Daytime spectacular.
Night time … don’t let me start.
seriously i’m so tired of waiting for this to be improved.
i wanna know what you guys think of night lighting in msfs.
Am i really overreacting?
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XP has always had the best night lighting out of the 3 main sims.
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yeah agree.
It somewhat frustrates me as Asobo’s engine is way more sophisticated and is capable of all this.
Well even this appears too dark for me. As far as I can tell, urban lighting is way brighter than this and considering how human eyes adapt to the dynamic range, I wish the brightness would be higher. Maybe I could put another in comparison here, that FlightGear’s atmospheric scattering model makes night sky brighter. That is not only more appealing to the eye than pitch black but also more accurate considering real world light pollution. And it is easier to fly. The problem I believe is that MSFS and XP’s sky does not contain any elements that could reflect light, except for clouds. Which is why street lights does nothing more than illuminating themselves.
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Night lighting in MSFS was better when it first released. I’m not sure what’s happened up to this point but it now appears blurry, like everybody below is smoking and given the ground a slight fog. I’d hazzard a guess it’s a LOD problem because it gets better as you get close to the ground but still nowhere near as good as it was in the beginning.
As an example, this video was done during the pre-release alpha:
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One of the coolest things I saw when I played XP11 was the night lighting. It looks just awesome, I don’t know how they overcome the problem of TLOD at night. When I play MSFS at night, city has lighting at some distance the beyond is blurry.
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thank you it was helpful
early days msfs was so much better with night lighting.
it went so horribly wrong at some point.
i wonder if it even crosses their minds at this point at all?
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There was an early “patch” around October '20, relatively early after release, following criticism from the “community” that was not satisfied with the look.
So they “improved” it!
Then it took a year or so to get it back to reasonable, yet mediocre. This Megathread gives some insight for those who don’t remember or weren’t around.
The changes later made with SU5 for performance reasons probably add to the situation.
Same pattern happened to Live weather one year later: great look and feel after release - “community” demanded more accuracy - SU7 turned it into a mess - now it’s back to reasonable yet mediocre after nearly 2 more years.
SU13 indicates that there will be no more major changes in MSFS2020, however it is worth to keep in mind that demands for improvements can be a double-edged sword.
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How many times have we read that. 
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I fly almost exclusively at sunrise and sunset. The two things I would borrow from XP would be the neatness of the ground lights and the lighting on the ground traffic. Otherwise, the night lighting is very good in MSFS. I really hope they add headlights to the cars in 2024.
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yep, at this point, im just waiting for FS24 and REALLY, REALLY hope that its not only about new features, but to polish what is there already.
Night lighting at airliner cruise level is just absolutely bad, a blurry orange mess all over the place…
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I’ve been using this mod for a couple of weeks now. Very happy with the alterations.
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With HDR on, at lower altitudes, the PG regions (and some autogen regions) look amazing but it doesnt come across in screenshots unless you adjust them a bit. XP has always been pretty at night and the way they (Laminar) do things, it can look better overall (more cohesive). I really dont know how MSFS will handle how scenery looks that is beyond the download range set by TLOD - especially at altitude. They need more realistic base scenery tiles.
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I generally tend to avoid flying at night due to the poor night lighting in MSFS. Stationary car lights and strings of street lights running through rural areas ruin the immersion for me.
X-Plane has some really nice features, such as the flashing lights of emergency vehicles speeding down the highway at night. Really cool.
XP does night way better. No doubt about it. I wouldn’t call MSFS bad by any stretch of the imagination, but it leaves a lot to be desired by comparison.
Night looked far better in the first year or so of the sim’s launch. It had other issues like remote, dirt country roads being illuminated with street lights making everything look like an urban setting at night, and some other peculiarities with lighting. But overall, I feel it used to look far more realistic than it does now.
But again, it isn’t bad. It’s just not as good as it could be, nor as good as it used to be.
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Yep, It seems like they’ve settled for mediocrity , as some of the key features from release (Live weather, lighting in general) seem to be a sideshow nowadays.
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I agree that MSFS night scenes are too dark. Before MSFS I flew in P3D. I did a lot of night flying, it was spectacular. I don’t fly at night in MSFS. I like the sunsets but when the sun is gone it’s way too dark. Besides atmospheric conditions there doesn’t seem to be any moonlight.
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Early days msfs was better for everything visually than it is now.
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Oh man. If there’s one thing I’ve learned since the Alpha, it’s that this is it. Anything else is a pleasant surprise, and there isn’t some magic miracle just around the corner. I’m expecting the same out of FS24. If night lighting is improved, it’ll be a nice surprise.
I also remember these garish sepia colored night light masks that were apparent at high altitudes. The ground just glowed. They at least improved that, and I’ve seen some gorgeous dusk scenes flying around places like San Francisco. On the other hand, I also got lost over San Diego one time and couldn’t find a Class Bravo airport until I was right on top of it. And this was while I was in the middle of a graded flight on PilotEdge. The lights just weren’t visible. No apron lighting, and the other lights on the field were extremely directional so the airport just looked like a hole from the air that blended into the bay.
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