Flying at Night

[ETOPS3_TTV 37]

Hello All,

I hope everyone is doing well and excited for MSFS 2024. I know I am.  However, am I the only one that wishes MS will enhance or change the night sky (stars) texture map and overall feeling of depth perception? I know there are a lot of things to continue improving, but this is one area where I lose immersion and the drive to fly at night. 

Keep up the great work MS and looking forward to MSFS 2024. Cheers

[btacon 1,850]

I find the night sky and the city lights below to be quite engaging. What type of depth perception are you seeking as I’m pretty convinced that the Star Map in real life appears quite 2-d due to the extraordinarily large distances involved?

-B

[F737MAX 5,738]

12 minutes ago, btacon said:

I find the night sky [...] to be quite engaging

That's not a commonly-held view. For a lot of people, it's quite low res/blurry, stars are too large and overly bright over conurbations.

The city lights are far better than P3D, though *every* road has streetlights. A really nice touch is that you can see some residential buildings with flickering blue light in windows to emulate someone watching a TV in the dark.

[Tuskin38 6,645]

1 hour ago, F737MAX said:

That's not a commonly-held view. For a lot of people, it's quite low res/blurry, stars are too large and overly bright over conurbations.

The city lights are far better than P3D, though *every* road has streetlights. A really nice touch is that you can see some residential buildings with flickering blue light in windows to emulate someone watching a TV in the dark.

The amount of lit up windows on autogen buildings also depends on the time of day. Like you'll see less windows lit at midnight than you would at say 9PM.

Edited May 1 by Tuskin38

[cappy42 40]

It's not just the stars that look low res/blurry, so does the lighting of other planes as well.  In the air (and space) FSX looked so much better at night.

[RaptyrOne 1,457]

I also think night city lighting and stars are a weaker point in the sim. While daytime presents a convincing picture, night flying is less so. I might well be wrong but I recall the sim launching with better night textures than we have today. It regressed since launch.

[roi1862 611]

Main issue with night light is the short distance LOD. Its most noticeable at high altitudes. There is some LOD range that beyond it, you just see the orange low res Sepia effect from FSX. 

[Tierborn 197]

7 hours ago, cappy42 said:

It's not just the stars that look low res/blurry, so does the lighting of other planes as well.  In the air (and space) FSX looked so much better at night.

Better but not accurate.

[Tierborn 197]

9 hours ago, F737MAX said:

That's not a commonly-held view. For a lot of people, it's quite low res/blurry, stars are too large and overly bright over conurbations.

The city lights are far better than P3D, though *every* road has streetlights. A really nice touch is that you can see some residential buildings with flickering blue light in windows to emulate someone watching a TV in the dark.

I do not think you would see that in RL.

[DD_Arthur 1,105]

6 hours ago, RaptyrOne said:

I also think night city lighting and stars are a weaker point in the sim. While daytime presents a convincing picture, night flying is less so. I might well be wrong but I recall the sim launching with better night textures than we have today. It regressed since launch.

Agree very much. The decision to provide street lighting for every major road where none exists in real life was a bizarre one too.

 

[Christopher Low 5,398]

The stars were not that impressive in FSX and P3D. Certainly in the latter, they were visible with the Sun completely above the horizon. In addition, the range of "brightness" of the stars was very low, so identifying constellations was almost impossible. Another issue that I noticed was that all of the stars suddenly disappeared from view at the exact moment of sunrise, and only slowly started to reappear....one by one. Hardly what I would call realistic.

[Langeveldt 294]

Night lighting for me is one of the biggest letdowns of MSFS.  Fine at smaller distances, behind the LOD and at altitude, I just cannot fly with the sepia blobs.  The worst place is northern Italy, you literally just get yellow valleys without any definition.  When the rest of the sim looks so good, it is just so bad.  

[bobcat999 8,509]

Stars and the night sky are very poor, but strobes are awful as well. 
Many aircraft show a nice flash reflection on the ground but the actual light itself is feeble.  

This is one of the most important lights during night time.
Even Carenado had this perfect in FSX / P3D, so I don't know why Asobo can't do it.

[Danthepilot77 19]

Does anyone else's night lights look blurry from a distance? They never look sharp to me unless I zoom in or up close.

[Fiorentoni 4,401]

16 hours ago, Tuskin38 said:

The amount of lit up windows on autogen buildings also depends on the time of day. Like you'll see less windows lit at midnight than you would at say 9PM.

Really? I need to pay attention to that. That's quite a nice feature!