My only complaint with the night lighting is that it has all the back roads in my little town lit up like downtown Las Vegas. Most of these roads are dark IRL. So this kinda damages my immersion... Anybody know of a setting I can change to turn off these street lights when I'm flying over rural areas?

Yeah same in the mountains between Canon City and West Cliffe in Colorado! I wonder if I can edit the scenery in the sdk to remove said lights. I also wonder how it calculates where lights should be placed because a lot of the roads also are correct and don’t have lights!

Someone in the official forum found out, that they simply use the same low res image for night lighting (at high alt.) as in the world map overlay.

See here: https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/dev-night-light/130529/23?

The night lighting is wondrous in most areas, but doesn’t look too great over cities from altitude, and the default airports night lighting is butt turrible.  All of it is better than fsx/p3d night lighting.

xplane night lighting is pretty special.  Really the only thing that xp has that I see as clearly superior.  But I am generally happy with msfs night lighting,  just those default airport terminals at night, ugh..

Edited September 1, 20205 yr by ShawnG

2 hours ago, ShawnG said:

All of it is better than fsx/p3d night lighting.

Yep... I remember paying lots of hard earned money on orbx scenery textures of the globe and many USA regions just to find out that flying at night from up high I could see no city lights. 

Im sure we’ll see some mods or tweaks in the near future but right now I’m more than impressed with the lighting.

Cloud reflections are really a big leap forward in this SIM and as the sun sets watching the line of darkness move from east to west as the light follows the sun. Did a flight from DEN to LAX last night, departing at dusk. I was gobsmacked as to how real to life it all looked.
 

 

I wouldn't say its awful.  Wouldn't even complain about it really and say that its bad but I still personally find I like X-Plane's night flying better. But clearly that is a pretty subjective opinion.  Certainly better then what FSX gave us in any form. 

On 8/29/2020 at 2:52 PM, 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.

 

 

It's an extremely subjective issue. I never found an issue with it in testing or upon release. As usual the few that don't like it have been very vocal on various forums.

On 8/29/2020 at 11:08 PM, IdleTalk said:

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

MFS dont have lit textures in citys but dynamic lights, just try to fly ur plane up close and u will see the lights iluminates your aircraft aswell as the cars that drive on the road.

On 8/30/2020 at 5:09 PM, Keto Ketchup said:

My only complaint with the night lighting is that it has all the back roads in my little town lit up like downtown Las Vegas. Most of these roads are dark IRL. So this kinda damages my immersion... Anybody know of a setting I can change to turn off these street lights when I'm flying over rural areas?

Its difficult to make those roads to not have lighting if theres no data that tells wich have streetlights and not.