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Night lighting


Shibbyland

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I have the same issue with night lighting as everyone else, but for me I consider the day lighting to be too bright, and with the gamma turned down it seems over saturated. For want of a better explanation during the day it seems completely blown out, over exposed.

 

Night time i have to turn defered off, its still not perfect. But still isnt as bright as it should be.

 

I really dont like using gamma to adjust this stuff I think it messes with colours as noted above.

 

I hope a fix comes soon, especially some change to the trees during the day with defered off. Some of my modules run quite bad with defered on. The mig 21 for example.

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Well, 1st update in weeks and none of the fixes for night time that were claimed to already be done were included in it. Does that make much sense? So, the fixes were just left on the shelf apparently. When will WE actually see the fixes?

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Night lighting seems to work for me.

'

Although I do use upuaut's runway lights mod! :music_whistling:

 

night%20lites.jpg?dl=1

 

I see building lit as well. it appears the countryside has electricity, unlike my house after the last blizzard yesterday.......:D

 

 

This was at 2200 hours. The mod lights are in rows on the left.

The brighter lights are in sim. From hangers I think.

 

night%20lites2.jpg?dl=1

"Yeah, and though I work in the valley of Death, I will fear no Evil. For where there is one, there is always three. I preparest my aircraft to receive the Iron that will be delivered in the presence of my enemies. Thy ALCM and JDAM they comfort me. Power was given unto the aircrew to make peace upon the world by way of the sword. And when the call went out, Behold the "Sword of Stealth". And his name was Death. And Hell followed him. For the day of wrath has come and no mercy shall be given."

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Interesting, it seems to be better indeed. I assume the moon is still not working right?

 

It's different, that's for sure, and there are aspects that look better. If you're flying around 1500 ft. AGL and looking straight down at Vegas it actually looks halfway decent. Not great, but it's a little bit of progress.

Higher than that though and everything starts looking really bad again, worse even. I can now see orange mountains in the far distance. The city textures are still unlit in the distance and are now actually darker than the surrounding landscape textures.

From the most recent weekend news:

 

Many issues have already been addressed like night lighting...

 

Addressed? Maybe. Fixed? Not even close. I really hope this isn't the final version of night lighting but I'm becoming more and more convinced that this is a fundamental limitation of the engine they built. Nevada specifically has been this way for years now. :(

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Addressed? Maybe. Fixed? Not even close. I really hope this isn't the final version of night lighting but I'm becoming more and more convinced that this is a fundamental limitation of the engine they built. Nevada specifically has been this way for years now. :(

 

Unfortunately I think you’re right. The fact that it has been this way for such a long time without being seriously improved upon really has me concerned. Hopefully we are both wrong but I’m growing increasingly skeptical. Did they at least get the IR pointer/TGP marker issue sorted out yet?


Edited by bigalsunit
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Lights have been improved on the ground, but we have an outstanding issue with moon light at the moment, once that is completed it should help a lot.

smallCATPILOT.PNG.04bbece1b27ff1b2c193b174ec410fc0.PNG

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Lights have been improved on the ground, but we have an outstanding issue with moon light at the moment, once that is completed it should help a lot.

 

They have been improved.... very little at best. I just got done doing a series of night flight tests and the lights unless within a few hundred meters go way way way too dim into a faded pee color that is just not bright enough at all. Even after the mentioned tweaks to them. It is as if there is an invisible fog between you and the lights always and past that and out at around a few nm the lights go awol pretty much completely due to this 'fog'. And even prior to that none have the focused sharp pointed brightness lights have when you see the actual light source and not the ambient light it casts on the surroundings.

 

If you go 4-10mn above Vegas the lights are non-existent at least in VR, maybe the race track lights can be made out a little at best and the same for a large building on the strip or two and when I check the monitor image they cannot be made out either.But no way does it look like it should still. It seems the terrible ground lights that DCS has had for years, you know, the halo ball lights, are a big part of the issue. At distance the muted halo is what is being used as the ground light and not the actual 'bulb' of the light and that is what can be seen for miles. Not the muted halo that DCS ends up using for lights. It is starting to appear that the engine itself was just not designed with night lighting in mind or considered when being developed and is just limited as a result.


