I primarily fly the C172 and my home airport is unusually dark at night. When using the G1000 variant I can at least use the GPS to see where I’m going, which probably is something you wouldn’t want to do for real. But if I’m in the Classic 172 or 152 I perhaps have about 5 feet of visibility in front of me. I’ve run off the taxi way countless times already.
Is the lighting in a real C172 that bad?
I installed a C172 lighting mode but I think it’s primarily for the visuals.
Are you flying the 172 G1000 or Steam?
I ask as the Steam is DLC from the premium deluxe edition so light mods don’t work on it unfortunately.
I sit further up when taxing to help see and also have a mod for airport lighting installed to help.
Look for uwa light mods online. There is a light mod pack that contains the 172 and improves the default taxi light brightness.
Depends on the version, it can only update the G1000 model not the Steam which is why I asked above.
I fly both but I think I’ll be sticking with the steam gauge since it’s easier in VR.
I have the airport lighting mod too but I don’t know it does anything for my airport, at least in the taxiway.
I plowed through my little airport in an A320 and it did a nice job lighting things up, lol.
In that case the aircraft light mod won’t change anything for that aircraft unfortunately.
I’m curious how realistic the lighting is. But I think there is something off about lights in the sim. It’s like the environmental impact isn’t there. I’d guess it comes down to the engine and graphics cards.
The moon and sun do their thing but other lighting seems to only act on short distance.
From my IRL 172 night experience, the taxi/landing lights don’t illuminate all that much. 172’s with LED lights are a bit better, but anything with a standard bulb is not all that bright. I’d say the sim seems pretty close at least in my opinion. For instance, in comparison to XP11, I feel the taxi/landing light combinations in most of those planes are extremely bright in that sim compared to the real world.
IRL, they are almost blinding, especially once you have developed nigh vision 
but it does help to have decent LED landing & Taxi light on your C172
Oh the airport lights are def blinding for sure! That’s where this sim needs to up the brightness. Lining up for departure pretty much matches the exposure of that 2nd photo.
I find the lights to be kinda dim too. XP11’s lights may be too bright compared to real life (I don’t know) but it makes things more enjoyable.
I wonder if this issue relates at all to the dullness of clouds sometimes. If all these surfaces reflected more light, they would appear brighter. Maybe its better in HDR??
What controls how much a surface reflects light? (and I don’t mean turning up ‘Reflections’ to Ultra) My GPU is a GTX1070 and Im not running the latest driver. Would a newer card improve lighting and reflections? Would just a newer driver help? Is it a DX11 vs DX 12 thing? Is there a default texture that I could modify?
Somebody on here recently had an issue with some jet and its landing lights not illuminating the ground and it turned out to be caused by the livery they had chosen (aviators livery) which leads me to believe the lights are in the livery textures somehow.
I think you are on to something with the reflectivity. Light kind of gets absorbed into the environment in a way that isn’t quite natural. It may just come down to the sim engine and the GPU. Light ends hard at a distance, but doesn’t take reflectivity into account.
More highly reflective paint lines would probably help. So we have spots too bright and spots too dark.
At larger airports it’s not a problem since they have the built in taxiway lighting. Having a G1000 helps too.
That runway shot is bright! But the camera is probably on an average frame exposure for the twilight setting. 
I have a similar shot I took from and Eclipse 500. I’ll have to dig it up.
I haven’t tried turning my lights off to see if it helps with night vision
Okay, the photo isn’t that similar. However, I have a sim screen shot that got mixed in with some shots I took at the same airport and I was completely fooled!
Taxi lights on the older C172 are pretty bad, haven’t flown the S model, but the R’s were slightly better than the older P models.
You should be able to duplicate the lights mod in your community folder, and point it to the classic steam version in the mod’s files.
You’d probably have to match the steam gauge aircraft’s folder name in SimObjects\Airplanes\ and update the layout.cfg to make it work.
Do airports use the higher relective paints now like the ones used on roadways?
Slightly off topic, but I actually hate street lights! They wreck your night vision and pollute the environment in many different ways. Driving with proper headlights, and a well maintained road makes for better visibility.
I’d love them all baned but modern people have become afraid of the dark.
In the dark, taxi at 10 kts max. 8 kts, about bicycle speed 
If you are 2D playing, move the ‘viewpoint’ to be looking down the left side of the glarescreen.
If VR, just lean left.
PS. I stash a Brompton folding bike in the C172, JIC I make a landing which is not on an airfield. 
In the real world, sunlight delivers about 120,000 lux. Set the brightness of the sun in your game to 120,000 lux, and voila — your sunlight matches reality.
But what is the Max Lux of your monitor ?? 350-500 nits.
In theory, I could walk out of the airplane in VR and use the flashlight to see where I am!
Problem is, that’s more walking than I have VR space. But it is fun to step outside during a flight. It reminds me of sky diving.
I’m using Virtual Desktop, which has has a nice dark boost option. It’s great for the night sky. It gets rid of that sky glow. But it makes the ground situation more difficult.
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