Night Lighting - Sunlight Glowing Over Horizon At Midnight

It’s always, live time, live weather. So that doesn’t seem the issue. Don’t you that problem? If I am on FL340 i. E, I always have a orange strip at the horizon. And it never gets fully dark.

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No, I don’t.

So you don’t have a yellow /orange sunset at the horizon at cruise flight level?

If I move the time slider manual, it doesn’t goe away, that’s weird.

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No, I don’t have that.

Depends on whether the moon is up or not, just like real life

Even with the moonless sky it seems too bright to me, I never had a really dark night in my experience with the sim.

I don’t not talk about, bright sky, I mean that the sun never goes fully down

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For me too, my comment its just a complement of the issue.

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Where are you flying? Might it depend on time of the year and sun’s positioning?

Something like that

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Not that extreme, but similar. I am flying mostly in Europe. Middle to southern Europe

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So flying at FL340 around Belgrade there is a very slight orange tint at some times of night. Here’s a time-lapse of an entire sunset-sunrise cycle:

Exactly what I mean. It’s not supposed to be isnt it? IS it already a known bug, or can I get rid of it somehow?

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It looks ok enough to me, but I don’t fly in real life at those latitudes at those altitudes at that time of night and couldn’t tell you if it’s realistic or not.

I see that’s time-lapse correct and I suppose is a moon night soo is not really dark because of the moon

I dunno… My moonless night flying is very dark on my screen. On external cam, it’s practically a black screen and I can only see the nav lights and the blinking beacon lights. Even I can’t see my livery or fuselage, just the window lights.

Full moon night flying is slightly brighter since I can see the clouds and my fuselage.
See how black it is outside my cockpit.

I get this too and reported a couple of times. It’s noticeable once you get above a certain altitude around 15000-FL200. Once you get into the 300 flight levels it is really noticeable.

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Yes there is definitely an issue with the atmosphere simulation of Microsoft Flight Simulator at dusk.

Astronomical twilight lasts for way too long. The effect is greater the closer you are to daylight and the higher you go, so naturally northern and southern latitudes are more impacted by the effect than at the equator, and you don’t notice the effect on the ground.

I think I didn’t notice this at the equator, but at 45°N, at this time of year it should be pitch black at night, but in the sim it’s stuck in astronomical twilight.

Also the effect depends on monitor settings, and wether you enable full/limited colors in Nvidia.

Here is how the Earth looks like in MSFS :


We can clearly see that dusk line on the opposite side of the sun, maybe a full 45° after the terminator, which is clearly too much.

Here is the same representation with Google Earth’s atmosphere shaders :


Ugly sun and city lights appart, there is no visible dusk on the opposite side of the sun like in MSFS.

I’ve calculated that at the equator, at an equinox (March/September 21st), at 30,000 ft, the very last chance to see dusk at the horizon would be after around 1 hour and 30 minutes. That’s about a 20° rotation of the earth.

I’ve experimented that in MSFS, at the equator, at an equinox (March/September 21st), at 30,000 ft, the last rays at the horizon are visible a full 4 hours after sunset, that’s a 60° rotation.

=> MSFS’s dusk extends about 40° beyond where it should no longer be visible.

That would explain why in MSFS, latitudes higher than around 30°N and lower than around 30°S never see a full night, and there is always light on the horizon. (of course it depends on the time of year)

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Yes…this is definitely an issue and surprised I have not seen this brought up more. The effect is greater the higher you go so the airliner guys will see it more often than GA flyers at low altitudes. In fact , the horizon can be pretty much dark while on the ground and as you climb it becomes sunset again!! Something you would expect leaving the atmosphere on a rocket of course but not at FL 350. Also, if you are travelling in the opposite direction, for example flying east after sunset you will not notice it since it will be prominent on the western horizon. It seems they have to somehow tweak the twilight phases but my guess is this is due to how they modelled the earth in the sim and maybe not fixable…

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