3 hours ago, SAS443 said:

yes from a camera, not our eyes. 

Two completely different things.

Your eyes are not my eyes and a screen is not a retina.  

Edited November 4, 20205 yr by harrry

3 hours ago, HiFlyer said:

Honestly, with so many mechanical and technical issues with the planes themselves outstanding, is this the best use of our limited bargaining power with Asobo?

I believe Asobo's developers working on this part of the simulation are not the same working on the night lighting though. Most likely, but I could be wrong, the Technical Director is supervising the former whereas the Artistic Director is supervising the later. Both are certainly working together in defining how the vision translates to implementation but this shall be limited to a few cross-team developers.

2 hours ago, Tom_L said:

the discussion evolved as some admittedly versed users took over and the narrative changed in the direction of "pre-release-lighting was best". And the thread was kept alive with detailed descriptions and comparisons of photos and screenshots and good ideas how the whole lighting should be changed and ended up with 500 votes so far.

I concur: in my opinion these discussions about night lighting, besides the number of messages expressing strongly sided opinions, are also meant to sharing creative ideas to both directors if ever they get awareness of this feedback and these suggestions.

It might be a sad truth this could take even more similar discussions with the same versed users to take over once again before any single Asobo developer gets awareness of these matters but the forum and the voting system are the sole means for raising awareness to what matters the most to the users. On the flip side, the more these discussions are popping up the more chances they notice these versed users might be worth listening to and/or contacting.

Edited November 4, 20205 yr by RXP

37 minutes ago, harrry said:

Your eyes are not my eyes and a screen is not a retina.  

Very true. 🙂

So why link to a heavy compressed YT movie. What does it prove...

10 minutes ago, SAS443 said:

Very true. 🙂

So why link to a heavy compressed YT movie. What does it prove...

It does show that what is in the sim bears little resemblence to reality.  It may be that people think the earth is dark.  It is not.  Show a better one if you have one,  I could not find the one I wanted to paste.  

The camera is probably much more accurate than the eye eanyway which takes a few photons and with after processing makes them look like a complete person at 100 metres. They had something that was ok.  By tinkering they are makingit worse.  Lots more important things to be number one post, and I do wonder how many of these voters have seen from a darkened cockpit at night.  I think sadly that may apoply to some of the Asobo developers. It may be a good investment tfor Asobo to charter a plane and take some of them to see for themselves with the cabin lights out.  Of course not just in the moist skies of  Europe but in the dry Australian deserts too, maybe in the desert areas of the US too.  DO the real research then use it.

Edited November 4, 20205 yr by harrry

43 minutes ago, RXP said:

the forum and the voting system are the sole means for raising awareness

While I definitely think the developers should listen to you and other likewise versed "users" I think the pressure building from the votes ("Hey MS/Asobo, our topic has the most votes, so oblige!") may lead to bad decisions on developers side just to appease the "community".

We wanted smaller trees - we got ourselves a tree-LOD issue
We wanted lightning - oh yeah, lightning we got, lots of lightning
We wanted better night lighting - oh yeah, night lighting we got...

I think it would be the task for the community-managers and moderators to filter an essence of the feedback and suggestions within the respective threads and forward that to the developers, as I don't think they are able to follow everything that's going on, not even in top-voted threads. The last Q&A gave me some inkling in that direction. Maybe all the voting system does is building pressure for the "quick and dirty solution"????

P.S. I fully understand your standpoint!

33 minutes ago, Tom_L said:

I think it would be the task for the community-managers and moderators to filter an essence of the feedback and suggestions within the respective threads and forward that to the developers, as I don't think they are able to follow everything that's going on, not even in top-voted threads.

And to elaborate on this I would like to see the user community identify a basic category of what's wrong or what's desired, then Asobo could devise a method to tease out exactly what the communty favors by vote.  For example, if the issue identified and considered for address was roughly, 'The night-lighting system needs work', then Asobo for example could post a variety of different and distinct changes in the form of representative screenshots to the current night-lighting scheme and then community members can then be invited to vote on which one they prefer the most.  This way Asobo starts w/ what matters to the community, but then focuses the potential choices after which a vote determines which choice most prefer.

Interesting points from Tom and Noel.

Like the idea of an intermediate between any developer and us users, eg an

authority on Avsim.

 

 

One idea of my own was to have an early indicator sub-forum (maybe). In two parts a) and

b), for contented users and discontented users (and their comments). That my simplify things somewhat initially and

give a clearer indicator to the general reaction of said product. Just a thought, maybe not a good one.🙂

 

I dont want to deviate from the basic thread however...

3 minutes ago, icewater5 said:

Interesting points from Tom and Noel.

Like the idea of an intermediate between any developer and us users, eg an

authority on Avsim.

 

 

One idea of my own was to have an early indicator sub-forum (maybe). In two parts a) and

b), for contented users and discontented users (and their comments). That my simplify things somewhat initially and

give a clearer indicator to the general reaction of said product. Just a thought, maybe not a good one.🙂

 

I dont want to deviate from the basic thread however...

Just a quick comment on this..  I think the problem would be getting contented users..  I would venture that these people are probably happily flying and not spending a lot of time on the forums to put their point of view forward...     Perhaps it could be done with one topic, once per update with a pop-up vote when the sim starts or similar..  at least that way you get it in front of all users 🙂

Graham

Yeah you might have a point there🙂, im a bit new to the sight, contended users often

in the background.

