A complaint with past sims was the pathetic road lighting in an out of towns.  MSFS seems to have nailed it.

Cheers

bs

Wait until Oct 19th and its going to get a hell of a lot better. 

What I hope improves is the individual light source, the bulb or orb, whatever you wish to call it. Needs to be more realistic. Having square shaped aircraft lights seen on AI in the distance looks terrible. They really need to do away with the legacy FSX "floating" lights. For a modern nextgen flight sim, I am hoping that they will eventually come around and continue to fine tune them to make them look more realistic.

They should dim runway lights. They are way brighter then real life. 

9 minutes ago, spitzer45 said:

They should dim runway lights. They are way brighter then real life. 

In truth, High Intensity Runway Lights (HIRL) have 5 settings...from pretty dim to ridiculously bright.  Medium intensity lights (MIRL) have 3.  But, you're right...on clear nights they're kept at the lowest setting and they're off during the day.  Also, strobes don't come on until visibility goes below 3 miles and rotating beacons don't come on unless it's after sunset or when the field is IFR.

MSFS has amazing lighting, but there is definitely room for improvement when it comes to roadways/city lighting.

Edited October 18, 20214 yr by CarlosF

31 minutes ago, CarlosF said:

there is definitely room for improvement when it comes to roadways/city lighting.

Exactly what is discussed in this thread on the official forums (750+ votes, 1,3k posts, 36k views). Here's a summary (by user @GrilledChippie):

• Night light orbs too big, fuzzy, doesn’t decrease with distance. Users prefer smaller and sharper “point lights” light orbs that gets smaller with distance (THIS IS THE PRIMARY POINT).
• Need more light sources other than street lights. Buildings on lower LODs need to have illuminated windows or some sort to create more randomness at distances.
• Need more variety in light colours, brightness, and placement (to avoid night lights from looking to uniform)
• Sepia looks weird as, makes the ground glow. Need to find better alternative (note pre-computed night texture by Grinde81 to be considered)
• Night lights continued on in an unrealistic way, after buildings and vegetation no longer drawn. This creates effect like “tron grid”. Distant “left-right” string of lights after buildings/vegetation no longer drawn, must be randomised.
• Night lights on rural area needs to be more randomised and spaced out (if impossible to identify and remove individually per area).

Truth is though, that "the community" asked for improvements from the beginning. "We" were heard, had a SU and that's how "we" ended up with the sometimes TRON-like grid of evenly big light orbs that some, including me, find inferior to the night lighting at launch, although that had it's issues with draw distance and the omnipresent sepia mask.

But- as always - this is highly subjective and I envy everyone who is content with the current status.

Edited October 18, 20214 yr by Tom_L

MSFS is the first simulator EVER I like flying at night. In comparison to P3D it's - wait for it - night and day.

On 10/18/2021 at 2:58 AM, fakeflyer737 said:

Wait until Oct 19th and its going to get a hell of a lot better. 

I missed lighting being mentioned, what’s the official word on the improvements?

4 hours ago, Carts85 said:

I missed lighting being mentioned, what’s the official word on the improvements?

According to the last MS/Asobo Q&A video, it sounds like they have improved the sepia mask so that it is not visible so close anymore.  They have added many more lights and pushed the sepia masking further out.  Also, the issue with the big blurry lights on ultra-wide screens and 4k have been fixed.  Looking forward to both of these!

personally I found Xplane 11 at night way better than MSFS, especially the road traffic. 

17 minutes ago, Ianrivaldosmith said:

personally I found Xplane 11 at night way better than MSFS, especially the road traffic. 

Although I never cared much for the overall XP lighting due to the light 'popping in' effect...I agree that the road traffic was awesome.  Would like to see that type of effect in MSFS at some point.

I agree with all the points concerning night lighting mentioned in Tom_L‘s post. Last week I flew to Madrid (nice city by the way) and the flight back was a night flight. It occurred to me once again that the sepia mask and the size of the orbs give it a rather unrealistic look. Although there was some sort of faint glow over settlements in the distance (I guess it depends on humidity), it looked nowhere near what we see in the sim. Everything that was not directly illuminated by a light source was pitch black, also from close distances. And the orbs look much smaller of course. The lights of the road traffic was very visible too, that was nicely done in XP. I‘m sure the update will improve things a little, but reading the patch notes I don‘t believe it‘ll be the ultimate night lighting update many of us are hoping for.