Nice avatar ;).
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Nice one yourself, as well 
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This is not entirely correct.
Yes, you are right, the human eye has a much higher dynamic range than a camera…
But you are forgetting about the fact that you are looking at the whole thing through a monitor, which is not even remotely capable of producing such bright light and contrast between dark/light.
Your eye simply does not react to a monitor to the same way it does real life.
That is why the monitor has to compensate somewhat and artificially simulate how your eye would react were it actually as bright as it is at FL370.
The effect miiiight be a tad on the strong side, but I totally understand why it is there and want it to remain there. It is much better than everything looking flat and washed out.
If they could integrate eye tracking to it somehow, that would be epic.
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It’d be nice if the eye adaption thing could be switched off in the options. I think you can do it by editing some config file so the option does exist, just needs to be added to the in game UI.
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I tried editing the options, it did nothing.
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While I’m mostly happy with the lighting, I can see where people are coming from.
MSFS could use a little more refraction of light in the cockpit, we’re not in outer space, even tho the air outside might be thin, in the cockpit you should have normal refraction and diffusion of light and I think this could stand to be brightened up a little. NOT MUCH.
Everyone is always saying the out the window view is too washed out and not saturated enough… To those people I’d say stop looking at HDR games and look outside, the world just isn’t that saturated with color, and when you’re up high, the effect is even stronger, the world is overlit and washed out in real life. Even at relatively low altitudes, you notice it.
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Can you explain the difference?
I would love to know how your eyes can look into a blue sky and inside a shadowy area and both be exposed correctly. In fact you may need to explain this to your optometrist too, they will want to study your eyeballs after you are done with them.
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Could not have said it any better!!
It is because of our brain. We are made that way. How it works, I don’t know, only that it works. The world looks totally different trough a camera lens than through our eyes. That is why so much time and effort is spent on taking the perfectly exposed picture. If cameras were as good as our eyes, great photography would be simple.
This game mimics a camera lens, not what a healthy human eye is capable of.
If you like the way the game works, great. I don’t and would love to be able to completely eliminate the eye adaptation effect, which editing the .cfg file doesn’t do. It helps some, but it is still there. Disabling color grading helps too, but we cannot fully eliminate it at present.
Sure thing.
The range from darkest to lightest that your eyes can discern details is called dynamic range, typically measured in exposure stops.
The very best medium format cameras have a dynamic range of about 15 stops. The cameras taking the photos and videos you typically see in a cockpit in flight have a dynamic range of maybe 8 or 9 stops.
The human eye has a dynamic range of 21 exposure stops.
I just don’t understand why people think that being in an aircraft cockpit is different than sitting in your car. In your car, when your eyes are focused on the road ahead at noon, is the inside of your car just a black void in your peripheral vision? Can’t you see your speedometer, your radio, the hand movements of your passenger?
If the inside of your car IS a black void at noon, I’m not the one who needs to see his optometrist ;).
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Help me understand this statement. Why would the devs want the monitor to show me a world that looks different than I see in reality? Isn’t the idea to show me the same view I see when sitting in an actual aircraft?
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That is what I think they should and thus the discussion about the instruments and textures are way too dark in bright sunlight. I remember the actual view from a few cockpit visits some years ago and stlll can see from every now and then in the cockpit of a sailplane.
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Exactly. Far too much is being made of all this extra light at altitude. Guys, it’s not THAT much brighter. You’ll wish for sunglasses if you don’t have them, but you certainly won’t be incapacitated or blinded without them or anything. It’s fine.
And remember, the same percentage of ambient light is entering the cockpit at altitude as on the ground. Sure, there’s more total light at altitude (marginally), but there’s the same percentage difference between inside and outside the cockpit.
So if your eyes can handle the view inside and outside of the cockpit (or your car) on the ground, they can handle it at altitude. The same dynamic range requirements apply.
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Your eye and brain are constantly adjusting light and dark into a brightness level that is the best for you to see detail, and this is exactly what a lens and the shutter are doing in a camera. Cameras even have auto exposure settings that don’t suffer from the acclimation effects and will adjust faster than an eye.
The problem that is confusing people in the game is that the lighting is taking an automatic and instant response and requiring a conscious action… move the PoV around, zoom, etc.
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I already explained this. Your eye and the camera are NOT doing the same thing; your eye is far more capable.
We need ray tracing.
I haven’t gotten to you yet lol!
Just because your eye has a higher dynamic range doesn’t mean that it isn’t working the same way a lens does. They both are designed to let in more or less light to the sensor/nerve.
I have no doubt that Asobo could tweak the lighting effect down a few notches to have it be less obtrusive. But I also know a pupil is continually changing when viewing light and dark areas of a scene, even if the extremes would be within the dynamic range of an eyeball.
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Haha I know how that goes; so many responses in your head but only time to get to one at a time ;).
But you’re right that your eye and a lens are working the same way. The difference is more in the image sensors. Film or a digital sensor have a far narrower dynamic range, and so the lens needs to make an adjustment in order not to blow out highlights or lose shadows.
Your eye/brain combination, with its much greater dynamic range, does not need to make this same adjustment. Thus, you can see details inside and outside the cockpit at the same time.
Effect of light
The pupil gets wider in the dark and narrower in light. When narrow, the diameter is 2 to 4 millimeters. In the dark it will be the same at first, but will approach the maximum distance for a wide pupil 3 to 8 mm.
Er… yes? I kind of assume we all know how pupils work, but… thanks, I guess?