1 hour ago, iCann said:

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

 

Yes, it looks much worse and isn't dynamic.

In this pic of a rather famous landmark, the lighting looks convincing.....up to a certain point.  I'm not sure how much better it can look in the future, but the one thing you can pick at is the intensity of the lighting as distance increases.  It seems to be too uniform vs gradually fading like we can all identify with in real life.  But however you look at it...this is light-years (pun intended) ahead of anything we've seen thus far, out of the box.

Look at the streetlights going up the winding hill.....yep you can see elevation issues....this "may" be fixable with fine-tuning of the light emitters of each lamp in the scene....but that as we can all realize is a monumental task...and may be the very future of some 3rd party devs in the future.

The biggest challenge that never had to be faced before (at a world-wide scale at least)...is that the 3d positioning of light emitters now is relevant, since they actually cast illumination.   That folks...can start an entirely new cottage industry if someone took the time to map each emitter in a given area to match the mesh elevation of that scenery.

Hmmmm...did I just kick-start a new industry in our hobby? 😂

 

Edited August 22, 20205 yr by Steve Dra

On 8/21/2020 at 7:57 AM, PilotPete99 said:

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

So funny did the exact same thing with the Baron over LA. Had exact same reaction 🙂

12 minutes ago, bonchie said:

Yes, it looks much worse and isn't dynamic.

Man, it’s totally different, MSFS night lighting is in a whole new level. I fail to see how someone thinks they are the same level. I used to like x-plane’s lighting, but now I know it’s not that good. 
 

It can improve, sure, but it’s far from the old tech we are used to. 

6 minutes ago, ca_metal said:

MSFS night lighting is in a whole new level

It is the same, in P3D we have dynamic lighting but it’s limited because it’s too much to run these locally, in MS3020 these are run on a server farm not single pc, the effect is exactly the same there, 

let me raise a more important question... and I can see LM choice there limiting dynamic lighting to airport area on their platform,

where is the value beside bragging rights in running dynamic lights for all streets? The intended effect will never come to play unless goofing around wouldn’t it? (or if lights were suspended 1000ft in the air 😆)

4 minutes ago, iCann said:

It is the same, in P3D we have dynamic lighting but it’s limited because it’s too much to run these locally, in MS3020 these are run on a server farm not single pc, the effect is exactly the same there, 

let me raise a more important question... and I can see LM choice there limiting dynamic lighting to airport area on their platform,

where is the value beside bragging rights in running dynamic lights for all streets? The intended effect will never come to play unless goofing around wouldn’t it? (or if lights were suspended 1000ft in the air 😆)

No it’s not. Totally different night environment. It’s way more natural/realistic. The environment blends way better.

Clouds/lights/air, everything working together as it should. Flying MSFS at night is nothing like flying P3D/FSX at night, and I’m talking about P3D/FSX with thousands of dollars with add-ons vs default MSFS.

Also P3D’s dynamic light looks odd, it might the rest of the environment doesn’t match, but who knows.

But, well, I respect your opinion, but totally disagree with it.

1 hour ago, Steve Dra said:

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). 

This, all day...this. When you fly over a city, the underside of the plane gets illuminated by the glow. When you park next to an FBO with lights on INSIDE THE BUILDING casts out through the windows and that light illuminates the plane, the ground...the environment. Sure the lighting can and will be tweaked over time, but man, this is like nothing we've ever seen before...and this is without DX12 and Ray Tracing...

In fact, the only flaw I've found with night lighting so far is that the animated ground people don't cast a shadow when you rudely drive up to them with your taxi lights on...lol

I can't help observing that the fact we are now debating the details of night lighting, waves on the beach, the fact that my favorite gas station isn't there, etc. and how these features compare to the real world, shows how much things have changed in a blink. The standard of comparison is now, for the first time, not really earlier sims but the earth itself. By that standard MSFS of course falls short, but holy cow, look where we are compared to a week ago!

28 minutes ago, iCann said:

It is the same, in P3D we have dynamic lighting but it’s limited because it’s too much to run these locally, in MS3020 these are run on a server farm not single pc, the effect is exactly the same there, 

The lighting is not rendered on a server farm; in fact nothing is 'rendered' anywhere but your PC. The only thing coming from the servers are ortho images - the photoreal terrain textures and the photogrammetry for the few cities that support that. The rest is rendered through the graphics engine of the application on each of our PCs, by our GPUs.

