Ah yes, the beautiful crisp night lighting of MSFS 2024.  

2024 night lighting looks far better than 2020. Much closer to reality than what we had in 2024, for the most part. There are still some issues that need to be addressed, though.

Edited June 24, 2025Jun 24 by RNAVV19R

I don't fly a lot at night in either version of MSFS (it has never really looked quite right).  

2024 does some things really well, I just feel everything is too bright.  (maybe my monitor settings, but I wouldn't want to mess with my brightness for daytime flying or anything else).  Small cities still have far too much glow.  You can still see too much of the ground details that just shouldn't be visible.  For example I shouldn't see farms with no light source on top.  (although I've never seen anything like the picture on the top page of this thread - that looks like the moon)

Is it realistic to see the stars so bright?  I mean you can always see the horizon.  The sun never seems to really "set", there's always this slight glow.  If there's no clouds, then there's really no visibility problems.  It is like there's eternal twilight.  

That said, things like turning on your landing lights in clouds at night looks really good (IE not good, but how it is supposed to).  

I'm sure overall it varies greatly by region, weather conditions, etc. 

On a similar subject but not really lights related, has anyone else noticed how strange the sky is during the transition from day to night (or vice versa)?  If you are flying north/south at sunset/sunrise, half the sky is black while the other half is still fairly bright.  It's almost like they are modelling the abrupt solar terminator which you of course do not really see or notice from lower in the atmosphere.  There's no real light gradient at all as the entire sky will still show some amount of light throughout. Anyway, it's something I don't expect to be improved upon due to how they modelled the sky but just surprised I haven't seen it mentioned much. I submitted it to the MSFS forums last year but I don't think it got much attention.