8 hours ago, sd_flyer said:

I wrote above 5000 6000 feet at night. and yes you can get way lover than 16000 ft. And how do I know it? I've been flying for 20 years and have seen healthy people get hypoxic  easily especially at night. 

I find that hard to imagine. I go hiking at that heights regularly and I NEVER have experienced or met anyone who got hypoxia at that low an altitude

22 hours ago, janda said:

 there is no doubt that the night lighting is much worse than it was before … it looks more XPLANE now !!! Where the colors are???, everything is two-tone!!!, cities look lifeless … and those empty spaces where there was lighting before…
Let me say briefly, PLEASE FIX THE NIGHT LIGHTING, IT LOST ALL ITS UNIQUE CHARM !!!

 

Fully agree.
The night lighting is terrible now. Cities become almost invisible now and we see lots of roads illuminated, totally unrealistic.

 Please go back to version before update 5. 

Please dont, it's far better. maybe you guys have hardware issues.

As an interested bystander not yet running the sim, it looks like there is every doubt about the new 

night lighting. Lots of positive feedback as well, and going by the screen shots here it looks better imho.

Maybe this is immersion vs exact reality kind of thing.

I have to add my voice to the "it's worse than before" camp. Flying at FL420 last night over Canada, to see long strings of glowing spaghetti criss-crossing the otherwise realistically moonlit landscape was just nauseating. And anyone who believes that city lights are now more realistic has never flown above a city at night, and certainly not from a darkened cockpit. Lights might look like that on an overexposed photo, but not to the naked eye. I'm a photographer and amateur astronomer with a few hundred hours night time, so I've spent a bit of time outside at night.

25 minutes ago, Farlis said:

I find that hard to imagine. I go hiking at that heights regularly and I NEVER have experienced or met anyone who got hypoxia at that low an altitude

hypoxia is just lack of oxygen in the bloodstream.  It can happen at sea level if other conditions are present.  if you are hiking at those altitudes, you are probably fully fit, and acclimatized to it.  If you are in an aircraft cockpit which might not be properly ventilated, at an altitude you aren't accustomed to, and  you're a bit porky, and perhaps hyperventilating slightly due to a stressful flying situation, It can happen very quickly.

6 minutes ago, ShawnG said:

hypoxia is just lack of oxygen in the bloodstream

I used to right-seat for a chain smoker who flew night-freight in Bandits back in the 80s. He once passed out on me at 8000 feet. Came back to once down below about 5000.

Edited October 30, 20205 yr by gunther

Have to agree. Night lighting is a major step down from previous version. Looks very unnatural.

Comparing FS2020 lighting to X-Plane is unfair because FS2020 is still not rendering some of the key characteristics of aeronautical lighting.

In effect, runway and taxiway lighting consists in narrow beams of lights in order to make them 'invisible' past a certain angle:

For example when approaching a RWY09, you won't see the lighting of RWY36. This is the same for the taxiways so that you won't see a see of green dots but just the most relevant lines of dots in your direction.
 

Here are 3 screenshots comparing XP11, P3D5 and FS2020 at LFMN:

The screenshot I believe is with FS2020 v1.8.3 but the latest is nearly the same. Please don't pay attention to the GTN and GNS on the screen, I just didn't want to take 3 news screenshots. On the other hand they give you the location and direction of the shot!
 

XP11:

FS2020:

P3D5:

 

Directional Light Beam seen from 3 angles at LFPG in XP11:

 

 

 

FS2020 v1.9.3 showing holes in the runway lighting at Tokyo:

 

FS2020 PAPI to the wrong side of the runway at EGNX RWY 27:

XP11:

Real Life:

 

Actually I personally find the highway lights, the surroundings blackness and the small light dots found in real life spot on in the XP11 shot, including the taxiway green dots matching nearly 1 to 1.

PS: there is a cool feature, these shots are hosted in the FS2020 forum server and I've just posted the links here! If you open a private conversation with someone, maybe even just yourself if you can, you can drag and drop your pictures there and past the link here! There you get an add-free image hosting system!

PS: I'm not trying to say XP11 is superior to FS2020, I'm just using XP11 as a comparison point for aeronautical related lighting because I find it is the one closer to reality and easier to take screenshots with (instead of having to fly there and take pictures with a camera).

 

 

Edited October 31, 20205 yr by RXP

23 hours ago, janda said:

 there is no doubt that the night lighting is much worse than it was before … it looks more XPLANE now !!! Where the colors are???, everything is two-tone!!!, cities look lifeless … and those empty spaces where there was lighting before…
Let me say briefly, PLEASE FIX THE NIGHT LIGHTING, IT LOST ALL ITS UNIQUE CHARM !!!

 

Agree it looks absolutely terrible, they have no idea what they are doing.

The screenshots RXP posted supports my little theory🙂

For real world reality XP looks closer to me, yet i still prefer the look

of MFS, before i even knew which simulator they were.

Lighting is way better now - man oh man 

The only thing I am not thrilled about the Night Lighting is the mysterious high altitude (400 ft) lights or the double tier lights that are on some roads that seem to be there only for "texture".

Do the Halloween Landing challenge and you'll see what I mean. Are those power lines that are lit up?  They're too high to be anything else.

I want realistic lighting, not lighting for lighting sake.  I under stand some "red lights" on major freeways to simulate brake lights, but smaller roads as they leave urban areas most likely are not bathed in lights.

Another "bad" example, is go to Monument Valley at night.  I'm pretty sure state route 163 going through there is not lit up like a string of diamonds across the desert.  You might have the occasional car go buy, but you can't see street lights for miles.   

Don't get me wrong, I like the look thus far, they just need to tone it down a couple of degrees and get rid of random lights in the air that don't exist in real life.  

14 hours ago, wthomas33065 said:

they just need to tone it down a couple of degrees

 

[UPDATE] forget what I've said, with the latest v1.10.7 it seems the tone mapper is no longer over-exposing like before. It was a cool trick though back then!

 

This is another thing in FS2020 which I believe is not right: tone mapping.

The tone mapper is working really well during day time and it tries to maintain a balanced exposure (think camera auto-exposure mode).

However at night, because most is dark, I believe the tone mapper in trying to adjust the exposure is over exposing too much. It is very easy to compare:

1) Open the following file in notepad.exe:

C:\Users\your_login_name\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.FlightSimulator_#############\LocalCache\UserCfg.opt

2) Locate the Sharpen entry, change the value to 0, save the file.

{Graphics
  ...
  {PostProcess
  ...
  EyeAdaptation 1       <---- change 1 to 0

3) Fly at night!

You might find everything a little too dark though.

 

 

Edited October 31, 20205 yr by RXP

Very useful comparisons.  There does seem to be some directional effect to the lights from some angles (like the runway lights showing up as yellow and red as you approach the far end of the runway, but white when you look at the same lights from the opposite direction on approach), but agree it's not correct in most instances.

The biggest problem I have with night flying in MSFS is actually that none of the aircraft taxi or landing lights actually illuminate anything in a useful way from inside the cockpit.  I'm very surprised there is no post on the MSFS forums with 1000 upvotes for that.

Edited October 31, 20205 yr by marsman2020