Yesterday I decided to do a night flight around NYC in the 172 and I couldn’t believe how real it looked. As I am a RW private pilot I tend to prefer airliners in the sim. However, night looked insane. I was blown away. Flying GA in MSFS is a completely different animal.

Cheers, Pete

agreed. next level. Too bad they didn't think to implement light pollution on the night sky as well. I live here, you don't see this many stars 😛

 

night visuals from good old fsx! (see vid date)

 

I really like the night flying in this sim. Only downside is performance are worse than daytime. At least for me...

44 minutes ago, iCann said:

night visuals from good old fsx! (see vid date)

it's really the buildings that they've made more realistic in FS2020. You shouldn't be able to actually see the tall buildings, just their lights and outlines

The night lighting is the best I've seen ever. Flying during dusk, dawn and night are my favorite times to fly. Absolutely stunning!

And while the lighting "points" on both the old FSX Night Env 3rd party upgrade and the default MSFS lighting "look" the same statically....the MSFS lights are dynamic and cast illumination within their cone of influence (all 10 ga-zillion of them).  The FSX lights are literally painted on.

Watch ground traffic wiz by those lights and become illuminated when they're supposed to...and look at the lighting reflection off the bottom of the wing in Gaiiden's post...actual reflection lighting from the ground.

You can post static pics all day long of how something looked in the past....seeing the lighting actually react dynamically when you're flying along is next level.

I wasn’t convinced, some wide shoot I’ve seen look amazing! but up close are actually kind poor looking, flying below 1000ft the street lights are above the aircraft 😯

It is amazing they are able to run more complex dynamic lights, in fsx or any other platform that would be too expensive,

btw that’s a video not a static image,

Edited August 22, 20205 yr by iCann

1 hour ago, iCann said:

night visuals from good old fsx! (see vid date)

In before the edit of your post iCann, unfortunately that person whose product is in that video link is persona-non-grata at AVSIM. 

I do use certain products for improving upon the night time within FSX:SE   and IMO they certainly improved the look.

Just now, iCann said:

I wasn’t convinced, some wide shoot I’ve seen look amazing! but up close are actually kind poor looking, flying below 1000ft the street lights are above the aircraft 😯

 

Agreed....however what we're seeing in MSFS thus far (to my knowledge) is nothing like we've seen before...and below 1000ft....the only sim that is going to replicate night better is outside your window (if its dark in your part of the world right now).

At normal cruising altitudes in real life (not too many places let you fly below 500 without special permission), there is not a sim better than MSFS at the moment.  

If you really wanted real life accuracy in a flightsim below 1000ft, your flying area would be limited to 10 square miles, require 15 petabytes of "ortho", and 10 Cray super computers running in parallel to handle the display (Would be cheaper to rent a 172 and go night flying for real) 🙂

 

I hope they fix those floating lights too. I was hoping that was a thing of the past, but when using the drone camera and exploring around the ground, I can clearly see that the street lights are floating and are not attached to any light poles.

I actually don’t mind that the lights are not connected to a pole a.k.a. floating I didn’t like the fact that they’re almost 1000 feet in the air, when you’re looking down at an angle they are looking great but when you go down to ground level you can see that the ground is splashed with colors separately just the way it was an old FSX, The lights are way up in the air they’re not actually forming a splash to the ground dynamically, am I wrong?

12 minutes ago, iCann said:

I wasn’t convinced, some wide shoot I’ve seen look amazing! but up close are actually kind poor looking, flying below 1000ft the street lights are above the aircraft 😯

It is amazing they are able to run more complex dynamic lights, in fsx or any other platform that would be too expensive,

btw that’s a video not a static image,

I realize that was a video iCan, the point was that even if you run the video, you'll never see the painted lights casting illumination....the technology simply did not exist at the time at a point cost-effective enough to deliver to the general simming  community (if at all...not sure exactly when dynamic lighting hit the scene, but I know when it did....turning it on for most reduced most simmer's systems to a PowerPoint slide show and made our GPUs throw off enough heat to bake a potato).   

Granted MSFS is making my GPU a thermal generator, but that is to be expected as its getting a real workout (finally), and without the PPT presentation....smooth as silk on my system.

2 minutes ago, iCann said:

I actually don’t mind that the lights are not connected to a pole a.k.a. floating I didn’t like the fact that they’re almost 1000 feet in the air, when you’re looking down at an angle they are looking great but when you go down to ground level you can see that the ground is splashed with colors separately just the way it was an old FSX, The lights are way up in the air they’re not actually forming a splash to the ground dynamically, am I wrong?

To be honest, I have not checked that yet...and if it is its certainly an issue that needs to be looked at.  I've not forced my aircraft to fly below where I'd fly it in the real world yet...or grabbed the drone to go take a look....too busy grabbing the time scroll bar and dragging it past dawn and dusk and watch the lighting gradually "illuminate" instantaneously vs getting to a certain point...loading screen...wait wait wait....ahhh....night to day...day to night.   Hehe...I'd buy the sim just to drag that drag that scrollbar back and forth and marvel at the scene changing from dusk/day then day/dusk. 🙂

 

I did a flight to Cairo at night and the lighting was stunning. Better than x-plane in my view. I am glad there is no light poles. That's going to impact performance and its only something that is noticeable from ground level.

Edited August 22, 20205 yr by sanh