Lets go, this cannot be a difficult &()$%^()_@#$%^ fix.
floating light are back if ever gone… i crossed over in this thread.
https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/trees-low-draw-distance-after-sim-update-3-no-fun-anymore/376917/100?u=ju1ius2416
[edit] @Ju1ius2416 I should have clicked your link! In any case, here are the night lighting screenshots in the night lighting topic.
Some more info about night lighting: if you watch today’s Q&A, Sebastian is showing side-by-side comparison shots of trees before August release and SU4.
What I also find interesting is these shots are showing pre-release night lighting vs SU4 night lighting:
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LMFAO, there’s clearly a row of lights floating in the mountain center of the shot!
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I don’t believe they are floating. Instead it looks like they are not occluded!
However you can see near the center-right the red light moving up, along with a few others near it.
could be, havn’t thought of that, nontheless floating lights are clearly back…
LOWI: around 4-7 mile distance i guess?
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i suggest found hungary night light scenery for p3d/fsx, it’s show exactly how it have to be, very long time don’t use p3d and much more fsx, so don’t remember what exactly scene, but i remember it was made for all hungury scenes, it’s give light pollution effect and looks perfect
I knew someone quicker than I would have noted they were looking at pre-launch lighting footage, but I didn’t catch the floating lights in the lower one 
. Now I can’t un-see it. Still, do you think they even paid attention to the lighting? I doubt it.
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They’re most definitely floating. For one, they’re following the road below them. And secondly, if you look at the road lights and the red light, they all move by the same amount upwards.
I really have to wonder… How the heck can they not see these things? It’s obviously an issue! How can they miss incredibly obvious stuff like this from an official photo used for reference in a public presentation?
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They all look pretty baked.
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Oh and the one thing that brings me joyous optimistic hope from this … that absolutely glorious GeForce RTX partnership badge proudly high vis top left!
Departing to the south from my own local airport KTVY at night is unrecognizable with floating lights that don’t go away and are hundreds of feet up in the air. It’s worse than ever now and until recently wasn’t like this. It’s now even down in flat areas, not just mountain roads where something to do with terrain loading issues might be involved.
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i found this problem not only at night lights, but for aircraft lights, they are floating above aircraft some time
Try soaking in the ultra wide screen (3xMonitor) super duper blind your face off lighting
Taken from Gatwick UK, lol, my eyes they wont come out with just a spoon!
With FS2020 locking vertical FOV and varying horizontal FOV with display width (XP11 is doing the reverse), this is causing a certain number of projection/size problems which could be avoided in my opinion. I believe there is a high probability bulb size which is already too large on a regular monitor W/H ratio, is getting even larger like in your screenshot because of this.
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X-Plane 11 is dealing with focal lengths first and foremost and is adjusting the projection matrices to make this focal length displaying properly whatever your monitor size ratio.
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FS2020 is dealing with display size only, like any other Direct3D game, with no consideration at all to focal length (so it seems).
This reminds me a post of mine back in September where I’m comparing the projections of XP11, P3D5 and FS2020 (see below comments and screenshots - Back to P3D… Wait, what happens? General Discussion & Feedback)
TL;DR:
In comparing all these, I believe:
- P3D5 is all wrong. It is distorting the objects depending on the window width/height ratio.
- FS2020 is right, but the problem is that with a fixed vertical FOV, it introduces distortions the wider the window.
- X-Plane is right. There is no distortions whatsoever and you can calibrate the view so as to use the zoom, instead of the window width/height ratio, to simulate the focal length.
Experiment:
I’ve read another discussion about how stretching the view over 3 monitors is exacerbating distortions, and what you’re describing I’m pretty sure has been raised in the past prior release as far as I remember reading this somewhere, and it is an old problem with any Flight Simulator product.
Rewind back to FS9/FSX: I’ve always find the 3D projection wrong because it wasn’t based on recreating a virtual focal length, but in fitting a computer screen like any other Direct3D game which is applying a perspective transformation based on the window size, not based on a fixed focal length.
I’ve been looking back at my experience with X-Plane 11 in 2D then in VR and I think there might be a simple explanation in the end, which can be easily experimented:
- Use the simulator in a window filling 1/4 of your monitor.
- Stretch the window horizontally back and forth.
With X-Plane:
The view keeps horizontal FOV constant and what changes is vertical FOV:
- The vertical / horizontal ratio is getting smaller.
- Perspective projection doesn’t changes while resizing the window
- Focal length (as with a camera lens) doesn’t change and objects relative sizes stay constant.
- The objects relative sizes don’t change with distance.
With P3D5:
- Perspective projection changes as if you’re changing camera lens focal length.
- The objects relative sizes change with their relative distance to the aircraft.
- The view zooms in our out
With FS2020:
The view keeps the vertical FOV constant and what changes is horizontal FOV:
- The horizontal / vertical ratio is getting smaller.
- Perspective projection doesn’t change while resizing the window
- The objects relative sizes don’t change with distance.
Comparing all these:
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P3D5 is all wrong. It is distorting the objects depending on the window width/height ratio.
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FS2020 is right, but the problem is that with a fixed vertical FOV, it introduces distortions the wider the window.
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X-Plane is right. There is no distortions whatsoever and you can calibrate the view so as to use the zoom, instead of the window width/height ratio, to simulate the focal length.
These differences are also having an impact on the perception of speed In my opinion:
- edges distortions are inducing a different perception to aircraft speed (peripheral vision cues)
- the objects are appearing moving faster to the edges than closer to the center.
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Ok, I correct, “we should see primarily the reflections from the ground.”
There are still a lot of lights with very inefficient designs installed, wasting their light almost to the sky. A legacy from the century of waste of energy. Its just the reason for what we call light pollution now. Humanity is still very young and inexperienced. And as always, if we recognize a mistake, we make three new ones.
Right now some false messiah’s as Master Murks are wasting the space with thousand and thousands of small satellites they will be obsolete for their purpose in lesser than 10 years but will polluting the space for millenia after Murks and consorts have been eaten by the worms.
That is sad, but against stupidity that is currently in vogue, there is no prudence. This is the cross that we have to carry.
Perfect example for “what I better shouldn’t have shown”
Imho Pre-Release light still looks classes better that SU4, not to mention the overbright floating lights “straight in your face”.
Yes as you could see from the pictures, the reality is pretty much opposite to that statement.
The light visible from the air is predominantly direct point light sources, and the ground reflected “splash” only visible when getting much lower/closer.
And agreed on lightpollution, being an astrophotographer, the hobby becomes increasingly more difficult.
For low altitude and within two-three kilometers, absolutely!
But for the other 90% of altitudes and distances typically flown, it was probably the worst out of the MSFS iterations due to disappearing lights and the implementation of the dreaded “sepia mask”.
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Same here, my friend, and thanks to LEDs being installed now that are much more difficult to filter, not to mention thousands of Starlink sats going up, it’s a dreary outlook.
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