So far, like everybody else, I am extremely impressed and overjoyed by the upcoming MSFS.

But I am not that thrilled with what I am seeing of the ground night lighting; city lights in particular. Like in previous iterations, it seems faint. They have also not shown too much of it yet, suggesting they may still be working on it. Dusk and night sky effects so far look nothing short of spectacular. I am hoping that night lighting on the ground will be equally as impressive. 

To me, xplane 11 offers the best night lighting, in particular streets. 

Edited August 18, 20196 yr by 767lover

This can be edited quickly. If Microsoft does not do that, it's an external developer. I'm not worried about that.

Let's wait and see.

It's too early to be concerned on this front.

Edited August 18, 20196 yr by irrics

The important thing here is that it's a global lighting engine with each individual fixture giving it's own illumination.

Everything else can be tweaked later, as we've seen with XP11's global lighting (which looks a heck of a lot better after some brightening and color tweaking).
 

Yeah, agree w/ @bonchie

Also, and I know this is an unpopular opinion, XP night lighting isn't the most "real world" looking in many scenarios.  It can be way too consistent in brightness and too bright overall and runways seen too easily, and highways can be ridiculously "way too lit up with too many lights", etc, etc.

 

Don't get me wrong - XP night lighting is the best we have at the moment, but it's by no means perfect or something that couldn't be improved upon.

 

The key, as Bonchie said, is that it's built correctly and thus tweakable later in case MS doesn't get it right.

Edited August 18, 20196 yr by irrics

Hopefully Microsoft will shed some light on this shortly.

47 minutes ago, irrics said:

Yeah, agree w/ @bonchie

Also, and I know this is an unpopular opinion, XP night lighting isn't the most "real world" looking in many scenarios.  It can be way too consistent in brightness and too bright overall and runways seen too easily, and highways can be ridiculously "way too lit up with too many lights", etc, etc.

 

Don't get me wrong - XP night lighting is the best we have at the moment, but it's by no means perfect or something that couldn't be improved upon.

 

The key, as Bonchie said, is that it's built correctly and thus tweakable later in case MS doesn't get it right.

Agreed. Xp night lighting is far from perfect. People who think its good havent flown at night. 

6 minutes ago, rocketlaunch said:

Hopefully Microsoft will shed some light on this shortly.

Ba-dum tisss

Or it would be nice if Microsoft could enlighten us. 

Sorry, could not resist. 

11 minutes ago, Baber20 said:

Agreed. Xp night lighting is far from perfect. People who think its good havent flown at night. 

Precisely my thoughts...

I think many incorrectly assume it's well lit and easy to see at night and "lights are bright", etc..  

On this front in general ..

MS - Please please please get airport environment lighting correct and appropriately challenging to pick out.

I'm going to scream in frustration if I can easily and unrealistically discern a runway from 30 miles out in the new MSFS, particularly if I'm not lined up with it.

Let's please make this realistic!

Edited August 18, 20196 yr by irrics

On a more serious note. I really hope they make the clouds react to light.

Just imagine illuminating the clouds with your landing lights and seeing the glow of the city below. 

16 minutes ago, rocketlaunch said:

On a more serious note. I really hope they make the clouds react to light.

Just imagine illuminating the clouds with your landing lights and seeing the glow of the city below. 

This is what I was to point out. XP lacks of atmosphere and clouds ground light reflection. If only that could be achieved in MFS... 

I agree with the OP. The night lighting shown so far still looks inferior to that in Xplane which at this point is the best we have in a flightsim. The lighting in Xplane can also be tweaked for even more realism. The big difference, besides being dynamic, is that the street lights are actual objects, not just floating orbs. As such, when viewed from directly overhead, you just see the illumination on the ground and objects as you do in reality. Another thing Xplane does better are the runway lights which are are much more difficult to see from off to the side of the runway than when you are lined up with it. Hopefully the new MSFS can at least equal Xplane's accomplishment in this respect. 

3 hours ago, aleex said:

This is what I was to point out. XP lacks of atmosphere and clouds ground light reflection. If only that could be achieved in MFS... 

Exactly! And I cannot understand why, in 2019 we cannot turn strobe lights on within the cloud and become disorientated from the bright flash all around the aircraft (like the real world) - in fact turning on lights or strobes "in a cloud" within any modern flight sim... does nothing! Unreal...