotta be able to express ourselves with more than just superlatives, if we’re hoping to be of any help to guide the Devs into improving the sim.
Personally I love finally being able to see realworld features like highways and streetlights breaking out of clouds, instead of a pale brown daytime texture showing a majority of features(roofs, fields, unlit areas) that would be pitch black IRL…
It definitely needs more tuning, but we finally have tech that has the potential to look Both realistic and beautiful, not just beautiful.
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