Stars and Light Pollution

Is it me or are there way too many stars lit up in the night sky? I’m not talking about how many stars, I mean that in and around cities the stars are barely there due to light pollution. But in the sim there’s hundreds.

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In RL there are billions :wink:

Go somewhere really isolated on a moonless night and you will be amazed. I once camped out atop a mountain in the Sinai and read several chapters of a book by starlight alone.

PS. I had good eyes then but now age is catching up with me.

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@DensestSnail693
That’s already clear - but what he means and I also think, that you can hardly see any stars above a city - should perhaps also be taken into account in the SIM. The sky looks as if you were at the South Pole and not above a big city. (I am a “star observer” myself (large telescope)) - I have already asked about this in the Alpha!

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Oh absolutely! That’s one of my favorite things about camping.

If I’m flying out of LHR, I don’t expect to see so many stars. When I lived near the airport you barely see any stars purely due to the light pollution of the airport itself and the surrounding towns. I am hoping something can be done in the sim to reflect this.

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For sure but I can’t imagine that coding in perfectly matching ambiance is such a simple task especially as DX12 is still very much in beta.

Played cards by full moonlight in Zimbabwe many years ago while backing through Africa, I couldn’t believe how bright the moon was. Happy days

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unfortunately the nightsky “skycube” is pretty much a low dynamic bitmap. Instead of like other sims where every star is a pinpoint sprite, with correct magnitude (brightness) and therefore you can limit the dim stars under light pollution. Just like in real life with the skys limiting magnitude blocking of the faint stars as well as the milky way unless away from light pollution.
A pretty simplistic compromise even though todays computers could easily handle “real” individual stars in both position and brightness.

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MSFS could take Stellarium source code with copyright acknowledgement GitHub - Stellarium/stellarium: Stellarium is a free GPL software which renders realistic skies in real time with OpenGL. It is available for Linux/Unix, Windows and macOS. With Stellarium, you really see what you can see with your eyes, binoculars or a small telescope. and light pollution data from various sources to build a more realistic night sky.

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Where I live, the old orange sodium lights have largely been replaced with down facing efficient white led lights over the last 2-3 years. I was surprised just how many stars I could see last night out walking my dog. These new lights are reducing light pollution considerably. I don’t think I am seeing that many more stars in the sim than I can see with the naked eye in my own town. Back in the 70’s I could see the haze of the Milky Way galaxy in the night sky, I have not seen that in the sim.

Please participate here.

Also note SU10 Beta post with Bug Logged status.

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