twistking

@Flappie Cold you have a look at it? I assume it's just WIP, but would still be good to have it acknowledged: To reproduce: Start flight hot on ramp or runway at night, no moon. Turn off some systems like a single generator to get warning lights on the warning panel on the right console. Now look at the the warning lights panel (right console) and the three greens lights of the gear indicator while toggling the BRT/DIM switch: Notice how the reflections of the indicator lights on the cockpit walls change in brightness, while the lights/panels themselves only show very little change.

I don't know. Wouldn't it be much better to just have a toggle that would darken or invert the map in the background? The neutral coalition (grey) is very difficult to see on some maps. I think it would be more elegant to change the background palette than to change coalition's colours...

The LUU-2 flares illuminate the exterior of the aircraft, but don't affect the cockpit when flying underneath them.

Have you done a file verification / repair? Disabled mods? What are your graphic settings, especially texture settings? Can you post a screenshot of the blurry cockpit?

The latest patch has fixed it for me. BRT/DIM now works, however it seems to mostly effect the reflections of the indicators on the cockpit walls. The indicators themselves barely change. It's easy to see on the three green gear indicator lights. BRT/DIM changes how much the cockpit wall is illuminated, while the lights themselves barely change. Same with warning panel in the right console but less pronounced...

I just tested with the new patch and could not reproduce my issues, even without deleting fxo/metashaders first. Floodlight works correctly now. Also the BRT/DIM switch now does something. I suspect those things were quiet fixed without patch notes. I'm still not happy with how the backlight looks though. It's now more usable with brightness control working properly, but still does not look very convincing, especially if you compare it to your videos posted above. In DCS the backlight is too even. It should be more directional and probably also warmer in colour. Ideally colour would change with brightness (assuming it's incandescent light).

Thanks for posting that picture. This is not how it looked on my end. Maybe it was quietly patched (haven't tested since patch) or it was a shader problem. I don't run any mods, but will now delete fxo/metashaders and run a steam file verification before playing next time. Yes, the actual floodlight lamps (behind pilot's head) should also be visibly "on" when you look at them. I thought those issues were related, but maybe they are not.

Fair enough. Glad i'm not the only one who finds the broken floodlight extremely jarring.

@Bucic since this is narrowing in on the instrument backlights, maybe it would be good to open a separate report for the floodlight issue, which i think is even more severe. I would do it, but can you confirm that the latest patch did not change it? I did not yet have time to test since the update...

@Flappie could it be that the brightness controls are not hooked up correctly? brt/dim switch not changing the caution lights (and AOA indexer) brightness and instrument backlight brightness also not correctly reacting to corresponding controls. might be related to that other report...

I now looked at @Bucic's pictures. I agree that the air nozzles look off. They are way too pristine and have an unnatural shine to them. The flashlight also looks a little bit off. Unsure what material this is supposed to be though... I also agree that some of the knobs are a bit too "glossy" I still think that the black plastics look good. On one of the image there is indeed a very strong specular reflection (palm rest) that is not physically motivated, but this is not a material issue directly. I don't know what technique DCS uses to inform specular reflections. So this could be an engine limitation or a badly placed light probe or whatever. In any case, this is a separate issue. The material reacts correctly to light that should not be there: Not a material issue!

I don't want to invalidate this bug report, but want to add a few things for context. The shimmering is not a problem with the F-5e. It's just something that the renderer does and which is maybe more visible with the F-5's materials. It can be alleviated with running higher resolutions or different upscaling/AA techniques. This may come across as pedantic, but i think it's worth pointing out to help communications on the topic: PBR materials don't have glossiness properties, but roughness and metallic. So i think technically the OP is criticizing low roughness. On the emergency hammer, it's perhaps also the case of metallic being too high. Personally i don't think that roughness is generally too low for the plastic materials (radar palm rest, flight stick), but i will take a closer look next time i'm playing.

This suspicion is probably incorrect. The the PBR rendering simply requires a different set of material maps. As we definitely got new textures (and also some new geometry), it is safe to say that those textures are set up for PBR (they would not look as convincing otherwise).

That's dependent on the map. Caucasus and NTTR did not get the lighting update...

The issue with the cockpit being not correctly illuminated by the floodlight does not need real world footage, i hope. Properties of light are generally consistent in the physical world. The cockpit of the F-5 in DCS does not react to light as one would expect though. To reproduce, do a flight a night (no moon) decrease and increase the brightness of the cockpit floodlight (right console) and observe how the cockpit materials react. Also observe the Global Illumination (or lack thereof)! My opinion on the instrument backlight on the other hand is more subjective. Backlit instruments are hard to read and the brightness control does not have a meaningful effect on backlight brightness. I assume that this is not realistic, but i accept that this is a subjective statement, as i don't have any experience with the real F-5. The floodlight on the other hand behaves objectively wrong. Full stop. I just put those two issues in the same bug report, because i assumed they were somehow related. ps: There is another bug report about indicator light being too bright and not reacting to brt/dim switch. This may be related to instrument backlight being too bright?!

I think your understanding it correctly and you're right that it should absolutely be extended to ground units (and AI units in general). Would finally allow skill settings on IR SAMs to have a big impact on difficulty with low skilled units happily shooting at flares...

*bump* Can we get this acknowledged please?

The lights are in fact on, they are just not visible at distance. I've been bug-reporting this for a decade now. Linked below is a wishlist item about it.

My feeling was that the bright/dim switch simply does not work. I cannot see it changing brightness of indicators at all. I have not tested with today's patch though...

I believe you're overthinking. I would imagine a new barrage feature that could have two main mode of operations. Semi-Scripted. Like the old one, but AAA fires in random directions and intervals with some additional parameters perhaps... Dynamic. AAA unit get position of actual aircraft in vicinity by "cheating". When aircraft in vicinity, but unit cannot spot it by itself, it just shoots in general direction of aircraft. If AC is picked up by own sensors barrage mode pauses and unit engages in default mode. ME can configure certain parameters, like 2d position error (how close need AC to be in order to trigger barrage) 3d position error (same, but including altitude. could be used optionally to ignore high flyers) aiming error (how precise the aiming is. high error would just fire in all directions randomly, very low error would shoot in general direction of AC) timeout start (how long after AC is close the barrage begins. would need to accept random min-max values) timeout end (how long the barrage keeps going on when no AC within vicinity. would need to accept random min-max values)

True, but that's an insufficient solution to the problem imho. The purely scripted nature of the command is another problem. There should also be some new AI logic (with options in ME) to allow AAA barrages to occur dynamically under certain conditions...

I also like the idea of a separate Hangar "experience" mode, where you can walk around your modules in VR and maybe also have a look at AI assets. So kind of a VR encyclopedia/museum. Obviously not a big priority, but would be neat. The default hangar view in the backgrounds needs to go though!

+1 I think there should be at least one AI bomber (high quality asset) per side for each era. Currently lacking is early/late cold war and redfor in general. Modern bluefor is good i think, and WWII is ok. Vulcan would be fantastic!

+1 (and i don't even use VR)

Glad to hear that. Yeah, it's a bit of a head-scratcher. To be fair to ED, if you select one of the profile presets, Preload is always set to a "reasonable" value. I think the fact that those high values are even possible is a relic from the old engine (which streamed less data) in combination with potentially extremely slow HDD drives. Unfortunately i often see people cranking it up, because "bigger is better" i guess. ED would need to communicate better what these settings do or simply remove the option to set bad values (i doubt that with the current engine there would be any system configuration that would benefit from high preload).