Yeah I saw that… Thought exactly the same as you…
However same old… Due to “NDA” we would never know sadly
That “visually” look like a solid base to build on. Judging by that alone, all they needed to do then were adding various window lights to skyscrapers, lower buildings and houses, add white sporting field lights, some green/red lights on intersections to simulate traffic lights, red beacons on top of skyscrapers, change light colours on top of harbours / warehouses / factory complexes to white etc and we’re mostly set!
The rest, 3rd party devs who make city sceneries can do their stuff…
It will even be better if the SDK allows third parties to do their stuff to night lighting in a particular region.
That’s exactly what many was wondering when those gorgeous & sharp lights went from being visible for long distances like in that video, to be reduced to a fraction of the distance and be replaced with he sepia mask after very short distances as just a kilometre or two.
Screenshots from the much cherished early alpha build (before that big change that removed the lamp visibility and replaced it with Sepia mask) showed quite a few rural roads being lit, and with tons of lamps visible at the same time, they were bound to look uniform in places. same as now since they haven’t implemented a solution for that yet.
Not knowing what the devs thoughts were, one can only guess/assume they might’ve listened to all the voices (same as now) saying everything is so bright and rural roads should have no lamps, with no suggestions on how it could be done, and lacking examples of how it actually works/looks like IRL flying at night at various altitudes & scenes.
Those voices surely got their wishes fulfilled when the lamp distance got cut down to almost nothing compared to IRL. And that effectively hid all those rural roads, the somewhat uniform appearance and so on.
The version after this big change (sepia/short lamps)got more and more polished up until release version, looking natural and balanced up close & down low. And this is great for all those just playing around at low level.
But everything just a bit higher just looked nasty to those knowing what it actually looks like flying at night.
I really hope for the sake of all types of users they will implement two choices of night tech, legacy for everybody who got used to the sepia version, and modern for those wanting a more realistic approach like we had early alpha.
That way the realism development wouldn’t be held back/downgraded by those only caring about eye candy down low, avoiding another big change like what happened to the early alpha, once again.
I understand why the NDA existed in alpha and the need for it then, but why is it still in effect now months after release? Would it not be helpful to the discussion to be able to give context about why something may have looked better in Alpha but was ultimately removed because of x,y,z rather than having to just say, “Yeah it was better, but can’t talk about it.”
I believe this is already addressed and illustrated in this discussion in previous posts. You’d have to search for them but I remember having posted publicly released pre-relesae screenshots (and a URL to get much more of them) and @Grinde81 further commented and contributed with the relevant information.
Agreed.
I strongly encourage everybody to watch those Developer Q&A streams, in particular those of you who’re doubtful as to whether the team is willing to listen to us and address the discussed issues. Every time I have watched one, I felt much more certain afterwards that things will eventually get much better.
These things take time, that’s all.
I fully agree on this, but then again there are probably reasons well beyond the insights I gained from being on the alpha, that made them take this decision.
With respect of this I restrict myself to giving my opinion on what could also be learned by close inspection of the from the pre-alpha / early-alpha screenshots/videos officially released
But in this particular case, I really wished this could be more openly discussed, since early-alpha had absolutely stunning night lighting in terms of realistic visibility range and lamp textures (as can be seen in the screenshots and videos posted earlier) , and building upon this and polishing using facts / real life properties would probably have given us stunning night lighting already, both low medium high altitudes, close and far.
Yep… Before I decided to buy MSFS and watched those pre-alpha trailers etc, I said to myself “show me your night lighting then we’ll talk”.
When I saw those pre-alpha nights, I was sold. Granted, there are stuff to improve, such as window lights from buildings weren’t there etc, but the basic was solid.
But of course out of the hundreds of images and trailers, screen shots / clips that shows night lighting were only about 1-5%(?) so we don’t really remember how it looks like, unless we’re part of alpha/beta team.
Honestly after I bought MSFS, I thought the pre-update 5 night light WAS the pre-alpha night light! Just when I got engaged with this topic and it got brought up, I checked again past clips etc and yeah they’re different!
Again, i don’t understand at all the “technical side” of software development etc… But if right now they “randomize” lights, and wants to randomize lights at rural area etc… They could’ve done it right then with the pre-alpha lights? Why reducing lights visibility? Short term solution back then?
I was one of the “starter” threads about night lighting - I didn’t ask anything else at that time - why do they change something that already looked good and nobody complained about it, even in the versions we “are not allowed to talk about”.
