Hi all -
Been doing a lot of early morning flights that start before dawn, but generally end after sunrise.
However, it seems the ground is really dark and doesn’t receive lighting from the atmosphere, especially considering all the snow on the ground.
Pic here is western Minnesota, 12,000 feet, 0705 local, facing roughly south. Any thoughts appreciated.
Has the moon already set?
No idea, but the relatively bright sky in the east doesn’t appear to be doing anything.
I’ve always found the ground in msfs too dark except for an hour before and after mid day. Heavy cloud cover can also make it a lot darker than in the real world. Turning up the brightness and/or contrast saturation or digital vibrance just burns out the sky.
I just posted about this in another thread. Twilight is definitely way too dark. A comparison with the real life scene here, and in the sim set to the same time and location:
Shot just ten minutes after sunset.
Even with it being cloudy in the real scene, I could still read a book outdoors. In the sim, I’d need a flashlight to do a preflight.
And you’re right that it’s the atmospheric lighting. The air isn’t scattering enough light, like it’s way too thin. The fix is for Asobo to crank up the global illumination effects at these times of day. Day, night, and civil twilight are important things to get right in an aviation application.
I’ve been flying the HPG hot air balloon a lot lately, and you want to fly it at sunrise and sundown when the winds are usually lighter. But it’s frustrating with the sim’s lighting model. It takes awhile to descend and you have to find a good off field touchdown point. And your ability to discern the terrain is effectively gone within a few minutes of sunset.
You can kind of cheat by increasing the exposure level setting in the drone camera view, but this amplifies all the light in the scene, so it will blow out the actual light sources too.
What should the bright sky in the east be doing ? It displays as a picture to me as opposed to a video.
Sorry, I don’t understand what you’re referring to when you say “It displays as a picture to me as opposed to a video.”
The sky in the east should be casting light on the ground, which should be much more visible. As the image shows, it’s entirely dark.
I understand your point now and completely agree… a bit too dark, yes, agree.
Overall sim is too dark.
At night you cant see anything
There’s definitely room for improvement. I dont think we already have Global Illumination in the sim.
Not to mention the exaggerated colors orange/violet at dusk and dawn.
I tried to reproduce the night scene of the topic author.
For me twilight was ok.
You remember, on the equator there is no twilight all. Either daylight or night within minutes.Twilight is a function of the latitude. (Moon phase of course too).
If you want to see a wonderful long lasting lightish twilight, try a flight in Iceland. (High latitude !) it’s a phantastic twilight scene. Wonderful and really touching.
Also on my LG screen a great impact on the immersiveness of the scene is achieved when I switch to “HDR effect”. Though I have only HDR 400, it makes a difference like “day and night”.
Bye, walter
Twilight can be shorter in duration on the equator, but there still is twilight. Sunset to the end of civil twilight at my current location (KSPI) and date lasts 30 minutes. At Entebbe, Uganda (HUEN) close to the equator, it’s 22 minutes.
HDR might indeed help with visibility in the sim. However, the sim should be adjusting the exposure for non HDR displays accordingly if that’s the issue. It’s not just the exposure level though. The lighting model is still objectively incorrect. You can tell just by the number of stars that are visible in the sim, which also appear way too early for the amount of light that should be still be in the sky.
I’ve been to the equator in Africa, on a flight that went north of Iceland, and did get to witness not only perpetual light on the horizon all night long, but the northern lights, and twilight on the Equator. Pretty amazing!
I don’t know,
if I look now from window it’s night. I see nothing, only city lights just like in sim. That dark black color is very close to that in sim, really I can’t imagine other color in sim at this time heh If I can compare to dawn, some little difference I see maybe but due my preffered TV settings it will never be same as IRL, inside sim.
The problem is dull, brown/yellow/ purple light speeded in the clouds and haze around sunset.
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