Night lighting issues still present - The community solutions

[ogu1271]

Playing with the nvidia ‘Freestyle’ I am happy with this. My monitor isn’t calibrated, it might look terrible to others but here’s a comparison of Paris -

Before -

After -

[daScooty]

“nvidia ‘Freestyle’”

Sorry, what does this mean? I have a GTX1080, can I get the same looks you have on the “after” screenshots? What exactly did you setup?

Sorry, maybe I’m a bit confused…

[ogu1271]

You can use it with a 1080, I have a 1080ti. ‘Freestyle’ is part of nvidia ‘Geforce Experience’ program (download from the nvidia site) After a reboot, launch the sim and after its all loaded up, press Alt+F3 and the following interface should come up. I added ‘Color’ and ‘Details’ Just move the various sliders until you get the best appearance.

[Travisgrey]

At LOWI (with ORBX and without) we have a LOOONG list of unidentified flying lights.

[ExpressTomato52]

@FidgetyWindow65

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.

@CptLucky8

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!

If you listened carefully, 2 times on the Q@A they said their initial goal was to get rid of the sepia mask filter, by changing and adjusting since release the light system because previously lights at higher altitude would disappear completely. They hoped on next update in December would be improved again. See the video_audio below included, I cuted the 2 parts on sepia filter and added the complete night light discussion audio.

Ps:The sepia mask will not works, there is no high definition available will always look out of focus and far from detailed.

[ExpressTomato52]

Submit at Zendesk, they fixed alot, some remain, light in sky are mainly near mountain.

[daScooty]

OOOOOOOOH… THAT is a cool tool!
Thanks a lot!

[gordongreig]

This one has definitely been raised elsewhere, but no harm in zendesking again

[gordongreig]

When you use Freestyle, do your filters save on restart of your PC? Whenever I use this, the next time I start my PC they are reset and I can’t seem to get them to save

[Grinde81]

@gordongreig

When you use Freestyle, do your filters save on restart of your PC?

I believe you can make 3 presets, but every time you start the sim it’s “off”, you have to select your preset in the upper part of the interface.

[gordongreig]

I find that the presets reset themselves - so I can’t save them. Googled it and seems to be a known issue for some.

[FidgetyWindow65]

@ExpressTomato52

If you listened carefully, 2 times on the Q@A they said their initial goal was to get rid of the sepia mask filter, by changing and adjusting since release the light system

Yes, the fact is in the video they said that at first they decided to increase the lights draw distance further to get rid of that sepia filter. But infact lights’ draw distance increase didn’t have any effect on the sepia filter itself. Have we really “got rid of” that sepia filter?? The sepia filter still exists as it is. It doesn’t seems that they have touched or done anything particularly about it yet. Its just that the lights are now visible farther than it was earlier & since now the lights are visible upto far distances, the sepia filter becomes less noticeable at lower altitudes, but we haven’t “got rid of it” yet. The baked sepia texture still exists and just that the night lights are overlayed on it. There are many pics in this thread to demonstrate that. I couldn’t understand what they meant to say by saying “we increased lights draw distance to get rid of that sepia filter”.

And regarding the December update it was all about improving the ramdomisation of lights in the countryside roads which is a different issue. I don’t think it has any relation to sepia texture.
I agree that they are repeatedly saying “getting rid of that sepia filter” in their conversation but I can’t understand how their statements regarding what they intend to do like “randomisation of lights, increasing draw distance” has got any relation to removal of sepia filter and infact as I said, we have also seen from the last update that by increasing the lights draw distance the sepia filter was not removed at all.

Only thing I feel gives us a hint of removal of sepia texture is their statement regarding better night data source in their previous October Q&A session which probably might remove the sepia filter if they indeed meant so.

[fclem33]

And what about replacing sepia mask by a baked street light texture visible from high altitude combined with existing street lights orbs ?

I would like to know what community think about it

[ExpressTomato52]

Sepia mask still there, from what I understand, it will get removed once they improved most things they want to do.

[CptLucky8]

@fclem33

I would like to know what community think about it

Here are the ideas I’ve posted in this discussion before:

@CptLucky8

It is clear to me the very problem of night lighting is not really how far they are drawing what, rather it is what they are drawing.

When comparing just these shots it seems night lighting is a 2 factor problem mostly when seen from above:

• pole lights are illuminating the ground.
• car lights are illuminating the eye.

This means the approach I’d like to see, for lack of experimenting, is combining these:

1. Use the OSM data as they are doing and as @Grinde81 has been showcasing in order to generate self-illuminated ground texture.

It is the equivalent of the “sepia mask” (which is in fact the NASA Black Marble texture) but restricted to the street and roads. Self-illumined is to be read as a rendering engine material (a texture which intensity does not depend on the sun to keep it simple. Color and width would be based on actual OSM metadata and heuristics if data is missing (near/far city centre, dense/light population area, highway/road etc…)

You can clearly see in photo #2 the “sepia mask” very close representing the highway and parking lot ground, but there is no discernable orange ground at a distance.

2. Don’t use the “sepia mask” texture at a distance because there is not enough resolution.

You don’t need too much resolution even up close but at a distance, if there is not enough resolution, such texture won’t suffice to discern roads or street which are close. In effect, there could be not enough pixels to represent it all (1 pixel orange, 1 pixel black, 1 pixel orange is the strict minimum under which orange pixels blend together)

This is clearly how it looks like in photo #3 and photo #2 (see my comments above).

3. Overlay all these roads and streets with actual lights emitted from actual cars.

This is what gives the most wow effect in X-Plane in my opinion and this is depicting perfectly red/yellow lights when seen in the correct direction, unlike the baked-red-dots seen in FS2020.

Photo #1 shows clearly most of the dots are cars, not poles (except on the pier). Photo #2 as well shows this clearly on the highway and in the most luminous streets. Photo #3 on the bridge up close shows the car dots are less visible than the orange ground.

4. At a distance, because there is no longer the “sepia mask” texture, artificially increase either the car light dot density or the car light dot texture size in order to compensate.

Here is a gross overview of this idea which I certainly can’t illustrate nor validate right now at all, but which makes some sense to me on paper (and this could prove being a bad idea in the end).

And more specifically for the light orbs drawing:

Night lighting issues still present - The community solutions - #719 by CptLucky8

[CptLucky8]

A new blog post today, this discussion is #8 and ongoing resolution which is good.

I wish it would be renamed: “Bring Back Lighting Previous to Release”. This is working to bring back clouds to pre update 5 so why not for lighting

[GrilledChippie]

It is encouraging to see the status as “ongoing development”, but a bit discouraging at the same time to see the release as “backlog” instead of “ongoing”.

[fclem33]

Added some diversity on the generated images (sport fields, tennis fields, diverses urban lighting that are not part of roads lightning).
Will try it in MSFS this week-end and share the results here of course.
Reminder : these images are meant to be observed from high altitudes > FL150

[anon73060745]

Looks absolutely so good but If you can do that, why cannot the fs2020 team do this?

[Grinde81]

@fclem33

Added some diversity on the generated images (sport fields, tennis fields, diverses urban lighting that are not part of roads lightning).

Brilliant!
That’s great procedure, I also got good results illuminating polygons for parking lots, gas stations , and placing lamps along walkways (if inside “park” landuse/polygon for example), lots of possibilities break up monotonous & repeating patterns of light.