3 minutes ago, cwburnett said:

In fact, the only flaw I've found with night lighting so far is that the animated ground people don't cast a shadow when you rudely drive up to them with your taxi lights on...lol

Well they deserve to be blinded by our taxi lights with the way they misbehave...walking directly into the path of running A320 NEO engine...not getting sucked in like they would in real life.  This game is a joke!  I want my money back!🙄

I was looking at your rather impressive list of aircraft in your sig and realized I paint too much (or did) when I realized that I've painted every one of them except the FSW's and the DC-8 (I had the other one).  I tried a few  FSW L35s but they used mirrored textures of some maps that map it impossible to paint text on the right/left side...can you say wingtip tanks?)   Not sure if I'll dip my aging toe into painting in MSFS....but I'm sure I be tempted. 🙂

 

 

 

15 minutes ago, cwburnett said:

in fact nothing is 'rendered' anywhere but your PC.

lights will still be there in offline mode?

if so that is impressive!

Edited August 22, 20205 yr by iCann

1 minute ago, Steve Dra said:

Well they deserve to be blinded by our taxi lights with the way they misbehave...walking directly into the path of running A320 NEO engine...not getting sucked in like they would in real life.  This game is a joke!  I want my money back!🙄

LOL, that's true. I had to turn off the ground vehicles because it seemed to me, that when they saw me on the only taxiway at the airport, they all made a beeline for the taxiway, drove right towards me and then stopped 50' in front of me. And just waited. And waited. And waited. They're literally after me! The little cargo/baggage forklift driving the length of the runway was good times, too.  My favorite, though, is spawning into a parking spot that's basically backed into a corner with vehicles blocking both wings. I feel like an airline that didn't pay its airport fees...

 

1 minute ago, Steve Dra said:

I was looking at your rather impressive list of aircraft in your sig and realized I paint too much (or did) when I realized that I've painted every one of them except the FSW's and the DC-8 (I had the other one).  I tried a few  FSW L35s but they used mirrored textures of some maps that map it impossible to paint text on the right/left side...can you say wingtip tanks?)   Not sure if I'll dip my aging toe into painting in MSFS....but I'm sure I be tempted. 🙂

You don't know me, but I know you.. lol 😉

I sure hope you take to some painting for MSFS. You're a fixture in my P3D simobjects folder...

2 minutes ago, iCann said:

lights will still be there in offline mode?

if so that is impressive!

Yes they are. And still dynamic and all. The lights are the same, online or offline.

12 minutes ago, cobalt said:

for the first time, not really earlier sims but the earth itself. By that standard MSFS of course falls short, but holy cow, look where we are compared to a week ago!

It is an amazing time to be a simmer without a doubt and where this has has the potential to go is mind-blowing.

As far as MSFS falling short...we can all agree on that realistically (I mean the whole world can't be rendered to a finite detail level) , however....being a guest on this planet for 58+ years, having the chance to live/visit in many parts of it, courtesy of the U.S. Navy...flying to some parts in MSFS and seeing landmarks that evoke a visceral response from brain synapses firing from memories of decades long past......totally unexpected...out of the box: (or ever in a flightsim)

The drive-in theater where I had my 1st kiss...back in the early 70s, while my Dad was stationed and the Naval Station in Rota, Spain.

The moment I flew over this alone was worth the price of the sim! 😉

 

  

1 hour ago, iCann said:

It is the same, in P3D we have dynamic lighting but it’s limited because it’s too much to run these locally, in MS3020 these are run on a server farm not single pc, the effect is exactly the same there, 

let me raise a more important question... and I can see LM choice there limiting dynamic lighting to airport area on their platform,

where is the value beside bragging rights in running dynamic lights for all streets? The intended effect will never come to play unless goofing around wouldn’t it? (or if lights were suspended 1000ft in the air 😆)

It is quite literally not the same. Even past dynamic or not, it does not look nearly as good. We've all seen those P3D lights in game. Stop trolling.

Edited August 22, 20205 yr by bonchie