 

Thx for feedback i might give it more thought just in case think of anything else 🙂

1 hour ago, Moria15 said:

Just a quick comment on this..  I think the problem would be getting contented users..  I would venture that these people are probably happily flying and not spending a lot of time on the forums to put their point of view forward...     Perhaps it could be done with one topic, once per update with a pop-up vote when the sim starts or similar..  at least that way you get it in front of all users 🙂

Graham

I had thought of an emailed request to all registered users to respond w/ a link to take you to a developed voting environment where Asobo would present a brief overview of the topic, then options to vote on.   I like the idea of at launch a pop up and request your vote to a page dedicated to that class of issue to address.

2 hours ago, Noel said:

 For example, if the issue identified and considered for address was roughly, 'The night-lighting system needs work', then Asobo for example could post a variety of different and distinct changes in the form of representative screenshots to the current night-lighting scheme and then community members can then be invited to vote on which one they prefer the most.  This way Asobo starts w/ what matters to the community, but then focuses the potential choices after which a vote determines which choice most prefer.

This would be a good starting point but I believe for this specific night lighting question, and many other similarly documented ad-nausea, Asobo might just want to pick from the discussion the most prolific people documenting and intervening, for private consultation first, so that this gives the issue a chance to be understood properly.

In the case of lighting there are some very constructive and documented posts like this one:
https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/terrible-night-lighting-after-patch-5/310086/318

Or my answer right after:
https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/terrible-night-lighting-after-patch-5/310086/319

And this one:
https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/terrible-night-lighting-after-patch-5/310086/322

And this comparison shot-for-shot:
https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/terrible-night-lighting-after-patch-5/310086/323

My other suggestions and rational approach to it (which my prove not good at all in the end, I'm genuinely wondering for this one):
https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/terrible-night-lighting-after-patch-5/310086/333

And this other suggestion:
https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/terrible-night-lighting-after-patch-5/310086/335

Which demonstrates there are similarly minded people experimenting with promising results:
https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/terrible-night-lighting-after-patch-5/310086/336

etc...

 

On 10/30/2020 at 11:04 PM, Alvega said:

They changed the lightning probably by mistake.

No it was intentional. They talked about in the Q&A. they also said they want feedback on it.

Edited November 4, 20205 yr by Tuskin38

On 10/30/2020 at 11:16 PM, desbean said:

They complained about lighting and now we have country roads lit up.

They were there before, they're just a lot more noticeable now. The hard part is where do they get the lighting data? Is there a database that can tell them where street lights are placed?
They can't hand modify every road on the planet, they need data to feed the sim so it can do it itself.

On 11/1/2020 at 1:58 AM, HiFlyer said:

Well..... Lets see if Asobo caters to one more try.... Then maybe a try after that..... And then.....

Well they said they wanted feedback, so it means they want to work on it.

On 11/2/2020 at 5:52 PM, Isaiah53six said:

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

They were there before, they're just a lot more noticeable now.

Edited November 4, 20205 yr by Tuskin38

36 minutes ago, Tuskin38 said:

They were there before, they're just a lot more noticeable now. The hard part is where do they get the lighting data? Is there a database that can tell them where street lights are placed?
They can't hand modify every road on the planet, they need data to feed the sim so it can do it itself.

Well they said they wanted feedback, so it means they want to work on it.

They were there before, they're just a lot more noticeable now.

There is no "lighting" database, except the light pollution map that NASA has, but that is not nearly granular to be of much use, it also doesn't differentiate between artificial light and natural light due to flame.  There is a database that classifies "types of roads".  This data can be used to describe the type of lighting to be used.  But it can't be used to differentiate light density or because a freeway going through downtown Denver is categorized the same way as a freeway going through the middle of the Rocky Mountains.  

From what I understand, and I could be wrong.  In past versions, they placed lights on all the roads as they are now, but put them on a probability to be lit.  The closer the light was to a "populated" area, the light had a greater chance of being lit.  However, even roads in dense urban areas were never 100% probability.

In highly dense areas, "most" of the lights were lit, but just enough stayed unlit so that we didn't have the uninterrupted string of pearls or the uniform dots in all the housing areas that we have now.

As the roads moved away from populated areas, the lights had a lower probability to be lit which led to sporadic lighting of road areas in rural areas, much like we see in real life.  It wasn't "real" as it never reflected real world conditions, but unless you specifically didn't know that there were no lights on that section of road, you never noticed.  

The upside to this is that because it was based on a probability, every night looked "slightly different".  I believe that's what gave a more dynamic and organic feeling.  We were flying over the same area, but the lighting was just different enough to be perceived.  So it felt alive.  

The biggest problem now is that roads are 100% lit which is not very realistic and neighborhoods now have a very uniform look because of the pattern of dots in some areas that is just too perfect.  And since this never changes, then it also leads to the night landscape looking sterile and static. 

Also, there is that strange issue where it appears another light map or layer is being added on top of the existing layer, leading to lighting dots appearing several hundred feet off the ground, or two sets of lights at two seperate layers lighting the same road.  I hope it is discovered that the addition of that second layer of lighting is simply a bug.

I hope they can return to this method of lighting.  It by no means will reflect "real life" because of the chance that there will be sections unlit, that should be lit, and vice versa.  But I think if we get an overall feel where it "feels" right , then that is adequate.   

Edited November 4, 20205 yr by wthomas33065