20 hours ago, Elvensmith said:

To me it's not the appearance of the lighting, so much that every single track road through the remotest moorland seems to be fitted with continuous street lighting.

exactly 

Lights on rural roads that shouldn't be are definitely a problem, but there's more to it than that.  The magic light bulbs everywhere feel wrong for most areas.  Maybe flying over a major city looks ok, but for a small to mid sized area surrounded by suburbs, the lights are just way too bright. 

The comparison pictures from a few pages ago shows it perfectly.  Before, the lights were natural and followed the terrain.  Now, it just feels very much like some of the early lighting we'd buy for sims like FS2004.  Back then it was an improvement, but now it feels like a massive step back. 

I like the night light(n)ing quite a lot

I read a discussion somewhere where it's almost impossible to actually render lighting as IRL because there is no database that tells you what roads are lit and what is not.  There is only a database that states what type of road each one is.  So true realistic lighting takes manual manipulation which is just not practical.

Some have talked about an algorithm that would turn off lighting a certain distance but that would make all rural areas unrealistically dark, as there are some roads that are illuminated even in rural areas (like freeways).

Asobo's previous method, and I have to say I prefer it, was to have the lighting on a probability.  The closer the lighting was to urban areas, the higher probability of being illuminated.  In a sprawling city or suburbs, the lights would have 80% to 100% chance of illuminations, where as in the "sticks" the lights might have a 50% or less chance.  This would result in sparser lighting in rural areas and break up the "string of pearls" across the desert.  But then you'd have some who would get all hurt because their specific section of road is fully illuminated IRL and in the game it isn't.  Also, this would slightly change the pattern as each time you fired the game, it would be just slightly different.  Which is probably what made it look "more alive".  Neighborhoods didn't look exactly the same every time you fired up the sim.  

Night lighting is going to be a compromise, we might as well get used to that.  But I think their "randomizer" as a more suitable method and hope the switch back to that.

Edited November 2, 20205 yr by wthomas33065

37 minutes ago, wthomas33065 said:

I read a discussion somewhere where it's almost impossible to actually render lighting as IRL because there is no database that tells you what roads are lit and what is not.  There is only a database that states what type of road each one is.  So true realistic lighting takes manual manipulation which is just not practical.

Some have talked about an algorithm that would turn off lighting a certain distance but that would make all rural areas unrealistically dark, as there are some roads that are illuminated even in rural areas (like freeways).

Asobo's previous method, and I have to say I prefer it, was to have the lighting on a probability.  The closer the lighting was to urban areas, the higher probability of being illuminated.  In a sprawling city or suburbs, the lights would have 80% to 100% chance of illuminations, where as in the "sticks" the lights might have a 50% or less chance.  This would result in sparser lighting in rural areas and break up the "string of pearls" across the desert.  But then you'd have some who would get all hurt because their specific section of road is fully illuminated IRL and in the game it isn't.  Also, this would slightly change the pattern as each time you fired the game, it would be just slightly different.  Which is probably what made it look "more alive".  Neighborhoods didn't look exactly the same every time you fired up the sim.  

Night lighting is going to be a compromise, we might as well get used to that.  But I think their "randomizer" as a more suitable method and hope the switch back to that.

Agree.   And a Bubblehead would surely be an authority on artificial lighting. 😉

Still hoping for a night-lighting sub-section in the settings (or a 3rd party mod one day) that would let us control how we'd each prefer our night lighting to look, as it seems to be spilt 50-50 on this topic.

The night lighting looks absolutely terrible. I did a flight at night from KSEA-KSFO and the lights just do not look natural at all. The stand out way too much, even at high altitudes. Totally ruins the immersion during night flights for me. I really hope Asobo can further look into this to see what they can do to make it better. Comparing the night lights in the recent update #5 to what we had prior, I can say without a doubt that the night lighting prior to this look much better asides from the horrible sepia-toned textures.

Edited November 2, 20205 yr by captain420

8 hours ago, wthomas33065 said:

I read a discussion somewhere where it's almost impossible to actually render lighting as IRL because there is no database that tells you what roads are lit and what is not.  There is only a database that states what type of road each one is.  So true realistic lighting takes manual manipulation which is just not practical.

This is a valid point but I also believe there is a flaw in FS2020 road lighting implementation: in most roads light comes from cars, not poles.

If there is no database I concur they should be using probabilities based on a certain number of assumptions to derive most-likely visuals. But should they also make actual running cars emitting light this would certainly give some additional credibility to these visuals. I'm not certain but it might be XP11 is also adjusting traffic density, hence for road lighting, based on region (rural,urban,etc..) and time of day (well night).

7 hours ago, captain420 said:

The night lighting looks absolutely terrible. I did a flight at night from KSEA-KSFO and the lights just do not look natural at all. The stand out way too much, even at high altitudes. Totally ruins the immersion during night flights for me. I really hope Asobo can further look into this to see what they can do to make it better. Comparing the night lights in the recent update #5 to what we had prior, I can say without a doubt that the night lighting prior to this look much better asides from the horrible sepia-toned textures.

agreed. There are too many lights now.....some rural roads and highways should not have any lights.......not sure why they added more of them as they have

10 hours ago, wthomas33065 said:

Some have talked about an algorithm that would turn off lighting a certain distance but that would make all rural areas unrealistically dark, as there are some roads that are illuminated even in rural areas (like freeways).

