Night lighting is 2024 is yet another of the big regressions from 2020.

The sepia mask is absolutely awful. The way you can see fields and details all lit up is terrible.

 

Then there is the way any lights on the ground light the sky and clouds up in a ridiculous way is completely unrealistic.

 

There is also the way you can see the Milky Way so clearly… Just rubbish.

 

Bad news to do with lighting for those still on SU1 as well. SU2 has completely broken airport ground lighting. Apron, taxiway, runway lights etc are just massive blurry blobs that look completely wrong.

 

They rely on a voting system and it seems that fixing an Airbus is more important than fixing the sim's core.

They never fixed the AI Traffic or ATC in 2020. Let's see if they finally fix it in 2024. It's ludicrous to rely on a voting system when there's common sense. 

I bet you that AI knows more about what needs to be addressed and fixed than ASOBO's dev team. 😀

2 hours ago, BrammyH said:

Is this 2020?

2024

14 minutes ago, Langeveldt said:

2024

Thought, so thanks.

Now, in full disclosure I am color blind. But what about this image is offending folk's sense of elegance? Too bright?

43 minutes ago, BrammyH said:

Thought, so thanks.

Now, in full disclosure I am color blind. But what about this image is offending folk's sense of elegance? Too bright?

Oh wow, if you can't see it, then you must be having a lot of fun in the sim.

This is TLOD 140 on a flight from Jakarta to Istanbul, overhead sort of between Abu Dhabi and Dubai, at FL350 or something.  

In reality night lighting from altitude is just pin points, clusters of little dots in an ocean of darkness.  It's very difficult to fly at night in a small aircraft because it's so disorienting.  In some countries it's pretty much just darkness away from major settlements.  These pin points should be sharp though, like almost grains of sand in the distance.  In some countries like Belgium and the UAE they light up their freeways, so you at least get lines of sharp dots joining up with the clusters of towns.  If you fly over Botswana at night, apart from Gaborone, Francistown and Maun, you will see literally nothing at all.  

This is a glowing carpet of bright light, rather like the glowing sea in Fallout 4.  Look how everything is lit.  Even the fields are glowing.  Look at how thick and splodgy the roads are.  Like when you are on MS Paint and you choose by far the wrong brush size.  It glows and radiates like it's almost daytime.  It looks hideous in the Alps too.  Whole valleys just glow in the dark.  In reality you may occasionally get a little glow under clouds with a big city.  But that's under the clouds, not on the terrain.  

It's dreadful, really the worst.  And I've kind of given up on it because someone at Asobo has looked at this and gone, "yeah, that's fine".  Maybe you work for Asobo, and this is NOT fine.  

Anyway, said in politeness.  It's literally half the sim time, night flying, and it sucks! 

Edited May 12, 20251 yr by Langeveldt

1 minute ago, Langeveldt said:

Oh wow, if you can't see it, then you must be having a lot of fun in the sim.

In reality night lighting from altitude is just pin points, clusters of little dots in an ocean of darkness.  It's very difficult to fly at night in a small aircraft because it's so disorienting.  In some countries it's pretty much just darkness away from major settlements.  These pin points should be sharp though, like almost grains of sand in the distance.  In some countries like Belgium and the UAE they light up their freeways, so you at least get lines of sharp dots joining up with the clusters of towns.  If you fly over Botswana at night, apart from Gaborone, Francistown and Maun, you will see literally nothing at all.  

This is a glowing carpet of bright light, rather like the glowing sea in Fallout 4.  Look how everything is lit.  Even the fields are glowing.  Look at how thick and splodgy the roads are.  Like when you are on MS Paint and you choose by far the wrong brush size.  It glows and radiates like it's almost daytime.  It looks hideous in the Alps too.  Whole valleys just glow in the dark.  

Thanks for the explanation. I was genuinly curious.

I don't tend to fly in darkness. I generally do dusk/dawn for my non-daylight hours, so I probably just haven't really seen it, or just gotten accustomed to it.

This is one of the more egregarious samples I've seen to be sure.

And this is how it looked years and years ago on the other sim, with an add on I hasten to add.  Just no glowing.  I also find it strange how there is no add-on to get rid of the sepia mask.  I'd hand over good money for it.  Given how we can change the weather, the AI traffic etc.  Is there not just a "remove sepia mask" line of code that could be written?

Edited May 12, 20251 yr by Langeveldt

13 hours ago, Christopher Low said:

It baffles me why Asobo Studios did not notice this during beta testing, and it baffles me even more that they have not done anything about it in the six months since MSFS 2024 was released

I'm quite sure it was noticed - along with all the other wonky stuff - but  they decided to put 2024 in the title so they were up against their self imposed deadline.

All these regressions stem from the same problem in my opinion; a failure of project management. They grossly underestimated the difficulty and thus the time scale of what they wanted to do.

