Let’s cross fingers what they said in the Q&A is indeed making night lighting better.
However I still don’t get it: why are they still insisting on using Black Marble texture for night lighting (the ‘sepia’ texture source is the Black Marble image if I’m not mistaken) ?
Let me explain what I mean: they will push the Black Marble texture further away in next patch, instead of just creating their own texture from the actual sim data, like experimented here:
Also, I find it intriguing during the Q&A they were not sure yet why there are lights over desert areas.
I’ve just searched for hints about this and there is lot’s of literature about this:
A simple self-adjusting model for correcting the blooming effects in DMSP-OLS nighttime light images
Remote sensing of night lights: A review and an outlook for the future
It looks to me the reason is quite simple: the sensor taking the picture is just suffering from blooming in some areas and this creates these blobs of lights where you can no longer discern the features producing the light (roads, streets, etc…)
Which is furthermore validating @Grinde81 experimentation is the way to go, eventually enhancing the final result in blending the generated texture with the Black Marble in a 80/20 % respective ratio if needed, or in using the generated texture as a truth mask for AI generated lighting from both sources, or any other creative idea.