Yes, that's exactly what I'm referring to. It looks like you just landed on the moon or something. Looks like the ground is covered in this sheet of yellow snow. I really hope they fix that. Cannot do any high altitude IFR flights because of that.

4 hours ago, MikeT707 said:

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. 

 

 

As I (unfairly) compared current night lighting of MSFS at higher FL with that of earlier version of XP11, I thought MSFS doing well because it's a lot better than nothing, which earlier XP11 has to offer.

But your first picture seems awful to me as well. It's not good. Just barely tolerable.

Your second video made me shocked! Is there really so easy and shallow method to create night terrain textures out of daytime satellite images? Then it's understandable why MSFS devs took such method to cover whole planet.

If devs want to correct that reversed night texture globally, then they should have correct nighttime satellite images of whole planet. I doubt even Google have such database since there's very little use except for flights.

Maybe alpha version had correct nighttime satellite images, but these seem to be dropped out because inconsistency for global application.
We'll see if some handmade area have correct night textures and if they are seamlessly integrated to generic inverted night textures.

 

Yeah I flew from JFK to LAX at night and was blown away from the lighting.  Kudos!

The night lighting is fantastic. If it seems dull ("sepia"), it's your color settings. My lighting is gloomy and warm....

 

Although it still needs work(the sepia filter issue), the night lighting in MSFS is miles and miles better than Xplane. There is no comparison.

33 minutes ago, Baber20 said:

Although it still needs work(the sepia filter issue), the night lighting in MSFS is miles and miles better than Xplane. There is no comparison.

I think that's apples and oranges. MSFS has a much broader approach resulting in a beautiful nightscape. Technologically, X-Plane's approach is still remarkable, and in some cases (for example LAX approach) it's really, really good. The main issue is that X-Plane's lights obey to the LOD, making them pop in at a certain altitude, and generally losing appeal the higher you go.

I don't understand why not just use the sim to their advantage.

  If you have a sim that has satellite or aerial imagery for the planet and you also have an existing light network then you should be able to force all that lighting to stay on to the altitude at which the original aerial imagery was taken (or higher/whatever) and get rid of all clouds, take away all lighting sources from the terrain so that it is completely black and then go around the world taking "nighttime aerial photos".   The you can use this new texture set at night and blend in any features from the day texture set that might be lit by the moon.  They don't need to obtain imagery.  They need to make it.

and note that I havent even been above 5000 feet yet and only flew at night for the first time in Miami and it looked great.

and no - I dont know what Im talking about. its just an idea that occured to me while trying to make clouds for XP. (turn the sky black and take pics of distant clouds to produce a new singular cloud texture...didnt really work)

Edited August 30, 20205 yr by sightseer

The sepia filter at high altitudes is the biggest issue. Been complaining about it since the Alpha. But I understand what they are trying to do. It just needs tweaking. The color is a little off to me and it shows up in areas it shouldn't, causing that "lit moon" look at times. 

But I will say that the night lighting overall is the best in any sim. People that prefer XP11 prefer it because it's brighter and more "hollywood" for lack of a better term. But it's not realistic at all. Cities are not actually covered in overly bright, massive bulbs of light that lack variety. Those are the visuals of overexposed pictures and videos you see on the internet, not the human eye. 

MSFS' method produces a much more realistic scene except for the filter, which needs to be changed. 

I can’t say I’ve seen it at higher altitudes, I’ll have to give it a try. From down low it’s great.

I don't have this problem, night light looks fine, maybe it's some setting on your system that you set up for other sims or just how your graphics card represents it for some reason.
Yours looks like IR vision.

I actually do have one complaint about the night lighting and that is the color chosen for interstate lighting in cities...its too red on my system. 

Edited August 30, 20205 yr by sightseer

Just now, sightseer said:

I actually do have one complaint about the night lighting and that is the color chosen for interstate lighting in cities...its too red on my system. 

That problem I have, yes, also nonsense red lights on highways and many lights that are floating 300 meters from the ground. 

The red lights are the ones that I understand less, vehicles already have their head and tail lights...

Also the AI assumes that EVERY road has lights, even the ones going up the mountains and the Highways, this is sadly not true, especially for Italy and other not-so-road-safety-oriented European countries...

7 minutes ago, EmaRacing said:

Also the AI assumes that EVERY road has lights, even the ones going up the mountains and the Highways, this is sadly not true, especially for Italy and other not-so-road-safety-oriented European countries...

That’s a problem in XP11 and P3D with vector addons too. I don’t know how you fix that without doing it by hand. There’s no world wide gro-referenced database for street lights unfortunately. 

1 minute ago, bonchie said:

That’s a problem in XP11 and P3D with vector addons too. I don’t know how you fix that without doing it by hand. There’s no world wide gro-referenced database for street lights unfortunately. 

Night satellite photos could help?

Yeah XP night lighting was nice and then I deleted. 
Im sure where the fixes are needed they will work on them . So far every night or dusk experience i had with FS2020 has been great when it comes to the overall experience.