Hello @Hester40MT
The title of the topic is “Night lighting issues in update #7 - The community solutions”.
What is off topic please ? 
You are good 
My post was to the thread. If I replied to you, you would have received a message.
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Could you be more specific please? I believe practically all posts here are about night lighting, and the only recent one which only seems unrelated, but it only seems, is the recent comments I’ve posted about LOD problems. In case you didn’t read them through and these were flagged to you, please understand the actual “LOD” bugs in the simulator do have a direct impact on night lighting too because they are, at the very root of everything you do see in the simulator. For example, if the simulator wrongly hide an illuminated object like the building windows, but is still displaying the building itself…
Are these Thomas photos or your generated ones? They look very nice.
I’ve been digging some of Thomas photos I could post here (not from his book) and here is:
Paris ( https://www.asc-csa.gc.ca/fra/recherche/images/regarder.asp?id=7603 )
Western Europe ( https://www.asc-csa.gc.ca/fra/recherche/images/regarder.asp?id=7614 )
Paris:
Bordeaux:
Lyon:
Rome:
Naples:
London:
Athens:
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The one I posted above (France and Nile Delta) are generated images 
and screenchots of Paris above use the very same database.
I will make more tries in MSFS very soon and post the results here.
I think it would be a good idea to make a mod covering the entire planet using these night textures with pre generated lights, in order to replace the sepia texture. It’s a very challenging project for sure. It is technically very interesting, I’m motivated but I will definitely need help.
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Some tests over Dubai
Vanilla :
Baked texture :
Vanilla FL260 :
Baked texture FL260 :
Baked texture, FL300 :
FL150 :
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these are very promising. can’t developers bring this to us? What is the obstacle in front of them? Why are they acting so slow. I still have trouble understanding…
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What @GrilledChippie is referring to is not much any form of “smaller LOD” problem, rather a few posts above yours: There are actual LOD bugs
This comes closer to real life than anything in the sims so far (Medium & Long Distance / Altitude).
Bravo!
And also serves as a perfect example what was wrong with the release-lighting (as well as current) use of “Sepia Mask” for those who still wonder why it needs fixing.
I’ve been proposing this method of procedurally generating a “lightsplash” overlay texture using road vector data since July. FPS friendly & very realistic looking
(no need to render point lights super-far away)
This is the way to go, instead of getting NASA Black Marble style data in higher resolution, as the devs proposed earlier.
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Thank you @Grinde81, this is great to have feedback.
I remember reading a discussion about this, I don’t remember if I had an active participation but at least I read all of it attentively 
Some new image of Dubai for tonight :
Original MSFS :
Same view : test of merging texture and existing buildings and lightbulbs :
Global view of Dubai (vanilla)
Global view of Dubai (baked texture)
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My render scaling is 100, building and land LOD set at 100. Other settings at ultra except buildings at “high”. Shadows at medium or low, clouds at ultra. I play 1080p.
Regarding terrain resolutions at night, I might try to post screen shot later. I did fly at 12k feet and zoomed all the way in to see the low terrain resolution. If we zoomed out then yeah, everything will be “compressed” and looks normal.
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It really looks great and quite promising for long distances and high altitudes !!
I can clearly realise that just by removing the sepia masking, the night lighting would look so beautiful and so close to real. I feel, if Asobo could atleast for now somehow remove the sepia texture or pushed it much farther towards horizon, half of the work would have been done. Amongst several other night lighting issues, this sepia issue is one of the biggest problem of the present night lighting because its the most unrealistic and distracting thing to see for those who have real experience of night flying and infact all of the night lighting discussions originated from a past topic -“Terrain emits light” which was basically this sepia texture issue that we are talking about. We can only hope that the dev team is listening and working on this…
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I’m sure the former (the topic is in the latest Q&A for example), therefore there is hope for the later.
NB: road/street night lighting was great before release where they just cut it out (distance and intensity) which led people to request farther distance lighting, which led to not revert to pre-release lighting but to add the “sepia mask” which led to this discussion…
Yes, but I think we haven’t received any clear or to the point info from them yet specifically regarding their plans to remove this sepia texture and infact whether they intend to do so or not.
In that case they have already partially done adjustments to distance lighting and intensity and they have increased the lighting distance a bit farther in the last update though its still not adequate. But then why they at all implemented that sepia masking if finally they increased the lights’ draw distance farther? Even if I consider that was done as a temporary measure, now they can remove it because I am sure Asobo can themselves realise that its completely unrealistic and quite disturbing to look at. Is removing the sepia masking so difficult ??
Probably the better night light data source that they were talking about in the October Q&A session would hopefully put an end to this sepia masking though I am not sure whether that is particularly applicable for this sepia issue and if so, whether that would be done for only a few places or the whole world…
You’re making a valid point here. For example the first time they’ve indicated this “better source” I was led to believing it would be a higher resolution “sepia mask”. However this might also just mean a better source of data so that they can remove the sepia mask and replace it with accurate point lights instead. It is quite open to interpretation indeed!
Nevertheless I can assure you they are aware of the very details we’re trying to explain and document here, I’ve passed the message to this exact information. What is important to also note is that FS2020 is managing different types of lights with different code implementation and “night lighting” is really generic. In effect night lighting is referring to the various type of lights they are simulating which are typically:
- AirportLights (runway, approach, taxiway, VASI, beacon)
- StreetLights (“orbs”)
- FlightSimLights on sceneryobjects or simobjects (mostly used to illuminate Gate areas on bespoke airports, and for airport vehicles headlights)
- Aircraft Lights (which is technically part of night lighting)
- Road Traffic lights (white & red around moving cars)
- some emissive materials on some objects (e.g. taxiway signs)
- stars and sunlight
Though some elements are common in these systems, they are mostly different, which means any feedback/request/criticism of “night lighting” should (preferably) refer to specific systems.
This discussion is mostly about “StreetLights (orbs)” explicitly*.
And “Road Traffic lights” implicitly: I think I’ve posted for example street light shouldn’t embed static red/white lights representing the cars and cars should emit their own light instead like in XP11.
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I agree with you. Infact I also made this point long back in this topic. Actually, this is the one of the best looking thing of the night lighting we have in XP11 !!
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Actually not only this is giving breath to the sterile static world, but in addition XP11 is varying the traffic density based on heuristic. This includes road type and time of day.
This is one of the reasons I’ve also written in this discussion I don’t think removing orbs in rural areas, like they’ve indicated in the last Q&A, in order to make it less a “string of pearls” where there is supposedly less traffic, will make any good. In effect, you’ll end up with 500m apart static orbs with no indication it is a road anymore because they are too spread apart. With XP11 cars driving around the road, you can see the road shape from above as they are moving instead.
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Actually, I was also pondering regarding this statement of theirs as to what they meant when they said that they would make the rural street lights more randomised and less frequent .If they actually do it like by spacing it some 500m apart or so, then it would be infact a disaster and it would not look a road anymore as u said and it would give birth to another wave of threads and discussions. But I don’t think that they are so inexperienced that they would do something like that. Thats what I said-we really don’t have any clear cut statements on what their plans are and what they actually intend to do…
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Funny, that’s exactly what I was thinking.
