This has been in the sim since the beginning. Not speaking of being dazzled when you look directly at the sun but of the extreme contrast gradient variation which makes, in MSFS, outside colors washed out when you look down to your gauges or the panel very dark in the symmetric eye move upward.

This is IMO the biggest flaw I see in the sim and setting the eyedadaptation parameter to null in the usercfg doesn’t work for me.

10 hours ago, Bdub22 said:

but the lighting is lightyears ahead of XP12. 

No, it's not. Let's avoid spraying false info about the other sim as it's done on the other side, shall we ?

XP12 lighting and colors are extremely good at daytime. I'm not sure which one is best between XP12 or MSFS, but saying "lightyears ahead" is just wrong 🙂

 

 

With HDR I find the sky is always too bright and ground textures usually to dark unless flying around mid day in the summer.

Turning bloom off has helped quite a bit, (and added a few fps) but I do miss it.

It seems like msfs is not properly optimised for HDR to me.

As msfs is my PCs primary use, I have adjusted colour, contrast, brightness, gamma, digital vibrance, etc. as best I can to get the best quaity of picture possible.

Edited March 5, 20233 yr by cianpars

Go into your weather settings on the fly, and reduce Humidity.

1 hour ago, JYW said:

Go into your weather settings on the fly, and reduce Humidity.

This is the way.

Unless, of course, its live weather, and then you would have to switch to a preset and turn down the humidity there. And when we say turn it down, it means below 4. If you want as clear as can be, turn it down to 1.

I tried to make peace w/ HDR10 and this sim and it's just too over the top so disabled HDR in-sim.  I use it for other titles.  I find GFE's Detail Filter is fabulous for the right balance between cockpit and exterior and there is ample contrast range.

16 hours ago, Ianrivaldosmith said:

So, I’ve been using XP12 a lot recently. Just fired up MSFS (both sims are good, this isn’t a debate about sims!), and the glare of the sun with HDR on is way too bright. Seems the lighting in XP12 is more natural. 
My question is, is there anyway to reduce this? 

Yes there is Ian, very easily and very effectively. You need to install Nvidia Gforce experience. In this there is an option for filters and this has lots of setting for different looks. One of the options is to adjust contrast, brightness and in particular highlights (I think it's called that) this last one has a massive effect on that over blown look in the sky. These will in turn dramatically adjust the look of the sim. I have to go out now but if I get a minute when I return I'll post some more details.

38 minutes ago, Rockliffe said:

Yes there is Ian, very easily and very effectively. You need to install Nvidia Gforce experience. In this there is an option for filters and this has lots of setting for different looks. One of the options is to adjust contrast, brightness and in particular highlights (I think it's called that) this last one has a massive effect on that over blown look in the sky. These will in turn dramatically adjust the look of the sim. I have to go out now but if I get a minute when I return I'll post some more details.

Nice one thanks! 

6 hours ago, Daube said:

No, it's not. Let's avoid spraying false info about the other sim as it's done on the other side, shall we ?

XP12 lighting and colors are extremely good at daytime. I'm not sure which one is best between XP12 or MSFS, but saying "lightyears ahead" is just wrong 🙂

 

MSFS's lighting is light years ahead of XP 12. I agree with @Bdub22.  To each, their own opinion, but I agree with Bdub22 that XP 12 lighting is behind MSFS, by a lot.

42 minutes ago, Ianrivaldosmith said:

Nice one thanks! 

Hi Ian, just got back. Sure, download Nvidia Experience, don't worry, I thought it may have been bloatware, but from my experience it doesn't have any impact at all, at least not on my system. Besides, once you have made the corrections, you can forget about it, unless of course you want to use it to record video, which incidentally, it does a fantastic job. Once installed, you can access the settings page and make changes to whatever you need to change. Once you access the game filters page, you will be faced with different filter options, disregard all of them except Color and Brightness/Contrast. Each of the sliders will in turn affect the 'blown out' highlights, so you will have to experiment. But in the first instance I would suggest you drop the Highlights to zero, then tweak between the exposure, contrast and gamma. There is no right or wrong way on how to do this, it will be down to your preference and type of monitor. I have attached a pic that shows my settings, you could use that as a starting block. Let me know how you get on.  

 

GFE's Detail filter is hard to improve on...

 

I recently enabled bloom.  Yes a bit of a frame hit but the sun looks stupid without it.

cheers

sp

8 hours ago, Sky_Pilot071 said:

I recently enabled bloom.  Yes a bit of a frame hit but the sun looks stupid without it.

cheers

sp

I agree, it slightly softens the overall image too, which is nice. I have heard of others reproting a performance hit with bloom on, but I haven't experienced any hit, possibly because I'm running a 3090(?)

2 hours ago, Rockliffe said:

I haven't experienced any hit, possibly because I'm running a 3090(?)

Running with a 1080TI here and no problems with FPS when blooming is on.