Hey everyone,

I've been seeing how one of the many popular comments has been about night lighting in 2024 and that folks want MS to adjust it (which I agree). I figured I'd share some pics from this evening when I was landig in Vegas. You can clearly tell how faint night lighting is in the real world when it comes to airports. And the images here shows KLAS. So not a small airport by any measure. But in the real world, airports from a distance look so faint in their lighting. Especially runway and taxiway lighting (from far away). Once you get within a couple miles, it does start to get brighter but definitely nowhere near the brightness you see in 2024.

Anyway, figured some people here might find this interesting.

https://imgur.com/a/A84KrM6

 

 

Edited December 6, 20241 yr by PiaggioPilot

I remember from flying lessons having trouble finding airports at night - the best example was flying to KDET-Detroit City Airport (Now called Coleman Young Airport). We were flying in from the south along the Detroit River to stay out of Class B. The airport is a bit north-north-east of downtown Detroit and for the life of me I couldn't see the airport even though we were 3 or 4 miles away with clear skies. You see I was looking for a brightly lighted airport which I thought is what the airport would look like from the air. My IP said look for the dark spot in the sea of lights and sure enough it was like a black hole where the airport was located. Now KDET is not big like KLAS but from the sky at night most airports in highly developed areas do indeed look like a black hole.

It's interesting in your second pic how of course the airport is very dark, and even the brightly lighted terminal area just looks like an extension of all the surrounding city light.

The night flying experience has been an issue since 2020. None of them are close to real life night flying, not close AT ALL.

21 minutes ago, rick celik said:

The night flying experience has been an issue since 2020. None of them are close to real life night flying, not close AT ALL.

Its been like this since the beginning of flight simming.  MS2024 should be better than it is though.

Edited December 6, 20241 yr by JBDB-MD80

5 hours ago, PiaggioPilot said:

But in the real world, airports from a distance look so faint in their lighting. Especially runway and taxiway lighting (from far away).

Yup, most IRL pilots will tell you that it's the absence of strong lighting that helps them locate an airfield in/near a city at night.

I like the illumination of the underside of clouds above conurbations. Other than that, the night environment in MSFS20 and 24 is disappointing.

2020 is , imho, more realistic than 2024 in the night lights department....

Edited December 6, 20241 yr by remcosol

Operated into Vegas for years in RW ops.

All those lights at vegas, lights everywhere, so many pretty lights… except for one place….the bloody runway centreline !

Why waste time and money on useless things like runway centreline lighting when we can make a big flashing ball covered in lights , unbelievable!

2 hours ago, F737MAX said:

Yup, most IRL pilots will tell you that it's the absence of strong lighting that helps them locate an airfield in/near a city at night.

I like the illumination of the underside of clouds above conurbations. Other than that, the night environment in MSFS20 and 24 is disappointing.

Going by videos of 2024 the lighting on the underside of the clouds is something I really like the look of. Other than runway/taxi lights it overall looks much better to me than my 2020. The lights seem to light up the ground better also. I suspect they overpowered the runway and taxi lights to help novices find the airport at night. 

2 hours ago, jon b said:

Operated into Vegas for years in RW ops.

All those lights at vegas, lights everywhere, so many pretty lights… except for one place….the bloody runway centreline !

Why waste time and money on useless things like runway centreline lighting when we can make a big flashing ball covered in lights , unbelievable!

Sorry for the off topic but we were behind a lot of the Data aspect of this and to your point, lights everywhere LOL

Lighting for the Las Vegas F1 Grand Prix: Each light covers ~150 sq ft so just over a quarter billion sq feet 🙂 

Quote

Lighting Up the Track

Including spares, we had a total of 1,700 of the Philips ArenaVision fixtures, so we also had 1,700 power supplies. Between those two items, we had to add five connectors, a custom clamp configuration, mode and address them in the shop. We had six crew in the shop building lights out for six weeks and then we delivered them. It was 11 semi-trucks worth of gear to move to the site. It was an interesting challenge where they would call the day before and say how many lights, they needed at which location. We had to nimbly respond to those requests.

A 3.8-mile track has very many work locations and the big challenge was coordinating that prep and delivery so that it aligned with street closures, when they had the truss up, and when they were ready for it. Working with Lex Products, we also helped design and manufacture 175 custom 480V power distribution racks that would be needed for the project. They would drop down to 60A 480V connectors that fed sub racks with 20A connectors. We put together the entire infrastructure, the MA network. We had 22 points that distributed data throughout the track, 7,500 meters of fiber, and a boat ton of data cable. We provided the consoles, the NPUs, and we programmed the track looks for them. In addition to the custom power distribution racks, we built custom mounting plates for everything as well as the cable assemblies. They utilized a three-pin locking connector on all their data cables, so we had to procure, build, or modify, and adapt everything to make it all work.

 

49 minutes ago, psolk said:

Sorry for the off topic but we were behind a lot of the Data aspect of this and to your point, lights everywhere LOL

Lighting for the Las Vegas F1 Grand Prix: Each light covers ~150 sq ft so just over a quarter billion sq feet 🙂 

 

That's great.  11 semi trucks to move the gear to the site. And I've got to use a paper straw because we are caring for the environment?  

Edited December 6, 20241 yr by Langeveldt

1 minute ago, Langeveldt said:

That's great.  11 semi trucks to move the gear to the site. And I've got to use a paper straw because we are caring for the environment?  

Don't forget the 2,500 tires for the weekend which to be fair is better than the 24 Heures races which go through ~ 13,000 tires  or 13 semi trailers for one race 🙂 

We refer to tires as black gold LOL 

As much as I'd love to see it like that - for the sim, and for "most" users, Asobo needs to make it more visible - otherwise you have people complaining about where the airport is.

And most users aren't the tiny niche of a niche here on avsim it's the people on xbox etc.  As it is now the taxiway lights are broken and I think on the stream they said the've fixed that.  But I doubt it'll ever look realistic.  I think the general night light is pretty decent though!

This was in the Vision jet last night coming out of the PSP area flying west towards PDZ, and looking south here at the Hemet-Ryan area

The Vision jet has a slight tint on the windows though so irl it would be a little brighter

One more huge factor when looking at real life night pics from a plane - exposure settings.  Mobile phones are not great for getting proper exposures so it's hard to say what's quite accurate.  

 

The taxiways in 2024 show up brighter than the runway light's in some cases in 2024, and needs fixing.

9 hours ago, PiaggioPilot said:

I've been seeing how one of the many popular comments has been about night lighting in 2024

This night lighting issue is highly subjective. I for one find it decent. On a computer monitor or TV screen it will never match real life!

I wouldn't think it is a high priority for Microsoft to address considering the lengthy list of more pressing issues to fix.

2 hours ago, desbean said:

I suspect they overpowered the runway and taxi lights to help novices find the airport at night. 

50 minutes ago, ryanbatc said:

As much as I'd love to see it like that - for the sim, and for "most" users, Asobo needs to make it more visible - otherwise you have people complaining about where the airport is.

That's what the assistance settings are for: Make it an option if you really want. But don't dumb down the sim for everyone.