And why is it so hard, Asobo will probably still be able to compare these versions with the versions at Asobo or the approaches of that time.
There were lots of other problems to be solved and then you change what already worked. It can only be a performance change, or an adjustment to something, they will know what they are doing, but I didn’t see any difference in the performance
I mean, it’s not a criticism and just a question - it’s easy to sit here and “criticize”, they have the work and the overview, but it’s still a legitimate question. I’m not allowed to say that in certain versions the lights weren’t stretched with the resolution, which for me personally is one of the biggest “bugs” here. With 1920x1080 it still looks usable - but with 5760x1080 it’s terribly distorted and stretched. already reported 2 times to ZenDesk. I don’t think that people with UHD, WQHD and multiple screens are a “minority” or does everyone use just a one 1920x1080 screen nowadays ?
I mean it’s a development process and certainly not easy, no question, but if 500 customers tell me (myself also working in the software business) that the other solution is better, it must make sense to me.
As I said, they will know it, but there must be a reason why it has been changed, but it doesn’t look more “realistic”!
Thank you very much but, I know NVIDA Freestyle, I put it in the forum at the very beginning - I meant which FILTERS YOU use to achieve this effect - which freestyle filters exactly ? which values did you change to make it look like this ?
thank you anyway !
BR
My bad, Freestyle is all news to me and I love it, thought it was fairly fresh
I’ve been going back and forth between two presets, one “realistic” and one more “artistic” … will post some settings/examples perhaps tomorrow when getting back to the computer.
But mainly clarity and sharpness reduced, and the hdr slider as well.
Plus tuning vibrance/saturation, highlights, shadows, gamma.
Has anyone noticed the “Volumetric Lights” option in the useropt.cfg file? Does anyone know what it relates to in the graphics options and what it does? In mine it’s set at 0 (zero). I haven’t played with it yet.
That’s interesting, because every time I have watched a Dev Q&A stream, I felt more desperate afterwards.
Thousands of people use the forum to report and discuss bugs, add to the wishlist, and spend hours on Dev Q&A questions, and Microsoft and Asobo decide that they cannot spend more than an hour with the community.
The only issues they ever appear to address in some technical detail seem to be issues of the Asobo graphics engine.
They seem to avoid answering questions about the flaws, bugs and broken promises regarding the simulation of the aircraft (simulation of aircraft has, historically, been the focus of previous flight simulators, so it doesn’t seem to be out of line to expect it to be at least of some limited importance in MFS as well).
They talk about how Live Weather is supposed to work, while users who actually spend time in the sim are quite aware that it still has major issues from backend (e.g. 22503KT) to rendering (e.g. precipitation effects almost never trigger when they should).
They swoon about how great it is “to work with the community”, which means Working Title and Fly By Wire, and “with devs”, which means Aerosoft, and how they’re going to grant access to beta builds to an exclusive club (instead of making it an open beta), while they’re breaking the excellent mods for e.g. the DA62 and the G36 with almost every update (not to mention aircraft they sell on the in-game Marketplace), while the SDK is still not feature-complete, and while its documentation is lacking in many respects (according to established and reputable devs).
So, yeah, I guess even when you watch the Dev Q&A streams, your mileage may vary.
The filter called “sketch” under “Special FX”.
I think by default it’s at zero (slider at leftmost position)… If you move the slide to the right, it’ll “grey wash” the entire screen, but the effect is light orbs appear a bit smaller. Play around and see…
But of course after that you wouldn’t want your entire screen to look grey, so you’d add more filters like playing with temperature, shadow, gamma, brightness etc to darken the screen so it won’t look grey.
This is a very limited “temporary band aid”, as what I want is to have only the orbs to get smaller, while everything else pretty much stays the same. With Freestyle filters, you will change the whole screen unfortunately.
To be fair, the people in the Q&A session are the head of Microsoft Flight Simulator, the CEO of Asobo, and the Executive Producer of Microsoft Flight Simulator. Those guys are busy doing actual work, and I think it is awesome that we get a little bit of direct access to them at all. We have several others from Microsoft and Asobo, like Jayne, who spend a ton of time with the community every single day.
That does not mean I disagree with some of your other points.
Thank you very much but, I know NVIDA Freestyle, I put it in the forum at the very beginning - I meant which FILTERS YOU use to achieve this effect - which freestyle filters exactly ? which values did you change to make it look like this ?