for me to consider Xp12 as good MSFS, visuals wise, even with it's present scenery model... Night lighting on the clouds from cities, as well as from any other light sources like aircraft lighting systems and not only from the Moon.

If this finds it's way into Xp12.x I will be really happy!

Those pitch dark night skies when there's no Moon are really unrealistic 😕

I was flying into a nasty weather area, with lot's of convective clouds that look gorgeous during daylight, and more stratified Cu bellow, and even over cities full of light, there was absolutely no hint of reflection 😕 ... it was pitch dark above ... well, excluding when there was lightning.

Edited September 25, 2025Sep 25 by jcomm

They’ve figured out a way to get moonlight to reflect on the tops of clouds, so I gotta believe getting city lights to reflect on cloud bottoms is possible.  I know Xenviro had this feature at one point; don’t recall if it was ever a thing with default.

5 hours ago, jcomm said:

Those pitch dark night skies when there's no Moon are really unrealistic 😕

Only if there are bigger towns/cities. Otherwise it’s excatly how it looks in real. If you fly over deserts or oceans, the night is often pitch-black, even more when there is no moon-reflection. And if you fly with dense clouds ovee a populated area, you also can’t barely see any light.

1 hour ago, Franz007 said:

Only if there are bigger towns/cities. Otherwise it’s excatly how it looks in real. If you fly over deserts or oceans, the night is often pitch-black, even more when there is no moon-reflection. And if you fly with dense clouds ovee a populated area, you also can’t barely see any light.

No, I mean over big towns ... 

Well depending on the cloud type and bases it can even be visible over small villages...

Edited September 25, 2025Sep 25 by jcomm

Surely it cannot be that hard to do, LM did it with P3D and not just town lights but the moon light effect as well. JComms point is a valid one, 

They are working on it. In some stream sessions, Ben Supnik talked about this. 

Definately more than one thing remaining. This wasn't even on my list... before 🤣

1 hour ago, GalaioSilva said:

They are working on it. In some stream sessions, Ben Supnik talked about this. 

As far as I remember it won't be by calculating every single light in the city (way too much computing effort), but using something like lightpollutionmap.

51 minutes ago, uwespeed said:

As far as I remember it won't be by calculating every single light in the city (way too much computing effort), but using something like lightpollutionmap.

Don’t know many details. I remember something about building the environment network with vectors. That will give ways to improve lighting and possibility also to add anti alias methos like TAA

Light on the bottom of cloud at night is simply albedo effect that is the reflectivity of the cloud, same as by day the tops are white and the bottoms shades of non white. It is commonly referred to as the loom effect and it is more pronounced the more intense the light concentration is but that is the key it is the light concentration. You will not see light reflected of cloud at night with single or small light clusters but rather an aggregate effect what size area? Seems to me from experience in RW night flying (a lot) it is generally a town that has over 10000 people and the "loom" basically shows as a light patch on the bottom of a cloud layer in the sky ahead. You do not need to fly to see the effect - I live in the country so around me are lots of small places in the area but only the next largest town (about 40,000 inhabitants) generates a loom effect at night, you can see it from up to 40 kms away as a smudge effect on the horizon just standing on a hill, Most if not all city dwellers never notice the same as they do not notice that there is so much light that they cannot see a good night star night too much ambient light being cast.

What I do miss in XP is the milky way! Where I live the a clear night with no light pollution the milky way is a magnificent sight across the night sky, in FSX and P3D there were good texture maps of the stars that allowed you to see the milky way and or the auroras in north or southern latitudes. The star display in both was good enough for you to actually use a celestial sextant to do navigation with but I see neither in XPlane and quite frankly the night star sky in XP is woeful and star clusters such as you would want to identify stars or constellations are patheticly bad! No way I can find Orion or any other significant star cluster or the planets low on the horizon in XP. XP works differently and as far as I can tell does not use them the same way or at all. There is no way they can begin to computationally add in light points for a universe of stars same as they cannot do it for night lights either, some clever programming gives you nice night lighting but the scalar is different when you begin to think about how to add that as a directional light source aggregated in a vector I am not sure it can be done.

Finally they need to fix waves and water motion - P3D had it because they used NVIDIA's algorithms and it looked amazing direction size etc, the waves in XP are but a facsimile and not very convincing at all and make seaplane operations a chore! Cannot tell wind or wave direction or size over water - not at all!

So I am not unhappy at all with XP as a sim but I note they are the limitations which keep reminding me it is just a simulation and some areas the flight and aeroplane part might be great but the real world representation is well - average to say the least, I accept and understand that. There was a reason why LM used the term vehicle in P3D because that simulator catered for land and sea vehicles not just aeroplanes and that is what marks it out from all the rest including MS, 

Edited September 25, 2025Sep 25 by coastaldriver

For those who do not use or have not used P3D this is what I mean.

IN fact I am going to update and install P3D again just to get my flying boats back and operational. Note that it was 10 years ago!

 

Edited September 25, 2025Sep 25 by coastaldriver

And this is of the night sky and the milky way from P3D just for interest not argument!

 

As for the rest well XPlane wins hands down - no arguments from me at all - maybe in XP 15.0

34 minutes ago, coastaldriver said:

IN fact I am going to update and install P3D again just to get my flying boats back and operational. Note that it was 10 years ago!

Have you tried the default cessna floatplane that ships with XP12 (I think?), that doesn't get talked about much but afaik it is simply unrivalled.

 

 

56 minutes ago, mSparks said:

Have you tried the default cessna floatplane that ships with XP12 (I think?), that doesn't get talked about much but afaik it is simply unrivalled.

 

 

Yes a lot actually, Not bad but it is the issue of bathymetry and the wave construction in the sim that stands out they are different approaches and solutions between the sims. I personally have (had) a complete collection of models of virtually every notable seaplane or flying boat that worked fine in FSX and P3D (with adjustments) that just have not been attempted in XP apart from the Boeing 314 which is a stand out. I guess the issue there is that most of these aircraft are well and truly historical and to do it them in XPlane is a significant undertaking (beyond my skills that is for sure!) I may have done them in FSX and P3D but the whole architecture of models and XPlane is so different that to get them into XPlane is beyond me and most others - although I will admit there are a few that have been done (the AWX C-47 is the Jahn C-47 from FSX/P3D and MarcelloO's Blackburn Beverley is also a port over from FSX to XP but that is about it). The Hydroz Catalina is another flying boat that exists in XPlane but it is an XP11 model that luckily manages to work ok in XP12. All the rest are GA floatplanes (Cessnas Pipers etc) No Imperial C Class Flying Boats, Sunderlands, Solents, Sandringhams, Sikorsky S42 etc not to mention Berievs and a few others,

Anyway off topic and I digress. Appreciate the input here. The only comment I have about XP and using the picture above the waves are ok but note the wake of the floats in the water very unrealistic seaplane wakes and disturbance looks nothing like that in real life. Floats and seaplanes create waves as they push the water aside the faster and bigger they are the more it becomes pronounced.