Seems that this might be something new, but can BlackShark not have the US interstates covered in red spotlights every 500 feet? Makes no sense. Maybe put alternating red light green lights at intersections and such.
The lighting in this game is really sad, you know all those light arent even attached to anything. You fly down there among them and there just little balls of light floating in air, red light float lower then the white lights so I guess maybe there simulating traffic?
The other thing the sun starts to come up, and the lights go out no matter what the atmospheric conditions are. You have a sunrise with a bad thunderstorm rolling through, where in the real world the street lights and house lights would be lit, they are all out looks like a massive power failure…
Oh yeah and another thing, when flying into downtown Cleveland, the lights in the bldgs are so dim that you cant even make the skyline out, do you know how many times Ive almost flown into the terminal tower just because you cant see the lights until you are right on top of the bldg. Hell that bldg is lit up from the outside of the bldg to celelbrate whatever is going on, last night it was lit up red white and blue for election day, in sim cold and dark …
and another thing … ;p
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I think the building lighting will get a face lift soon. But lights having a brain wouldn’t be hard to do at all. They know when they are lighting an athletic field, as the lights hit the corners of the soccer/football/baseball/cricket field. Let’s have those bad boys go dark round midnight, like real life. I don’t even care about the floating orbs. Lights that are climate sensitive should be easy too. Unpopulated stretches of highway don’t need the formulation of light every 200m. Randomize a bit. Maybe denser on curves. Idk! Its AI. Right, BlackShark? Emphasis on the I.
You give too much credit to the AI. Those nice lights around football fields come from OSM data. Same for red lights where masts should be. In SDK we don’t even have access to lights of this type, plus you can only set lights to appear 24/7 or only at night.
This is true. Drive any stretch of interstate between two major cities and theres hardly light posts within a few miles of city limits
Last time i flew at 500 feet AGL, i was actually able to see the light posts (in VR) which the lights where hanging from. Maybe it’s an LOD setting and the light poles disappear after going so far away, leaving us with floating orbs.
Practically speaking though, how much more computer power would it take for the game to know “oh it’s 11p local, time to shut the lights off in the parks only.” How many parks and ball fields exist in the world? I’m betting more than there are airports. Yes AI would be doing most of the work, but that AI could probably be better spent calculating live traffic or weather, not determining when the lights turn on and off
Not only that but there’s a practical limit to the number of light sources a GFX card can calculate.
maybe the Nvidia 9080 TI+ 64gb will be able to handle it all…
Dang……couple lines of code for a light that checks local time… on or off? I guess putting a tag on types of lights would be too taxing? Hell idk. Dynamic night lighting would require an entire upheaval of the light system? Seems very limiting for a SIMULATOR. But, again. I don’t know.
Road lights used to be worse, at launch almost every road in the sim would have lights attached to it in some way.
Some update late last year or maybe early this year changed it so the light density is based on the local population density.
Each Red Light represents an aircraft landed…
Airports and parking positions are occupied because once landed: You are doomed to stay on ground until Asobo lifts the departure ban.
I think some folks are overthinking this. It isnt a survey map. It is a simulator. You arent suppose to fly down and be amongst the street lights. That doesnt make any sense.
Equally there may well be too many lights at night. But they are also there to help you find your way. Imagine flying at night without any lights for miles and miles as you sometimes see for real on US Interstates and other Motorways etc. Folks would soon complain that VFR night flying was impossible.
So we need to accept compromise and accept it isnt reality. Things will differ from the real.
Its a Game. A Simulator.
Whhhaaaattttt…its a simulator, if I want to fly a simulated real plane 5’ AGL well thats a simulation. It’s not a sit a in tube and watch the flight computer and auto pilot do all the work simulator…err well okay its that too…SEE!
yes and when you do that you will see the lights just hanging there like Christmas balls.
You have found the compromise you need to make. That was exactly my point. You can do all kinds of things but at some point the fact that it isnt reality but a game/simulator will become more and more obvious.
5’ AGL will do that.
Been doing it since the 80’s when I started we had paper maps and used compasses and protractors, and the DME to tell where we were. Where I retired from they flew GA all the time at tree top levels for inspection purposes, and helicopters to trim the brush away from the transmission lines. Both of those require low altitude flying and in the case of the trimming a pretty big set of …
Oh yeah and I almost forgot … we used to have them, that other sim has them. Hell they even have road signs…never informative ones but they have them. The underworld just has the feeling of being unfinished. And the lights are only the 1/2 of it, no radio towers, sure the lights might be there at night, but once the sun comes out boom no lights no tower… go figure …it just feels undone…
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I think might interest you. Towers, chimneys, and other objects. Over 200k of them. All based on OSM, NOAA and FAA data. There is also one for Europe.
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