Hi everyone,

I'm not a night flyer (except for transcontinental flights) and my preferred time for (VFR) flying in the sim is either early morning or late afternoon/early evening.

The reasons are:

1. The landscape is beautiful at dawn/dusk, the light is sweet and easy on the eyes, except if you look at the sun of course. By the way, I noticed that many promo screenshots are done at dawn/dusk.

2. At other times of the day, the light is 'blinding' and the scenery is kind of 'washed'. But perhaps that's the way it is in real life.

How about you guys? I'm curious.

1 minute ago, Simicro said:

Hi everyone,

I'm not a night flyer (except for transcontinental flights) and my preferred time for (VFR) flying in the sim is either early morning or late afternoon/early evening.

The reasons are:

2. At other times of the day, the light is 'blinding' and the scenery is kind of 'washed'. But perhaps that's the way it is in real life.

Yep, same here.  I agree completely with your point 2.  When MSFS was originally launched the lighting scheme was absolutely spot on.  However, for whatever reason, when the sim updated to get it into the XBox enviroment last year we lost this.

A great pity in my opinion. 

Same as you, Never Night or just "Night" at start or end.

If its winter here in the UK and its "night" I will use Real weather as always but pull the clock back to day/sunset or day/sunrise.

Edited June 4, 20224 yr by Nyxx

15:24

I'm not joking! 😄

I was having a lot of problems with that overdone eye adaption of the lighting outside (worse when using TrackIR) and one day, I had the perfect flight, where the lighting was just right.   I checked the sim time and it was 15:24, and now - unless I particularly want a dusk or dawn flight - I tend to set the time to 15:24.   It's light and bright but reduces the overexposure of noon flying.

Thanks all for participating to this thread.

Thanks for the 15:24 tip, Bill.

I'll give it a try 🙂

I like the golden hours (dawn / dusk) and night.  

I don't particularly like the daylight hours because of the way MSFS handles HDR.    It assumes that you have a 10,000 nit monitor (virtually nobody does).

The sim needs a slider.  Without one,  you either crush the blacks or blow out the highlights.  This video talks about Xbox,  but the pc has the same issues.

 

Edited June 4, 20224 yr by Waldo Pepper

I try and fly like the Airlines, any time day or night. 

I really don't have any preference.  If it's nice and sunny, I'll fly just about anywhere to explore.  Especially within a 100 mile radius of home.  I'll take a night flight every once in awhile, to a location I'm familiar with, just to test my skills of landing at night.  I even like to fly in storms.  Mainly to experience the atmospheric conditions on the plane, especially with real gusty winds.  The plane will definitely, jerk and get pushed around.  I'm on east coast, but I like to create flight plans for areas I'm not so familiar with.  For instance, I like to fly around the massive amount of islands in the upper northwest.  From Seattle to Anchorage.  Many times I'll select a float plane so I can land and visually cruise around on the water.  There are many little airports (landing strips) as well.  And there's just about any flavor of weather up there too.

Edited June 4, 20224 yr by redjr

Night is pretty boring to me it's pitch black and can't see anything. I'm more of a real weather daytime Pilot and I like to fly to nice island destinations that people go to for holidays.  Been enjoying flying the Fenix A320 around the Med, West Africa, Japan and Australia. 

Edited June 4, 20224 yr by VBHB

I use real weather and time almost always.

Sometimes I only have availability at night to sim so I'll change it to day so I can see stuff haha.

8 minutes ago, VBHB said:

Night is pretty boring to me it's pitch black and can't see anything. I'm more of a daytime Pilot and I like to fly to nice island destinations that people go to for holidays.  Been enjoying flying around the Med, West Africa, Japan and Australia. 

They need to fix this its terrible - drives me nuts 

Oh did they forget to pay the electric bill at the airports - even fsx had lights at the airports - what are they thinking - these are basic needs

Edited June 4, 20224 yr by Richard Sennett

I always use real time. So it depends on whether it's summer or winter. Since I mostly have time flying in the evening hours, obviously it's getting dark early, so it's the same in the sim. Now, since it's summer time, I enjoy the becautiful landscapes. I have to agree, that I don't like flying at around noon. Light is bad and the textures look odd. I am in real life it's the same, just try to go around noon and try to shot nice photographs. Not easy task to do. However, I maybe there will be some improvements within next updates.

To add another point! I am satisfied with the textures at noon in the sim, but I never enjoined flying at night in a flight simulator before. It's just amazing, even you don't see the nice landscape it's fun.

I too prefer early morning or late afternoon flights. There is something magical about northern Norway and Finland between 1:30AM and 3:30AM local time at least in the spring.

1 hour ago, ryanbatc said:

I use real weather and time almost always

Talking of weather - Rex Weather Force has always had an issues with an fps hit on the best quality settings.  However, I had always been flying GA, so it was noticeable.  Since I purchased The Fenix A320 and PMDG 737 this is far less of an issue because airliner flying is more or less straight most of the time.

Rex produces spectacular skyscpapes that live weather just can't match. My last flight was Dublin to Milan at FL350.  Approaching Italy there was an area of storms.  Towering CBs were punching through a layer of cirro-stratus, which were throwing shadows onto the CBs below.  Switching to live weather was a real disappointment.  The CBs were underwhelming with no high layer cloud to throw shadows - the lighting thus looked flat.

Live weather has its moments, but if you are airliner flying, give rex a go.

 

2 hours ago, redjr said:

For instance, I like to fly around the massive amount of islands in the upper northwest.  From Seattle to Anchorage.  

The San Juan islands?

Yes please 😎