Blown away by night lighting, dont get the complaints

[767lover 285]

I just cannot believe how good it is. I heard some people complaining about the MSFS night lighting to be like FSX (because of baked-in night textures) but I wonder what drugs these complainers are on?

I find the lighting extremely immersive and arguably the best part of the graphics.

 

 

[SirDan 471]

It's all in the setup really. Some get lucky and have all the stars line up for them and things work. look great. Others have computers set up to run other Flight Sims and well things might not go so well for them or they just have bad settings. But yeah the night lighting looks great for me also. 

Edited August 29, 2020 by SirDan

[flyinpilot212121 724]

18 minutes ago, 767lover said:

I just cannot believe how good it is. I heard some people complaining about the MSFS night lighting to be like FSX (because of baked-in night textures) but I wonder what drugs these complainers are on?

I find the lighting extremely immersive and arguably the best part of the graphics.

 

 

I agree ten fold...the very best night lighting I’ve ever seen in a sim...What was amazing was the glow of the city lights in the distance bouncing off the cloud base! That did it for me.

[aleex 551]

Have you tried XP at night? Have you tried XP + Extended night lighting free addon? 

If you haven’t, then is reasonable you don’t understand it. I suggest you to look for some photos. If you have, then the difference is obvious. And I would say even the orange ugly textures of default XP for long distance looks better than the ugly sepia mask that exist now on MSFS. 

And as has been said, this is not about the lighting effects on clouds or other graphics things, which is obviously better compared to XP. Is about the Lights itself at high altitudes. 

Edited August 29, 2020 by aleex

[Carts85 1,203]

I think the issues people are raising relates to the altitude. Low altitude the night lighting looks great to me anyway, at cruising altitudes is where it seems to be lacking. Am sure it will be addressed. There’s bigger issues that need sorting first.

[Alpine Scenery 1,609]

I prefer XP night lighting as well, to me its not the color as much as the consistency and the sharper looking lights in Xplane 11 vs. the blurring of the lights in the distance in MSFS.

That said, there are some custom night lighting areas that Orbx did even in P3D and FSX that looked really good. I think it was some airports in Alaska where Orbx knocked it out of the park, and they were better than Xplane's default night lighting.

However, if you just randomly pick an average city spot in any game, XP 11 will generally have better looking night lighting than the others, but airports just have a lot of variance in every sim.

Edited August 29, 2020 by SceneryFX

[SirDan 471]

Just going through the X-forums , screenshots just in case I forgot something but    nope still looks the same lol rip

[Alpine Scenery 1,609]

I've used various lighting mods in XP11, some are better than others, the problem with night lighting in all these sims is consistency and often too much orange, none of them have it perfect. There is a lot of orange in real life, but some cities have much less orange than others in RL...

[jon b 2,050]

I was amazed/amused while taxing out in the dark to see some of the occupants of nearby houses watching TV with their curtains open, there’s a blue flickering light Coming from the odd window!

However yes I would agree, the standard XP night lighting of highways stretching off into the distance remains the best on any platform 

 

[Danno 192]

Loving the night lighting too. One night feature I was pleasantly surprised to see was the flashlight in a dark cockpit. Nice touch.

 

 

[dtrjones 356]

There as still more work to do with the night lighting but overall the effect is decent 500-5000 feet in the air. Overall I do like it though especially when 3PD add downtown buildings with night lighting rather than the photogrammetry or residential skyscrapers in downtown at night which are pretty bad.

 

[flyinpilot212121 724]

5 minutes ago, Danno said:

Loving the night lighting too. One night feature I was pleasantly surprised to see was the flashlight in a dark cockpit. Nice touch.

 

 

That’s is a nice touch! Glad it was implemented.

[IdleTalk 8]

Pre-made LIT textures are mandatory in order to cover whole terrain to the horizon at FL200+

MSFS did it very well and effectively. I think they took the right decision.

X-Plane's method seems to be fancy and fundamental solution, but it's very ineffective and visually not so realistic.

Earlier versions X-Plane 11 (till 11.20) didn't have LIT texture for night terrain, maybe because it's devs were too proud of their new night lighting. 

But everything was pitch black at higher altitude because their "real" lights sources were shut down due to LOD distance, and light points were abruptly popping in as you fly nearer to ground and terrain tiles in front of your flying coarse.

I remember it because I had to make LIT textures for X-Plane 11 out of X-Plane 9 LIT textures.

https://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/files/file/42198-urbantexture_mod/&tab=comments#comment-236838

[captain420 3,099]

7 hours ago, 767lover said:

I just cannot believe how good it is. I heard some people complaining about the MSFS night lighting to be like FSX (because of baked-in night textures) but I wonder what drugs these complainers are on?

I find the lighting extremely immersive and arguably the best part of the graphics.

 

 

That's what I thought too until I finally flew above FL180 in a dense city area and saw the dreaded ugly "sepia" or what appears to be like a moon surface. It looks absolutely terrible. Granted if you fly at low altitudes then you won't notice this and will think it looks amazing like I once did. The higher you fly the more ugly the night lighting looks in these dense areas.

Edited August 30, 2020 by captain420

[MikeT707 1,181]

13 minutes ago, captain420 said:

That's what I thought too until I finally flew above FL180 in a dense city area and saw the dreaded ugly "sepia" or what appears to be like a moon surface. It looks absolutely terrible.

I agree. This issue is when you are at a high altitude. When you are at a lower altitude it looks great. Go to a city and get to a high altitude and you will see that the city loses its individual lights and instead becomes a glowing texture. 

What is worse is the parts that glow in a Sepia color are reversed. What I mean by that is in low altitude, the streets are lit and the buildings and ground are dark for the most part, but at altitude the streets become dark and the buildings and ground becomes lit.

Look at the picture below, which is from someone on the flightsimulator.com forum. Also look at the video, which was made by a different person on the flightsimulator.com forum. This has been an issue for quite some time and from what I have heard, an alpha version from some months ago actually displayed lights in the distance and not a Sepia color mask which makes that wrong parts glow and look odd.