Edited by Torso
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I am sure ED will tweak more, but they also have to find a balance somewhere.

smallCATPILOT.PNG.04bbece1b27ff1b2c193b174ec410fc0.PNG

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Lights have been improved on the ground, but we have an outstanding issue with moon light at the moment, once that is completed it should help a lot.

 

 

Gotta say, the night lighting needs much more than tweaks.

 

I wanted to see if it was improved, so just for kicks I set a flight from LSV to LAS. Night time. Thunderstorms.

 

Taxiing to the active, it was almost impossible to see the taxiway center lines more than a ten feet in front of the airplane. This may be somewhat realistic, but even the nearby lighting that you could see was unrealistically dim. Almost no lighting visible. The sky was abnormally bright, even between visible lightning strikes, the effects of which were dramatically understated. By this I mean the sky way too bright when no strikes and almost no change when strikes occurred.

 

After departing LSV, I found myself climbing above the clouds and leveling at 5000ft. Lightning strikes were occurring all around, but strangely, no towering clouds, just a clear sky with terrain poking up through the clouds and lightning strikes coming to/from clear sky above. These strikes shouldn't have been coming out of clear air, but rather between clouds and the ground or with other clouds. The bigger problem was the strikes were very dim and had little effect on the brightness of the visible cloud layer below or terrain.

 

Approaching McCarran, the airfield lighting was very understated compared to the neighborhood lighting all around. If I recall correctly, I landed on 26R. Attached below is a sample shot after the landing roll out. Here's some problems with it:

 

What shouldn't be there? I *think* the hill in the middle of the shot is Potosi mountain, which is about 20 miles away. It is clearly visible at night in heavy rain against the overly bright sky, and you can see some area that on this that is illuminated well compared to the nearby runway edge lights.

 

What's missing? Well, you can only barely see one taxiway light from the parallel taxiway that is only about 100m away. It's not all in the picture, but looking in all directions, you cannot see any of the other airport lighting or the parallel runway edge lighting that is only 200m away. The majority of the airport is invisible even though it is within a couple miles of this location. Neither can you see many of the numerous towers or buildings nearby that have obstruction lighting within 5 miles of the field. Of course it should be normal to not see the more distant things in these conditions, but lighting should be much more obvious than terrain at night that can be seen from much greater distances.

 

There are also specific issues with the design of the lights themselves. Look at the nearby runway edge lights. These should be L862 (or L861/2), which are either bidirectional (180 degrees amber/180 degrees white) or omni directional (360 degrees white). In DCS, they only shine in narrow cones aligned with the runway. They are also way too dim.

 

I wanted to see how DCS compares to other sims at night so I just downloaded the xplane 11 demo. I have to say that at first glance the night lighting is impressive. The effects on the terrain, airfields, other aircraft of light sources such as lightning, aircraft taxi and landing lights. etc. are much more realistic and aesthetically pleasing. Beating xplane for visual night realism would be a good goal for ED.

Screen_180315_135028.thumb.png.09b9e01287c6d19cf6966182edfcada2.png


Edited by Cake
Picture failed to upload

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Can't agree more Cake.

 

One thing that I always thought it could be improved is the landing gear lights. Not the effect itself, but the range at which the lights reach the runway, how far it lights up the runway. I think that's a great point that Cake made.

 

The effect itself is amazing, I love how they look now, since 2.2. But the range isn't enough. It's very clear when landing at night, you'll only see the runway on touchdown. It shouldn't be like that, you should be seeing the runway way before the touchdown, that's what lights are for.

 

Anyway, the night lighting definitely needs more than a few tweaks indeed. PAPI lights and everything.

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Can't agree more Cake.

 

One thing that I always thought it could be improved is the landing gear lights. Not the effect itself, but the range at which the lights reach the runway, how far it lights up the runway. I think that's a great point that Cake made.

 

The effect itself is amazing, I love how they look now, since 2.2. But the range isn't enough. It's very clear when landing at night, you'll only see the runway on touchdown. It shouldn't be like that, you should be seeing the runway way before the touchdown, that's what lights are for.

 

Anyway, the night lighting definitely needs more than a few tweaks indeed. PAPI lights and everything.

