Sure… with low-angle sun in front of you. But in reality, we have sunshades for that ;).
In MSFS, this effect exists at noon. It should not. Anyone can see this in their car.
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No…? I was talking about above the clouds for example , which obviously reflects significantly more light than asphalt while sitting in a car.
Let me add some clarification avoid more misunderstandings:
During my career I have many times found myself in situations where I had to cover the outside with my hand to be able to clearly see smaller instruments and/or digital displays, especially over clouds. And definitely not just low sun head on situations.
The contrast is much stronger than in a car, except perhaps on packed slightly melted snow with very high reflectivity.
Having experienced this “effect” very often IRL through years of commercial flying, I recognise it in MSFS and appreciate it, that’s all. That’s why I don’t agree with dismissing this whole thing with just that the Asobo artists doesn’t understand the real world enough, instead I’m rather impressed with it.
And I get most MSFS users might not share the same experience/background as me, and that I would therefore welcome a shadow-boosting setting for those who doesn’t agree with this effect. The loss of contrast might be compensated with other adaptive/dynamic-contrast effects.
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Or how about a simple user definable setting such as they do for ‘Bloom’ ? That should make us all happy in this one regard.
I mean… I’ve been a professional pilot for 27 years now, currently flying 737s, so it’s not as if I’m not speaking from experience. Nor do I have some sort of super eyes, I don’t think.
Being over a surface with a higher albedo (clouds, or snow-covered ground in a car) certainly means more light is reflected upwards, but it also means more light finds its way into your flight deck. While it can be brighter overall at altitude, there’s no reason to think that there is a greater percentage disparity of illumination between inside and outside.
When I’m at work looking out the window at noon, the cockpit in my peripheral vision is not a dark outline the way MSFS renders it. It is a normally lit space.
I don’t know… DO I have some kind of super HDR eyes? Am… am I a cyborg?
Seems unlikely. I make it through the magnetometer every time KCM flags me for a random. 
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Just switching off dynamic lighting would throw off the lighting in the whole MSFS world, not just the cockpit, since it’s all “photo metric” in the sense that it needs to adapt/adjust to the overall scene brightness.
Here’s a good read on the subject from X Plane 12:
That’s why I’m pretty sure we’d be much better off lifting the shadows for those having too deep shadows, or increase ambient cockpit lighting without throwing the rest of the “world” lighting off balance.
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Without knowing what airframe you have the most experience in, I can only say that the ones I have a vast majority of my hours in probably let in 4x-5x as much light as a 737 cockpit comparing angular window surface, so that might very well bias me with darkening my instruments quite a bit more without much glare shield to speak of as well as a complete lack of sunshades.
Wouldn’t a set of cyborg eyes (digital?) have less dynamic range than our organic counterpart? 
Ofc our eyes are superior to cameras, and our brains ability to do “real-time hdr dynamic contrast”. But central to our problem here, eyes are also vastly superior to our monitors trying to simulate the outside world.
So some sort of compromise is required. We simply can’t squeeze to world into 0-255 brightness levels and hope for realism. Citing the X Plane 12 Dev regarding photo metric lighting:
“ A decade ago, the image of the world you saw through your simulator was essentially built out of pre-made images drawn in Photoshop by artists. These images were drawn as realistically as possible, but they were low dynamic range (LDR) because that’s all the monitor could handle. The sky was as blue as the art director decided, and then created with Photoshop. This worked great in its time, but with today’s modern graphics cards we can do much better.”
Which rounds up my point that ditching the eye-adaption would bring us backwards rather than just fixing the problem with too dark cockpits for some.
But we could probably go around in circles arguing this as our understanding of eyes/cameras/monitors probably doesn’t differ as much as our ideas of how to get around this problem and where to compromise.
So instead, which of the following do you (all) think looks best and most realistic on your monitor? Note that it’s just the cockpit shadow levels being changed here, and pay attention how the contrast between bright and dark disappears the more we increase cockpit brightness, while IRL we would obviously have Both stark contrast and being able to distinguish some details in the dark parts.
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This can be related to eye adaption in MSFS (where your view is focused.
These are two pics I took and posted here showing how the interior lighting changes depending on where you’re looking. It shows how both interior and exterior lighting changes depending on where your eyes are focused.
In the real world, if you move your eyes from a bright scene to somewhere in shadow, the shadow area is initially really dark and then brightens up as your eyes adjust. In game, the change is instant.
Age is also a factor, as you get older glare effects you more (I used to wear sunglasses as a fashion accessory, these days I actually need them) and the speed at which your eyes can cope with changes in ambient lighting deteriorates.
Eh, when you’re that high up in the atmosphere, you’re looking at white cloud tops that are aggressively bright as well. It’s reasonable that cruise will be blinding.
We’ve been begging for a change for 2 years. If it ain’t happened by now it won’t ever happen. Asobo flat out don’t listen to their customers at all. Never have, never will. Sad truth.
