39 minutes ago, Daube said:

As an external reader, I just wanted to say that all of these discussions are useless until you post some screenshots to precisely show the problems.

I've seen enough simmers complaining about the sim being too dark or too bright, when it really was just their monitor settings which were incorrect (their screenshots were looking just nice for everybody else).

There's been plenty of photos on the thread in the official MSFS forums, I think because its a bit of a process to upload images here people shy away from it. 

I don't mind the night lighting in 24 in general.  I mean, nothing you're going to see in a game is going to be a 1:1 representation to real life seen through real eyes - heck, nothing in a real video is either.  So I can look past artistic or stylized choices - to a point.  General city lights I think are fine, whatever. . But what is objectively a real problem right now in 24 is the airport light BLOOM, with no way to turn it off.  Runways actually look blurry to me at night until I'm close enough that my landing lights illuminate the surface.  

This is dumb.  Not giving users a choice to disable bloom is dumb.  (And dear god, the lens flare and exposure changes when looking inside vs outside... Whose ideas were these?  Are we TRYING to simulate a camera??)

Edited June 24, 2025Jun 24 by Stearmandriver

Not sure how anyone thinks this looks like real night time flying, from the street lights below to the glowing blobs further out. As I said, each to their own I guess. 

https://imgur.com/qGhAuKY

Edited June 24, 2025Jun 24 by rick celik

12 minutes ago, rick celik said:

http://[img]https://i.imgur.com/qGhAuKY.jpeg[/img]

This link points to page 2 of this thread, not the image.

3 minutes ago, Rimshot said:

This link points to page 2 of this thread, not the image.

Is it working now?

15 minutes ago, rick celik said:

Is it working now?

Yep 👍 I see your point. Night lighting could be improved.

Now I don't think I'm allowed to share anything from the 2020 tech alpha.... but here is one from the early builds of 2020 (not tech alpha, tech alpha was even better than this...). And just added an image off topic, but just to show how much we've regressed. The wing shot with the water looks amazing in early 2020. And another one just to rub it in. No blurries, great draw distance, great water, great night lights, great clouds. Anyway back on topic. Just a little ticked off that we should be moving forward. 

Enjoy.

https://imgur.com/a/1SprGYX

Edited June 24, 2025Jun 24 by rick celik

24 minutes ago, rick celik said:

but here is one from the early builds of 2020 (not tech alpha, tech alpha was even better than this...). And just added an image off topic, but just to show how much we've regressed.

They really had night lighting dialed-in at some point in MSFS 2020.  It changed along the way and definitely changed/regressed in 2024.  The worst part about it in 2024 is the sepia illumination mask.  It needs to be pushed out at least 30-40 miles, similar to how it is in 2020. Otherwise, the lights themselves do look pretty good at lower altitudes, maybe under 5000' where the illumination mask is not as obvious.  Hopefully some improvement coming in SU4....

5 minutes ago, Flic1 said:

They really had night lighting dialed-in at some point in MSFS 2020.  It changed along the way and definitely changed/regressed in 2024.  The worst part about it in 2024 is the sepia illumination mask.  It needs to be pushed out at least 30-40 miles, similar to how it is in 2020. Otherwise, the lights themselves do look pretty good at lower altitudes, maybe under 5000' where the illumination mask is not as obvious.  Hopefully some improvement coming in SU4....

Yep it was good to see that there’s something being done about in SU4, let’s hope they nail it.

Yeah, the NL is out of whack. Flying into Dubai recently all the non-building areas in the city had a glow like I was using night vision goggles.

I find chile Santiago city so bad in the night. There are now weird disco lights like red and green. This was not with 2020

On 6/22/2025 at 9:38 PM, jwhak said:

Gotta use MSFS 2020 at night and MSFS 2024 in the day 😉

Sure will be nice when I can consolidate to 1 sim again with the improvements.

 

Though yes, the dusk and sunrise are better for to be in FS24 also, and the city lamps etc., and the FS24 day light-colours much better and close to the real live, and match much more the real live light-colours that there is in that place in that real live hour-moment than FS20.

But yes also, those illuminated yellow-brighten-cities convince me less than the full night in FS20, and FS24 wins in positive points more than its flaw points vs FS20 in that.

59 minutes ago, Flic1 said:

They really had night lighting dialed-in at some point in MSFS 2020.  It changed along the way and definitely changed/regressed in 2024.  The worst part about it in 2024 is the sepia illumination mask.

It is quite obvious what happened here: you are absolutely right, at some point they really improved the night lighting in MSFS 2020 reacting to a HUGE and longstanding thread in their forums and a catastrophic first attempt to calm the community which made the sim look more like TRON at night. That must have been the time when they decided to fork the code in order to develop MSFS 2024, and that's why the "new" one has so many flaws that have been ironed out in the "old" one. The sepia mask is another hint, as it was dialled down at some point in MSFS 2020. They are aware of the sepia issue as it played a major role in the above mentioned HUGE thread for MSFS 2020 already, and Seb has hinted at a solution in a recent Q&A. But why they weren't able to implement all the updates for MSFS2020 in the forked code in the first place will remain their secret.

I agree that 2024 is better at dawn and dusk. Nevertheless, I don't tend to fly at night anyway. I live in rural England. Way back in SU3 or 4(?) they decided to 'improve' night lighting by adding non-existent street lighting to major and minor roads outside of conurbations.

This still really annoys me, lol. I used to be carted around in low flying helicopters at night occasionally but that was forty years ago.  None of what we've had has ever struck me as particularly realistic but all those strings of pearls stretching off into the distance? None of it exists in real life!🤨

I think Asobo roadmap has night lighting improvements slated for SU4.