Anyone else using VR think that the night sky is extremely crowded with stars?? Looks like long exposure photo, even near large cities…
I have been around a few desolate places in my life and been taking night sky photography and have Never seen a night sky as bright and starry as the one we have in VR. Also the stars looks smudged and blurry. Flying on a clear night in VR is a mehh experience at best.
Hope it will get fixed in the future. Or even better. An adjustment option for individual preferences could be added, then there arent even anything to argue about.
It seems a little “starry” on the regular monitor too… especially around cities
There is already a topic about “Stars too close” which is related somehow. In effect, the stars seem to be just a projected texture. This explains their look and feel, and probably the “too close” factor if the dome they are projected onto is just too small. This also explains why star magnitude is not rendering correctly, because it is just a pre-painted texture with static stars. At the same time, your topic is different because it is not about “too close” but about “magnitude”, and for this, it would require the stars are not painted on a texture but painted as individual light dots.
For these reasons, I’ll copy my remarks from the other topic:
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FS2020 is using a texture projected on a dome.
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It is clear you can’t have enough pixels in the projected texture otherwise it will be massive a texture size. This approach to night stars is typical to games.
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Because it is a texture it doesn’t take in account magnitude either.
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In a simulator like X-Plane stars are point lights and the magnitude is simulated as well, so that you only see what you’d see IRL depending on the ambient luminosity too… To each his own.
For those wondering, and Asobo, the XP11 file with the data is plain text:
X-Plane11\Resources\default data\earth_astro.data
It has about 25000 stars in the form:
Ascension Declination Magnitude [name]
The file starts like this:
I
740 Version - build 1795, metadata StarXP740 Copyright © 2004, Robin A. Peel (robinp@mindspring.com). This data is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program ("AptNavGNULicence.txt"); if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.
6.752569 -16.713143 -1.43 Sirius
6.399192 -52.695718 -0.62 Canopus
14.261208 19.187270 -0.10 Arcturus
14.661361 -60.835147 0.01 Rigel Kentaurus A
18.615607 38.782993 0.03 Vega
5.242298 -8.201639 0.18 Rigel
7.655149 5.227508 0.38 Procyon
1.628542 -57.236660 0.45 Achernar
5.919525 7.407036 0.45 Betelgeuse
14.063735 -60.372978 0.61 Hadar
5.278138 45.999029 0.71 Capella
12.443317 -63.099056 0.77 Acrux
19.846301 8.867385 0.77 Altair
4.598667 16.509762 0.85 Aldebaran
5.277851 46.006709 0.96
13.419890 -11.161245 0.98 Spica
16.490130 -26.431946 1.06 Antares
7.755379 28.026310 1.14 Pollux
22.960785 -29.621837 1.16 Fomalhaut
12.795366 -59.688732 1.25
20.690532 45.280334 1.25 Deneb
14.660942 -60.839471 1.34 Rigel Kentaurus B
10.139572 11.967195 1.36 Regulus
6.977096 -28.972089 1.50 Adhara
12.519425 -57.112569 1.59
17.560146 -37.103748 1.62 Shaula
5.418852 6.349735 1.64 Bellatrix
5.438194 28.607873 1.65 Alnath
9.220067 -69.717472 1.67
5.603559 -1.201917 1.69 Alnilam
5.679312 -1.942578 1.74 Alnitak
22.137188 -46.960616 1.74 Alnair
8.158876 -47.336612 1.75
12.900454 55.959843 1.76 Alioth
3.405375 49.861243 1.79 Mirphak
18.402874 -34.384315 1.79 Kaus Australis
11.062177 61.751119 1.81 Dubhe
7.139857 -26.393208 1.83
13.792374 49.313303 1.85 Alkaid
8.375240 -59.509538 1.86
17.621979 -42.997822 1.86
5.992158 44.947435 1.90
16.811074 -69.027635 1.91
6.628528 16.399415 1.93 Alhena
7.576668 31.888636 1.94 Castor
20.427458 -56.734881 1.94
2.529743 89.264138 1.97 Polaris
6.378330 -17.955917 1.98
9.459792 -8.658683 1.99 Alphard
2.119524 23.462777 2.00 Hamal
10.332823 19.841860 2.01 Algieba
8.745055 -54.708568 2.02
0.726452 -17.986684 2.04 Diphda
1.162166 35.620830 2.05 Mirach
18.921088 -26.296594 2.05 Nunki
14.111479 -36.368696 2.06
0.139769 29.090828 2.07 Alpheratz
5.795941 -9.669602 2.07 Saiph
14.845110 74.155476 2.07 Kochab
22.711093 -46.884566 2.07
17.582224 12.560576 2.08 Rasalhague
3.136147 40.955651 2.09 Algol
2.064978 42.329848 2.10
format is: Astronomical data (astro.dat) File Format Specification | X-Plane Developer
You can even edit this file in any text editor and add your own geometric figures… I never thought about this one until now 
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Wow… Thank you for this in depth post/reply.! I am however sure it is on a list in a drawer somewhere at Asobo… Pretty sure they can also see the issue and the night sky was down prioritized to meet their launch dates etc. For now I just fly in daytime.
I thought it was an HDR texture though. Changing the exposure setting on the camera brings fainter stars into view.
Where is this star texture in the sim? I have searched for “sky” and “star” and “dome” and drawn a blank. Maybe if we can find what it’s called, we can replace or modify it.
I don’t think you will be able to change the diameter of the dome.
Everybody is talking about it like everybody knows where it is, maybe I am just missing something obvious. If it’s a texture, where the heck is it?