 

I wonder what is really going on here? It's almost as if lights are treated as small objects that cannot be seen from a significant distance. At night, aircraft lights can be seen from great distances. Typically, you can spot an aircraft's strobes at night before you would spot the same (entire) aircraft during daylight. As far as aircraft go, you'd think this would be a somewhat easy fix, but as for objects on the maps? I dunno...?

 

I will say that upon landing in many different real airplanes in my experience that the landing lights don't light up much of the runway until you are pretty close, but it should work well enough by crossing the fence and one can see well for a good distance in front when on runways and taxiways. Of course the light power depends upon equipment, but better equipment often has higher approach speeds.

 

Compare the previous screenshot I posted to the one attached below. Just took this from the xplane demo. You can see the blue taxiway edge lights, green taxiway center line lights (I know these aren't at all airports. Notice the runway edge lights can be seen from side angles.

 

I turned on all the landing lights and taxi lights on the 747. You can see the effect on other objects. It's pretty convincing. You can imagine they would light the runway pretty well. Tried to capture a screen from during a lightning strike. Couldn't seem to time it right, but I will say the strikes lit up the runways and grass areas. Very realistic.

 

I'm tempted to buy this just because of the night flying and weather, but I think DCS could do it better. For me, xplane totally misses the feel of the airplanes compared to DCS, but I want to do realistic things for the aircraft simulated in DCS, which includes approaches in bad weather and night flying for some of them.

810739478_X-PlaneScreenshot2018_03.15-16_05_58_78.thumb.png.270ff82cfc38d2c07858d284169199da.png

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I can't tell you how much I agree with every point and note you've made Cake. I have been chasing this seemingly lost cause for ages. Made threads, posted pics, screenshot..etc. Nothing ever came from them. I at this point think that the engine that ED has created is just not capable of achieving anything close to XP11 and possibly just any kind of a decent night env. Which is real sad if so. GA/CA or MIL aircraft focus, the world environment needs to be able to decently create the atmosphere being called upon. I hope I am wrong. It just doesn't seem so from what has been stated so far. We might be looking at close to the best DCS can achieve. I keep my fingers crossed though. It's free to do.

 

Oh and Cake, I did buy XP11 just for it's usable night env. It is amazing and there are mods that make it look even better than out of the box. Wishing the ED team luck with this hole in their game. I hope with some focus it can be filled and have an env they can stand up against the others out there in the genre. There should be someone on this full time. I can't imagine the same guy/gal who handle environment also be one coding weapons systems and ac/fm code....right?

 

I mean who isn't looking forward to trying to land on a carriers pitching deck at night in crappy weather in your newly acquired Hornet once they start showing up in our hangars. We need the correct env to be able to do that! I mean how can you call the ball when you cannot even see it because it does not render and is visible at a usable distance :)


Edited by Torso
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I am sure ED will tweak more, but they also have to find a balance somewhere.

 

I mean no disrespect, but I feel this is part of the reason that frustration is often expressed with regards to Open Alpha, Open Beta, etc. Please allow me to explain:

 

When NTTR was released the night lighting was almost non existent. The runways, taxiways, and cities were only visible within a mile or two of the aircraft. I never posted anything about it because many other individuals identified these issues and reported them. Those people were quickly and sometimes condescendingly told to “Chill out. It’s an Alpha” or “If you don’t like testing new products, you should just wait for the release version”. DCS 2.5 suffered significant delays, but finally it arrived in Open Beta form. The night lighting issue was not fixed. Now DCS 2.5 is nearing its official release and the same lighting issues still exist. The only difference is that now, the problem is being played off as a compromise that cannot be fully addressed. Just tweaked. This is frustrating. What’s even more frustrating is the feeling that myself (and apparently others) need to post screenshots and give in depth descriptions to try and convince ED that this terribly obvious issue has not been fixed.

 

I truly hope that we are not even remotely close to talking about “a balance”. If there isn’t serious improvement to the night environment, I feel that DCS will have become a “day VMC only” simulator. This would be a shame. After all of the excellent work ED has done to create the most realistic modern battlefield simulator and yet the night flying experience remains anything but realistic.


