Night lighting looks bad at high altitudes

[captain420 3,099]

I haven't really noticed this before since I fly mostly during the day time in low altitude VFR flights. But recently I did an IFR flight for the first time at night in the 787 I noticed that the ground looked like this yellow tone. It's very apparent when flying over large, dense urban areas and does not look realistic at all. In fact it looks horrible. I can't fly at night until this issue is fixed. At low altitudes it looks fine, although the individual lights can be a bit more crisp and defined instead of blurry. I should've taken a screenshot of what I'm trying to explain but there's a few threads on the official mfs forum regarding this with screenshots.

https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/dev-night-light/130529/3

https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/what-happened-to-the-night-lighting/169018/47

[Carlosx 48]

Yes, a very unfortunate known issue.

Especially unfortunate because it is essentially a downgrade. It looked way better "back in the days". 
And no one knows why they did that. It had nothing to do with performance.

[aleex 551]

Yup. Absolutely awful, I would say even worse than XP (the ground textures, not the graphics). 

I think the way XP does with the lights, plus the extended night lightning addon, should be the way to go for MSFS. And it isn’t heavy for FPS. 

[captain420 3,099]

Yup, comparing the night lighting with the alpha version, it looks like a step in the wrong direction. Not sure why they went backwards with this. That sepia tone effect on the ground looks extremely bad.

Edited August 28, 2020 by captain420

[SirDan 471]

But the stars oh man the stars look amazing

[captain420 3,099]

Stars do look very nice, but the moon can use some improvement

[Dillon 2,197]

41 minutes ago, captain420 said:

Yup, comparing the night lighting with the alpha version, it looks like a step in the wrong direction. Not sure why they went backwards with this. That sepia tone effect on the ground looks extremely bad.

Maybe this was done to work better on XBOX.  No other reason would explain a step back in the wrong direction.

Edited August 28, 2020 by Dillon

[alexcolka 183]

Noticed too this weird looking cities at high altitude at night, however what is so beatiful to me is this light reflection of the screens on the controls and all over the cockpit. Like paradise by the dashboard light.

Edited August 28, 2020 by alexcolka

[B777ER 2,486]

Night lighting looks like the whole scene is lit artificially. It looks just awful from high up altitudes. There is no way they looked at this prior to release and said it looks realistic. 

[UAL4life 239]

1 hour ago, Carlosx said:

Yes, a very unfortunate known issue.

Especially unfortunate because it is essentially a downgrade. It looked way better "back in the days". 
And no one knows why they did that. It had nothing to do with performance.

Ubisoft’d...

[rick celik 1,243]

Agreed, no idea why they downgraded the night environment. Looked much better before. 

[Dillon 2,197]

Not sure what you guys are seeing but I just did a high altitude flight tonight and it looks fine.  Didn't fly over a major city, I'll try that next time.

[captain420 3,099]

Just now, Dillon said:

Not sure what you guys are seeing but I just did a high altitude flight tonight and it looks fine.  Didn't fly over a major city, I'll try that next time.

You need to fly over a dense urban area to see what we're talking about. Make sure you're at high altitude, probably about FL180 and above.

[MikeT707 1,181]

I saw a number of images that were taken from a few months back, and I do have to say that night lighting definitely got worse and looks very bad at high altitudes.

Edited August 29, 2020 by MikeT707