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@SlavaK7455 unfortunately I couldn’t disagree more. Couple of hundred hours real flight time, and there hasn’t been a single time ever flying IRL that I couldn’t make out the instruments in the cockpit when it was bright outside.
Happens ALL the time in MSFS.
Absolutely, 100% completely unrealistic to treat the human eye like a camera.
IMO
Scott
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But what people don’t seem to realise is that there is no way to convey the feeling of brightness/darkness through our monitors other than using such “camera effects”.
Our monitors inherently cannot get as bright as in real life and do not have such high dynamic ranges… so bright light/shadow has to be “simulated” in other ways.
Sure, you can make all the instruments and environment outside always visible by reducing the contrast between bright/dark, because that’s how your eyes see it… but that will result in a flat, washed out picture on the monitor that will look like trash.
A lot of this is about compromises.
I think MSFS strikes the balance very well (looks great on my oled tv, and I never really struggle to read any instruments), and for some others… it could even be a matter of adjusting their game brightness/monitor settings.
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Then why bother with it or just give the player the option?
Heck, we can choose to turn off damage, have unlimited fuel, rudder and trim assist…all we want is one little switch to turn this mess off.
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For example, when you zoom in to the FMC or just the instruments, everything becomes clear and you actually get to see the small details of the textures. Why can’t they just have the same effect when looking straight forward. Instead, things dim down.
It’s very annoying especially if you use HDR. With HDR, outside contrast becomes very good, you can see the clouds in all it’s glory without being washed out, but then it also makes the inside cockpit too dark. So I’m forced to have HDR off.
I sure hope they get rid of it, or at least give us an option to turn it off.
This post, jeez, you’d think humans just like to argue with each other…
Anyhoo. I think the effect is a bit over-done, but it isn’t unrealistic. BUT, I also agree that rather than ramming it down the users throats it should be an option… Just put in a tick box and boom everyone is happy. Seems like an easy win.
Regardless what anyone’s opinion on the topic is, it’s never going to be your concern how someone else wants their sim to look. So just making it optional fixes it. It’s not like its a combat flight sim where visibility could change outcomes… Actually that having been said, the option should not exist if you’re in races, or any other competitive modes they may dream up in the future.
Normally if I’m flying big iron I fly the A32NX. However yesterday I was flying the Salty 747, and I noticed that in the brown colored cockpit of the Boeing, the effect is MUCH more annoying. So maybe that’s the X-factor here on who hates it and who doesn’t? Just a thought.
TL;DR - A check-box to disable would end this fight. Stop worrying about how others want their screen to look.
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Strongly suggest using a filter (like Nvidia etc). I think its way too dark inside cockpit too. In the JF arrows I can barely see some instruments.
MSFS will never achive a correct setting for all kinds of GFX cards, monitors, HDR on/off etc. Its better to set up your own ‘calibrated’ picture. Using filters really changed my whole MSFS experience - can see cockpit, white is actually white, crisper picture etc. I have to use one filter for day and one for night though to get best results. But they are quick to change between. Try it!
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Wow. I’ve known about the filters in the Nvidia control overlay, but never have I thought about actually using it. I guess I really just wanted Asobo to give us a better option for this.
Let me tell you, it has made my cockpit so beautiful. No more darkness.
I added the “Detail” filter and tweaked it just a bit along with the “Brightness/Contrast” filter.
Man, you can really see every fine detail in the cockpit. You can now see even the inner edges of the buttons and switches on the FBW A320.
I’ve tuned it where I can have a good balance between bright clear days and night time.
It is WAY better than default. When I turn on and off the filter it is just amazing.
I’m mind blown on how I didn’t do this months ago.
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@Stearmandriver2 - the “feeling” is wrong - I can see the instruments in full daylight in a real cockpit without having to turn on internal lights. Maybe this is how people who haven’t flown think it would look like - but it isn’t.
Here’s two screenshots I’ve captured at different points and submitted to Asobo. I particularly like the top one where’s it’s talking about seeing what cruise attitude looks like on the instruments…when you can barely see the instruments.
And the second screenshot is even worse…if you ignore staring at the glassy screens (which can and do fail), you’re absolutely SOL trying to read ANYTHING at all in the cockpit…
I don’t feel it’s too much to ask that, in daylight, I’m always able to read the instruments, without having to swivel the view around to block out sun or having to squint at the controls. That’s 100% not the way it works at all in a real cockpit.
IMO!
Scott
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@Fornax4188. Suggest you or @xxYUNIORxx add a post telling users who have NVIDIA cards how to do this along with the settings you arrived at for each of your setups. I am certain this information would help quite a few other simmers struggling with dark cockpits. Just my 0.02… and thanks.
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Yes. I will compile some screenshots and settings later in the day when I’m off work.
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