PS probably the greatest displeasure of the flight sim community is the "I know more than you" attitude even though they have never been there and never seen it.

The "it cant possibly be like that" crowd.

The sim community has very little input from real pilots(not hard to wonder why really) partly because when they do give input its the same old same old....oh that cant be right the sky doesnt look like that from my balcony, or how would you know, or oh look it cant possibly be like that as a friend of mine who once sat in a jump seat says its not true..lol.

The environment at 10 plus thousand feet it very very different to that at sea level. Lighting is far more intense, way more saturation in sky colors at sunrise and set. Color graduations are far more pronounced with the full spectrum of color visible across the transition at the terminator(modt sim pilots wont inow what the terminator is because non of the sims show it) every day. Some things like the terminator is not even simulated with gradual transitions yet in the real world the terminator runs like a hard edged line demarcing day and night. 

Camera tech today still does not allow the capture accurately of the colors and graduations the eye can see with its incredible light gathering ability so its still hard to share what we see.

Right now the closest to real sky is the Milky Way texture from Envtex if you want something thats very close to what you see in the dark hours from the flightdeck.

Enjoy.

Without getting into focal ratios (f 2.8 is extremely fast and the size of the objective lens is unknown), the photos above have obviously been re-touched because the displays would be blurry and blown-out if a 5 second exposure was used in an actual cockpit.

To the unaided eye, there are potentially 9,096 stars (of mag 6.5 or below) that might be visible ( http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-resources/how-many-stars-night-sky-09172014/ )... so the number included by default is actually pretty close.  The problem is that the sim usually does a pretty terrible job of depicting actual star intensity and the dimmest stars are way too bright.  In reality, the ambient light in the cockpit (Displays, panel lighting, etc.) will also greatly hinder night vision, so I use Autostar to limit stars to around mag 4.5 for a much more reasonable representation.

5 hours ago, mtrainer said:

Those that have seen the night sky with young eyes from the deep country will never forget it.

Mark

 

Remembering sitting on a clear night on a sand dune deep in the tunesian desert and getting instant goose bumps .... i felt what is in reality: sitting on a small marble in the middle of outer space.

4 hours ago, DEHowie said:

PS probably the greatest displeasure of the flight sim community is the "I know more than you" attitude even though they have never been there and never seen it.

Funny you mention that, because I see that attitude likewise among real world and non real world pilots here. And not seldom, it's real world pilots who argue between them.

 

Why would anyone want 250,000 stars for a flight simulator? There are a total of around 9000 stars visible to the naked eye across both hemispheres (north and south), so you are looking at a maximum of 4500 stars visible on a perfectly clear night.