I drove all the way across the US in both directions and frequently there are no light poles on freeways.  The light comes from cars, not from light poles. 

58 minutes ago, RXP said:

If there is no database I concur they should be using probabilities based on a certain number of assumptions to derive most-likely visuals. But should they also make actual running cars emitting light this would certainly give some additional credibility to these visuals. I'm not certain but it might be XP11 is also adjusting traffic density, hence for road lighting, based on region (rural,urban,etc..) and time of day (well night).

A good start would be to use the NASA Black Marble light pollution data to determine if the roads in a given area are illuminated or not. 

Someone did a demo here of what that might look like, it would at least be more plausible then what they have done now - https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/terrible-night-lighting-after-patch-5/310086/181

They also need to make the lights 'cut off' type, not spherical globes sending light in all directions.

1 hour ago, marsman2020 said:

A good start would be to use the NASA Black Marble light pollution data to determine if the roads in a given area are illuminated or not. 

Maybe not:

https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/night-lighting-terrain-emits-light/178647/170

In short, Black Marble data suffers from blooming artifacts caused by the very sensors used to capture the images. In this post there are 2 links to research material about this very issue. But I agree this looks a little better.

 

Edited November 3, 20205 yr by RXP

this is camera sensors

it glows

https://soperth.com.au/john-glenn-saw-perth-as-city-of-lights-14525

 

Edited November 3, 20205 yr by harrry

If I were tasked w/ trying to duplicate real world night lighting it seems a good start would be to view 100's of photographs of actual night lighting from various altitudes and in various environments and in different weather conditions.   I wonder what the team of folks w/ this task actually did to solve the problem.  It must be very daunting because this will vary I would think rather greatly over the planet.  They have a good start but needs fine tuning.  It would be cool if we had 4-6 examples, all significantly different, like some of the ones posted in this thread from various sources, then conduct a user poll w/ a message to all buyers to tune in and vote for the one that they prefer the most. 

1 minute ago, Noel said:

If I were tasked w/ trying to duplicate real world night lighting it seems a good start would be to view 100's of photographs of actual night lighting from various altitudes and in various environments and in different weather conditions

The problem is that the very nature of photography and exposure time tends to lead to the inaccurate conditions we see now.  Most photographs because of their extended exposures show lights as being brighter than we actually perceive and longer ribbons of light than we actually experience.  This is a case where the photographic evidence actually contradicts what we actually see and experience.

The night scape is a dynamic place,  Lights fade in and out due to motion, the interference of ground objects, The motion of vehicles, atmospheric conditions, etc.  It is never uniform, and to simulate such an environment would be difficult indeed.  So how do we take a dynamic environment, freeze it, but make it feel dynamic?

I think the way they did previous, was a good start.  Have lights fade in and out based on probability.  In dense areas, even a 5% chance of turning off would portray change while maintaining the overall feeling of high light density.   In rural areas, the opposite would be true.  a 5% or 10% probability would result is very sporatic areas of lighting but those would change as well.  

However, I think just taking a look at photographs actually leads us to what we have right now.  A very static and uniform view of lighting that although may be more technically accurate according to photographs, feels just wrong to the naked eye.

35 minutes ago, wthomas33065 said:

This is a case where the photographic evidence actually contradicts what we actually see and experience.

 >> Then the challenge is to edit the photograph so as to match the capture characteristics of our own vision.  Step 1:  take a photograph thru a very clear window in the aircraft.   Step 2:  now open the photo on your large laptop and edit it such that the photo matches what you see out the window.  Otherwise it's do it by pure memory, which seems less reliable.

So how do we take a dynamic environment, freeze it, but make it feel dynamic?

>> With some sort of algorithm I would supposed

I think the way they did previous, was a good start.  Have lights fade in and out based on probability.  In dense areas, even a 5% chance of turning off would portray change while maintaining the overall feeling of high light density.   In rural areas, the opposite would be true.  a 5% or 10% probability would result is very sporatic areas of lighting but those would change as well.  

>>This could come from video photography, observing what happens during flight, and designing the logic accordingly

However, I think just taking a look at photographs actually leads us to what we have right now.  A very static and uniform view of lighting that although may be more technically accurate according to photographs, feels just wrong to the naked eye.

>> If so, then that is because as you point out photographs aren't matching what we see out the window of aircraft, which once again seems like the photograph simply needs edited to match human capture and playback processes.  That could be done while sitting in the aircraft and editing the photograph to match what you see out the window, a very very clear window ;o)

 

Edited November 3, 20205 yr by Noel

Orbx Sydney. If you own Orbx Sydney fly around, at dusk and then at night... andenjoy. I never flew the earlier night lighting cause it looked like drab lighting they had baked in a  lousy day.+ yes, it looked realistic like looking out on a dull boring day. Only now I am enjoying night flight.

In P3D I bought pretty much bought all the Night Environment add ons. .cause it gave me something like this. Like the best night lighting. Not the average boring night lighting day. I can always create the boring realistic night by lowering the visibility or add bad weather.

 

Edited November 3, 20205 yr by Manny