(DCS 1.5) What do your nights/water look like?

[Slippery Pete]

I've posted this in another thread, and done some searches but have never really seen anyone comment on this, so maybe this is purely a graphical bug on my end, but ever since 1.5 beta was released I always thought there was something weird about the constant ambient light, and especially how bright the water can be.

 

This is the darkest I can make a night using the calender and time. Still there's much light, and no real need for NVG, the water is always visible.

 

This is what I find the oddest though, there are times where my water is downright glowing orange, at night.

 

Maybe this is how it is on everyone's end. I don't know. But I do know before edge was released black nights could be black, I haven't been able to replicate that since the update. Maybe I'll do a complete reinstall to see what that does, if others arent having this issue.

 

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[ShuRugal]

have you tried setting overcast? Your first image looks about like what i see with my unaided eyes on a nice clear night once i've been outside for about 30 minutes to get fully dark-adapted.

[Slippery Pete]

This is what the water/night looks like with overcast, underneath of course. Water illuminated, no moon. Time/calender settings set so it's as dark as I can get it.

 

This is with the camera on top of the overcast clouds, facing away from the 'sun's position', as you can see it is completely black, but this only happens when flying above the overcast, and not looking anywhere near the 'sun' wherever it might be hiding.

 

And this is what it looks like turning the camera 180 degrees around, towards the 'sun's last position', of course it never actually disappears over the horizon and is always there with constant lighting. The stair-stepping/banding effect never goes away. Never the less, while things might appear darker above the clouds, the water and land is always quite bright and well lit, it simply isn't possible to get a dark night in the game.

 

 

 

Sunset, however, kills lighting on the land/water, and makes things seem actually dark. I don't mind this, I like it and think it looks great with how everything gets dim.

 

But again, after this, when the sun actually 'sets' under the horizon, the lighting goes way up again, and the land and water textures are illuminated even brighter than they were before like in my first post with the orange water. It's like there's only about an hour+ where things be can be dark, while the sun is setting. Once 'night' starts, everything is lit up again by some magical ambient light.

[Slippery Pete]

(This will probably be my last post and I'll let the topic die if no one else responds)

 

But I now realize there is always an ambient light source, and it's always coming from the south.

 

Here we have the sunrise coming from the East, early morning.

 

And yet, coming directly from the south, even though there is no sun or anything there to illuminate the water from its direction, there is still a yellow/orange ambient light ever present, clearly coming independently from the Sun's. :huh:

[Leutnant_Artur]

I think nights are really to bright. I don't know why they changed it, I remember when nights was really dark like in real and it was couple years ago.

[BIGNEWY]

It is worth noting that currently the moon and moon light are not working correctly, this has been reported internally.

[Harpoon]

I hate to revive dead threads, but I think this is necessary. It's been quite a while since the problem has been reported (around a year and a half at least) and 1.5 still has this issue.

 

Photo from a flight a few minutes ago, water on low setting, time and date set was January 28, 2017, at 0307 local, new moon