I think a lot of it is proper shadows. It makes everything feel more grounded and appropriate.

Yes, light makes a difference. P3D gave us the shadows but no decent atmospheric light by default. 

The touchstone will be, for me, how the snow looks like.  Snow textures have always been rather dull so far (default or Global textures alike), and for a good reason, no reflection.  Snow  should at last  bring its own light to the scenery.

Edited October 17, 20196 yr by domkle

6 hours ago, erocfx said:

I think a lot of it is proper shadows. It makes everything feel more grounded and appropriate.

Shadows are only a part of it. We got shadows in P3D but because the scenery looks like it's a cloudy day already the shadows only made things look even more cloudy and dark. You won't get a better impression of light by just adding shadows: you need a new lighting system and MSFS gives us that. P3D will never ever have realistic light unless they change the entire graphical system. MSFS also looks so good because it actually simulates the entire atmosphere (if that's the right word) so light changes depending on humidity and so on. P3D doesn't do that at all.

Edited October 17, 20196 yr by Reader

Yes the engine is light years ahead of anything else used for flight simulation on the market today... And  no matter what technique they used to render the atmospheric light effect, it works beautifully...

And speaking of shadows, I hope scenery developers will finally abandon and stop implementing these overdone "baked"  shadows" / HDR resulting in gloomy looking architecture that feels as if covered by an invisible stormy cloud... 

Plain textures with the proper brightness/contrast and color saturation should be the norm in my opinion in such a dynamic atmosphere...

Edited October 17, 20196 yr by Claviateur