Wishing for Better Night Textures

[kevinmac]

The day textures have always been pretty good in FS. But I think the night textures have a long way to go. Have you ever approached a big city in an airliner at night? There are thousands of lights amongst the airport lights. I hope FSX contains night textures that will make finding those airport lights a little difficult. More realism in the night department is my wish!

-Kev

[lnuss]

The biggest problems with night in FS is that in the real world you see all these little pinpoint jewels all over the place, often twinkling from atmospheric disturbances, while in FS you see blobs of light. Granted that there are occasionally small blobs in the real world, but they are rare compared to the jewels. Nearly as bad is that in FS the lights fade pretty quickly with distance, while that's not the case in the real world (other than with very restricted visibility, of course).

While on the subject, baseball stadiums in the summer, football stadiums on autumn weekends, etc. tend to show in the real world as VERY bright, sometimes almost blinding, white lighted areas. After 10-12 PM, depending on the area and night, these get turned off. Shopping centers tend to show as areas of amber lighting most, or all, of the night.

[jasonlg3d]

Lets just hope they ditch the using a texture for your landing lights and use an actual directx light source! I see better with my lights off in 2004!

[Fredla]

oh I AGREE. I can't see anything when the landing lights are on. Everything is washed out.

[LGA]

Right on with making airports a little harder to find. I've noticed that in big cities, large airports from a few miles out are actually the dark area nestled inside all those lights. One of the first things that you can see a faint glow of is the VASI. In anycase, it would be nice to see the airports blend in better. As for the night textures, the default ones to have room for improvement, yet it would be nice to see a new approach that would bring us something even more spectacular. I've always said on these forums that what MS really needs is moving vehicle traffic at night on the roads. It would really help the night scene. It doesn't look like it will happen, at least from what I see so far in the screenshots(I believe those are car textures drawn on the road textures in some of the screenshots offered).

[Fredla]

Huh? They have already told us that they will have moving vehicles, so what makes you think they won't have them at night?

[btrjet]

Kev,

Try Ultimate Night Environment Pro. You'll get all the twinkling lights you want.



Pat

[sobaka]

I agree with Pat,
I have Ultimate Night Environment and I find it is the closest thing to night city lights I've seen so far. I have landed at night on several occasions at Pearson Int. in Toronto, and final approach from the east, brings you less than 1000ft over the heart of the city, and it is as bright as using Ultimate Night. The night lights over San Fran and L.A. are not too bad using Mega-scenery but they could be a little brighter.