They've basically been firefighting since the release. If everything had gone to plan, these last six months would have been fine tuning and Jorge enjoying himself in dev livestreams introducing new features. Instead they've been scrambling to get their wayward creation under control. It's been a slow process. 

With SU2 what we have is a sim that looks very good and performs very well - within the narrow confines of free-flight - but MSFS 2024 is meant to be much more than that. Career mode has proved to be more popular than they anticipated and so it's received a great deal of developer attention in both SU1 and SU2. 

Personally, I'm not interested in career mode or taking pictures of elephants or dragging an advertising banner around* and I suspect most people on Avsim aren't either but we're going to have to wait longer while they sort this stuff out before getting round to improving the night environment, clouds, a.i., etc. 

I've no doubt they will - eventually - just like they did with 2020 but due to the large amount of work required it's becoming evident that it'll be over roughly the same time scale as it took for 2020 to mature.

 

*Actually I might be interested in pulling a banner in a Cessna if I didn't have to grind through the career and I could tow something really rude around and make a video of it😎.

 

Edited May 12, 20251 yr by DD_Arthur

1 hour ago, Langeveldt said:

 Is there not just a "remove sepia mask" line of code that could be written?

I hope so. They could also remove the line that gave us street lighting on every major road too. That really would be great.

4 hours ago, abennett said:

Night lighting is 2024 is yet another of the big regressions from 2020.

The sepia mask is absolutely awful. The way you can see fields and details all lit up is terrible.

 

Then there is the way any lights on the ground light the sky and clouds up in a ridiculous way is completely unrealistic.

 

There is also the way you can see the Milky Way so clearly… Just rubbish.

 

Bad news to do with lighting for those still on SU1 as well. SU2 has completely broken airport ground lighting. Apron, taxiway, runway lights etc are just massive blurry blobs that look completely wrong.

 

Yes exactly this! the whole night time flying experience is terrible. 
 

Now not to start a war here, but I did download the XP12 demo the other night just to see what night time looks like, and it wasn’t perfect, but way ahead of MSFS. I’m still a MSFSer 🤣 but that’s why I’m so vocal about the night lighting to get better. 

Yes, night lighting at altitude is an area where X-Plane is far ahead of MSFS.  You're allowed to enjoy both sims, especially if MSFS regresses further to being a buggy X-Box game.  

There is money to be made for any 3rd party dev that can overhaul the night lighting system without some sort of massive performance hit. I’d buy day 1.

15 hours ago, Langeveldt said:

Oh wow, if you can't see it, then you must be having a lot of fun in the sim.

This is TLOD 140 on a flight from Jakarta to Istanbul, overhead sort of between Abu Dhabi and Dubai, at FL350 or something.  

In reality night lighting from altitude is just pin points, clusters of little dots in an ocean of darkness.  It's very difficult to fly at night in a small aircraft because it's so disorienting.  In some countries it's pretty much just darkness away from major settlements.  These pin points should be sharp though, like almost grains of sand in the distance.  In some countries like Belgium and the UAE they light up their freeways, so you at least get lines of sharp dots joining up with the clusters of towns.  If you fly over Botswana at night, apart from Gaborone, Francistown and Maun, you will see literally nothing at all.  

This is a glowing carpet of bright light, rather like the glowing sea in Fallout 4.  Look how everything is lit.  Even the fields are glowing.  Look at how thick and splodgy the roads are.  Like when you are on MS Paint and you choose by far the wrong brush size.  It glows and radiates like it's almost daytime.  It looks hideous in the Alps too.  Whole valleys just glow in the dark.  In reality you may occasionally get a little glow under clouds with a big city.  But that's under the clouds, not on the terrain.  

It's dreadful, really the worst.  And I've kind of given up on it because someone at Asobo has looked at this and gone, "yeah, that's fine".  Maybe you work for Asobo, and this is NOT fine.  

Anyway, said in politeness.  It's literally half the sim time, night flying, and it sucks! 

Yep, that's how we get it in xp12... Way way closer to reality, not to mention airport lighting, and even easy to mod... Example:

X-Plane 12 Night Lighting Edits

Only thing not yet fully implemented is the clouds illumination from city lights, but we will get there with time...

This and other stuff are the reason why I tend to see MSFS more as a cartoon of flight simulaton... Everything is "cartoonishly" augmented, even the flight dynamics... Detailed ortho-photo scenery is nice though less when it goes into "melt state"

Edited May 13, 20251 yr by jcomm

We need an app like PTA to change shaders.

  

28 minutes ago, GSalden said:

We need an app like PTA to change shaders.

  

While I think this might help, I think the way the sim renders lights and night time settings in the core. In the first 2020 tech alpha, the lights were actually quite good and for some reason they regressed big time. 
 

If I’m not mistaken, they use the sepia mask to illuminate the cloud base. They need a whole new approach on how they do this. Grand Theft Auto titles have better night environments for crying out loud, and this is a flight sim… where night flying is crucial. 

Edited May 13, 20251 yr by rick celik