Compare the lights in these recent screenshots to what used to be…it’s enough to make me cry. Will we ever have this as the night lighting? This came from the pre-launch video about the weather.
I managed to come up with this, this morning. The difference to me would be the kind of pixel doubling going on with the light sources. This is very noticeable on runway lighting.
It’s gotten better but they still desperately need to get rid of the sepia and the smaller roads that look like strings of christmas tree lights for dozens of miles out in the middle of nowhere.
I didn´t want to sound too pessimistic, but I would rather say no. Not with the upcomming SU6 nor with any of the futher SU´s. Just look at this thread: 743 Votes, 1,2k replies, 32.0k!! views and the Dev´s still completely ignore the problems that many of us have with the way how the sim handles the night lighting.
It is simply not on their top priority list. This says all,or not?
I agree, we need at least a return to what the night lighting was. This sepia bullsh** is just aboslutely horrible, it took all the joy out of night flying. I used to enjoy buzzing at night, admiring at the sea of lights underneath, now i can just gleam at the glowing ground that looks ablsolutely horrid.
I should think it would be possible to introduce some sort of algorithm that looks at how near a road is to other roads - the more isolated it is, the fewer lights it gets. All the way down to zero at a certain distance. And for roads with few lights, they should prioritize intersections, rather than being placed randomly.
I don’t mind the sepia filter in theory. Nighttime is almost never truly pitch black to the human eye, unless you’re in a very remote area under heavy cloud cover, and the filter reflects that. But it should be dialed back to maybe half its current brightness, or less. Or given a slider so everyone can adjust to taste.
Honestly tho, i have zero expectations for SU6 / 7 fixes for night lighting.
I get the feeling i will be dissapointed by their so called fixes/improvements.
I hope they will pleasantly surprise me.
I agree, the night lighting leaves much to be desired, especially at higher altitudes and in VR. What‘s bothering me is that they haven‘t really done much to improve it so far. Okay, there was this half-hearted attempt in autumn that didn‘t change much (only toned down the sepia mask if I remember correctly) but that was about it. The alpha screenshots looked very promising. It‘s a shame really as flying at night as it stands now is just not much fun.
Edit: Now, after SU6, it looks much better, maybe not as good as can be, but I think WU6 was a big leap in the right direction.
I believe (hope) they are referring to the visibility of cities from high altitudes and in the far distance being presented more realistically than just the sepia smear on the ground. Seeing as how they have mentioned it almost not at all in the dev Q&As I too am worried that they’re either just going to kick the can down the road again (it was originally SU4-5-6) or do some half-measure and hope we shut up about it.
That’s what’s got me worried. It looked soo good before and then they really stuffed it up. That sepia mask looks terrible. Mentioned above, that not all cities are pitch black… They aren’t but that sepia mask effect is def not what it looks like IRL.
If they just got back to what it used to be like in the videos posted above, but with extended draw distance of lights, we have perfect night lighting in a flight sim for the first time. All other sims with their night lighting never really done it for me or got it right. These guys actually got it right the first time.
Its a shame we have to wait over a year to enjoy flying at night and we have a fix promised but what that fix is, isn’t really clear yet. Its a wait and see situation unfortunately. I’m not holding my breath.
I hope by “long distance fix” they are also referring / addressing the issue with light bulbs stays at similar size / bloated, even though they’re further away. I don’t know what they consider “long distance”, but I myself would consider lights 2km away already to be “long distance”.
Problems with city night lighting starts to be visible from about 1k feet, which is why if we look at screen shots from below 1k feet, it might look OK, because we can’t see further away… From 1k feet above, cities look like “Tron grid” with continuous strings of light bulbs going left to right everywhere (which is unrealistic), and light bulbs far away look as large as the ones way closer to the observer.
Guys on another thread also got blurry lights on wide screen monitor and thinks 1080p got the best-looking light bulbs… While me using 1920x1080 got bloated square light bulbs/orbs! And from this thread, I realised that I’m not the only one who’s seeing “squarish” light orbs.
I also can’t help to be sceptical about the night lights improvements in SU6 & 7 but would love to be proven wrong. Just give us something very similar to pre-alpha night lights with light orbs getting smaller the further they are, until just 1 tiny dot. We’ll be happy (as long as they don’t stuff something else up, like making lights too bright etc).
One more thing that Asobo needs to improve also about night lighting, is that lower LOD(s) for buildings also need to have window / porch lights! This will add to the variety of light sources further away from the observer.
We’ve been waiting since October 2020 (when this thread started)!
It is a long topic which in my opinion needs a TOC in the OP. There are some good examples in this topic with lots of screenshots, technical data, analysis you might like to read.
Since it is long topic spanning a long time, I’ve tried to mark some key “chapters” in order to help navigating, and I hope this will help new readers to find out the most discussed aspects they can build the discussion on, and Asobo to find some of the most relevant suggestions.
Night Lighting Issues chapters
Light Bulb issues and solutions
This problem has been documented in greater details in the following posts:
No, the ”Sepia Filter” illuminates tons of features that should be close to pitch black, huge farmlands, mountains, deserts, it’s just the lowres night-mask you see on the world map.
I’m well aware of all that, but that’s a specific flaw in the filter that should be fixed specifically. It doesn’t condemn the whole thing under ordinary circumstances.
The idea is sound, the realization is not. This is what different experiments in this topic are explaining, showing, testing and illustrating, in many of the posts I’ve taken the time to assemble in a single post above.
And from this thread, I realised that I’m not the only one who’s seeing “squarish” light orbs.