Edited by bigalsunit
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If there isn’t serious improvement to the night environment, I feel that DCS will have become a “day VMC only” simulator. This would be a shame. After all of the excellent work ED has done to create the most realistic modern battlefield simulator and yet the night flying experience remains anything but realistic.

 

Agreed, 2.X has been a day-vmc sim since day one. On the vmc front, it literally can't be overstated the importance of weather to aviation. It's a pilots chief concern after, if not equal to, the condition of the aircraft. Though it's not brought up too often here, weather has been a weak spot in DCS from the beginning. I think they've mentioned a weather system overhaul in the future (whatever that means) so fingers crossed, I guess.

At this point, especially with the weekend news distributed today, it looks like they're going to push a release version with a totally unacceptable night environment and carryover 1.5 weather.

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Reading this makes me sad. I thought they are reworking the nightlightning.

This really needs a fix not a bit of tweaking if you ask me.

Currently in an A10 Mission and can´t even start the plane as there is no cockpit floodlight.

And when you make it in to the air you never come back because the runway lightning is non existent. It just appears when you found the runway already.

 

Edit:

 

If no solution to this is possible deactivation of DS at night is still an ok solutiun but then pls make a 2nd shader folder so it doesn´t have to do the shaders everytime i have to switch because thats alway 2min load times.


Edited by Neuse
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Reading this makes me sad. I thought they are reworking the nightlightning.

This really needs a fix not a bit of tweaking if you ask me.

Currently in an A10 Mission and can´t even start the plane as there is no cockpit floodlight.

And when you make it in to the air you never come back because the runway lightning is non existent. It just appears when you found the runway already.

 

Edit:

 

If no solution to this is possible deactivation of DS at night is still an ok solutiun but then pls make a 2nd shader folder so it doesn´t have to do the shaders everytime i have to switch because thats alway 2min load times.

I feel and think similar :( I love DCS, it is the best and only "Game" i have on my PC and all is designed for it.

But right now, i can´t play neither the A-10C nor the Huey Campaigns due to the crazy sling load

and soon it will be two months where i´m stuck :huh:

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Reading this makes me sad. I thought they are reworking the nightlightning.

This really needs a fix not a bit of tweaking if you ask me.

Currently in an A10 Mission and can´t even start the plane as there is no cockpit floodlight.

And when you make it in to the air you never come back because the runway lightning is non existent. It just appears when you found the runway already.

 

Edit:

 

If no solution to this is possible deactivation of DS at night is still an ok solutiun but then pls make a 2nd shader folder so it doesn´t have to do the shaders everytime i have to switch because thats alway 2min load times.

 

Well you guys, just switch that DS off for the time being as I do.

I think most people agree that the cockpits are FAR better with DS off, and anyway this

is the place where we spend most of our time, and not outside the plane looking at the nice trees and scenery. Moreover, the sun blending effects are also far nicer with DS off, as DS does not allow HDR to be on.

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yES night lights were improved a bit but that's not enough, I think a complete re-work of night lights is needed.

Just waiting for ED :)

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Wait 2-3 mins for eye to adjust to dark in 2.5

 

Given what I knew then and what I think I know now, I don't think they should mess around much with night illumination. At first I also though that nighttime is too dark. Not anymore. Now I like it , sort of, the way it is. It appears to me that ED implemented human night/low light level eye adaptation. It takes few minutes to adjust. One notices that after 2-3 minutes, things are more visible. Avoid using NVG during this time. Plus moonlight is illumination light. As in real life, the darkest time is before dawn. Additionally light is simulated , it changes across time. So taking off at 4 am, and coming back after 5 am, you get to see early morning light. Physiologically humans are weakest, least alert , when awake, between 2:30 AM and 4: AM. Standard military Stand To (everyone is awake and manning post) is around 3 AM, depending on mission commander's guidelines, and tactical situation.

Above applies to 2.5 with Deferred Shading ON. Legacy HDR is too bright to be believable.

 

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The real life precedent, is modern day Syrian Civil War, War In Donbass, Angolan Civil War, and various Bush Wars of 1960's and 1970's. All made use of proffesional combat aviators and maintenance/ordnance personell.

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