I had just taken off from Port Keats (Northern Territory, Australia) at night and recognised the constellation of Scorpius in the south eastern sky. I looked in the opposite direction and was surprised to see the constellation of Orion. Consistent with the mythology behind their naming, these two constellations are never seen in the sky at the same time. I was only at 1,000 feet AGL so that shouldn’t have been the reason.
Was the accuracy of the celestial sphere every claimed?
Astronomer / pilots, eh! Tough crowd!
Maybe all that pesky dark energy is to blame.
Seriously though, I can’t say I have noticed any glaring celestial errors. But then again I cannot
claim to be that keen an observer. Maybe it’s a hemispherical question.
I’m up north [as they say round 'ere].
Orion and Scorpius can be seen at the same time IRL both spring and autumn, albeit close to the horizon…?
Just try an online/free planetarium software and you’ll see it.
These two screenshots are from same date/time/location;
No problem, I’m an uber-dork when it comes to Astronomy and don’t need many reasons to bring out my astro-apps and tinker
The MSFS night sky does a good job with the positioning of constellations, but I disagree with the method used to render it (Baked low dynamic range texture/skybox, instead of point light sources for stars, like in Starry Night)
Long time astrophotographer here. While I can’t speak for the southern hemisphere, as I’ve never been there and seen it with my own eyes, I can completely vouch for the accuracy of the sky in the northern hemisphere. It matches positions of stars and the moon perfectly with real life based on your position on the planet. The only thing missing is planets.
Agreed. It doesn’t really look great under closer scrutiny, unfortunately. But at least everything is where it should be and accurate, so I’ll take it. This is a flight sim, not Stellarium. lol
Awesome, nice to find a fellow cloud-curser here!
(I got a rig in a remote obsy in southern Europe for AP)
Yeah, I just think it looks weird seeing the milky way from downtown Los Angeles, as current texture is low dynamic range and doesn’t scale brightness at all. (Bright stars visible while faint stars aren’t)
Just saying, X Plane 11 does this the “correct way” with a textfile containing a list of stars consisting of RA / Dec / Mag, and the sim does the rest, scaling star visibility via magnitude depending on background sky brightness & so on.
But I agree, we shouldn’t be peeking at the sky at night while flying in a sim, but I still think it could be done more realistic for the “golden hours” and under light pollution.
Yeah, the view of the Milky Way over bright urban areas is pretty unrealistic. I try to not let it bother me, but it still rubs me the wrong way when I see it.
A bit off topic, but somewhat related since we’re on the topic of the skies, if you want to take a gander at my stuff… Dark Arts Astrophotography | Flickr
Awesome pictures. Makes me want to play Elite Dangerous again, I visited a lot of those
What annoys me about the night sky is when taking a zoomed in pictures, the stars turn into huge blobs. Very ugly and already way to big at normal zoom level with increased exposure.
As a keen amateur astronomer i concur with the general feeling that the constellations are very well positioned in the Sim, but like others it’s completely let down by the too large appearance as the above post links too.
Like a lot of things (well everything!) in MSF it needs a Quality Of Life Passover to bring it to life in a more realistic way, especially in VR where the night sky generally looks very poor.