Lighting is incredible!

[Dav IRL]

Just flew the hornet at 20:00 in PG and the lighting is like holy s**t!!! Reflections in and outside the cockpit and the city lights span for miles!!! It's amazing!!! Thank you ED.

[nighthawk2174]

Are they just the backed in textures or has the some lighting effects not being seen in the cockpit/on aircraft + nav lights view distance also been fixed?

 

edit found this so probably not:

 

[Rudel_chw]

Yes, the airport lights dont illuminate the aircrafts that are on the ramp .. hope ED will fix them sometime soon.

 

However, I do like the increased city lights, maybe a bit exagerated, but much better than the older blackened towns:

 

 

I also like the starts:

 

 

and the buildings (at least in Persian Gulf):

 

 

Thanks ED :)

[Harlikwin]

How is it in VR?

 

I hear you have to turn off the fancy SSLW (whatever it is) to keep frames above 20. Does that only impact cockpit lighting?

[NineLine]

Are they just the backed in textures or has the some lighting effects not being seen in the cockpit/on aircraft + nav lights view distance also been fixed?

 

edit found this so probably not:

 

[/img]

 

That isn't part of what is being worked on. The issue of terrain lights interacting with aircraft and such is another issue and has to be balanced with performance and eye candy.

[Tiramisu]

Nice progress! Will there be any additional light-ray-effects? Currently you can see the point lights, but no small rays that are located around the points of the light sources. It is probably not easy to get that effect right, but I wonder if ED is working on it.

[SloppyJoe403]

The new lighting looks great! Can't wait for the Steam version to get sorted out so I can see for myself! :)

[Tiramisu]

Can someone explain how to make pitch dark scenario. Whatever I do there is a gradient on the sky.

 

Maybe you should lower your gamma value.

[wilbur81]

Can someone explain how to make pitch dark scenario. Whatever I do there is a gradient on the sky.

 

This is what I feared with this new lighting update: I never quite understood peoples' complaints about DCS at night. Night-time is, well, dark. Even with a full moon, it is still night-time. I thought, prior to today update, that night itself looked pretty close to perfect...it was only city lights that were too dark (or more precisely, not visible from realistic distances), the sky was just fine. I even thought this problem had been pretty well alleviated with some really solid updates. My concern after today's is that now that the city lights are brighter, the sky is going to be unrealistically bright. For what it's worth, full moon prior to today's update was already pushing a bit too much ambient light. Oh, well. I haven't played with it yet myself so we'll see how it looks. I just hope ED didn't give in reactively to all the complainers about 'night is too dark' and go overboard. I was finding that a gamma setting of about 2.5-2.8 was good for realistic high noon and nighttime lighting. I hope we don't now have to mess with the slider when we're playing at night vs. day. Oh, well... first world problems. ED does first class work anyways, so cyber air combat times are good.

Edited February 14, 2020 by wilbur81

[Goa]

This is what I feared with this new lighting update: I never quite understood peoples' complaints about DCS at night. Night-time is, well, dark. Even with a full moon, it is still night-time. I thought, prior to today update, that night itself looked pretty close to perfect...it was only city lights that were too dark (or more precisely, not visible from realistic distances), the sky was just fine. I even thought this problem had been pretty well alleviated with some really solid updates. My concern after today's is that now that the city lights are brighter, the sky is going to be unrealistically bright. For what it's worth, full moon prior to today's update was already pushing a bit too much ambient light. Oh, well. I haven't played with it yet myself so we'll see how it looks. I just hope ED didn't give in reactively to all the complainers about 'night is too dark' and go overboard. I was finding that a gamma setting of about 2.5-2.8 was good for realistic high noon and nighttime lighting. I hope we don't now have to mess with the slider when we're playing at night vs. day. Oh, well... first world problems. ED does first class work anyways, so cyber air combat times are good.

 

 

 

 

IMHO : bull***

 

 

the nighti is perfect now!

[Mars Exulte]

Can someone explain how to make pitch dark scenario. Whatever I do there is a gradient on the sky.

 

The lunar cycle is appropriate for the selected date. If the moon is too bright (ie full moon), choose a different date where it's at quarter or half. If you want pitch black choose a date appropriate to a new moon. Consult a calendar or Google.

 

@Wilbur

The light from a city pretty well saturates the night sky in rl, thus the glow visible from a distance. My parents lift 20 miles west of Fort Worth, you can turn back toward the city at night and the glow covers a massive arc across the horizon. You can't see any except the brightest stars, and this despite being 20-30 miles away

Edited February 14, 2020 by zhukov032186

[Dav IRL]

IMHO : bull***

 

 

the nighti is perfect now!

 

With the new lighting engine you have to dial in your cockpit lighting (which actually makes sense!) and you have to dial in your night vision (which makes sesne too). Before you would just increase brightness and it wouldn't make much of a difference where now you can be too bright or too dark which is immersive for one and add another layer of detail. The lights at night were so dull previously that there was no point flying at night where for the first time in what seems like years I am having allot fun playing at night time.

[fitness88]

With the new lighting engine you have to dial in your cockpit lighting (which actually makes sense!) and you have to dial in your night vision (which makes sesne too). Before you would just increase brightness and it wouldn't make much of a difference where now you can be too bright or too dark which is immersive for one and add another layer of detail. The lights at night were so dull previously that there was no point flying at night where for the first time in what seems like years I am having allot fun playing at night time.

 

Yes I agree, noticed this as well, a nice feel of realism.

[NineLine]

No, gamma is already at 1.

 

The problem is with moon. It just illuminates objects too much and make color gradient from horizon to zenith.

 

click for full res.

 

It obviously needs a little bit of tweaking, but it looks promising.

 

Your Gamma is a 1? Wow, is your monitor calibrated? I run around 2.1 - 2.

[Mars Exulte]

I know that. I purposefully tested both with new and full moon

 

Ok =) That's an oft overlooked item. I haven't got to try it yet, twas downloading when I left home. My gamma is 1.8 if anybody cares

[Steve Gee]

Your Gamma is a 1? Wow, is your monitor calibrated? I run around 2.1 - 2.

 

He may mean the Gamma setting in the desktop settings section. Mine's at 1 there as well. I did have to lower mine down to 2, which I think is default, in game now so it's not too light.

[Crash *]

Flying at night....a joy.

 

Nice work!

[maxTRX]

In VR (Rift) it looked good in strong moonlight (local time 2330) except I could see a feint circular glow around the nose of the Hornet (about the size of NVD goggles fov) and around the VR mouse pointer. It was barely visible in the video clip I made unless gamma was set higher.

The carrier deck looked quite visible without any flood lights. The stars looked overwhelming in VR on a clear night.

The last 3/4 mile of case 3:

[maxTRX]

Is that full moon? It looks pitch dark, completely different from my experience.

 

To be honest I assumed it was, I was too busy to look up ;) but I never really saw the moon. This was my first short hop. I'll do a lot more tonight.

[JIMJAM]

Probably around 80% of my rl time is night and 1/2 of that is nvg. It is a hard thing to do and a one size fits all is impossible. I will do some night flying later but so far the sun bleached out the 190's pit and I had to lower the gamma a tad and it looks great. So far with the exception of a slower initial load and a little chugging over dense areas all is well.Looking forward to doing some LL night hunting in the Harrier. This is using vr.

Edited February 15, 2020 by JIMJAM

[NineLine]

He may mean the Gamma setting in the desktop settings section. Mine's at 1 there as well. I did have to lower mine down to 2, which I think is default, in game now so it's not too light.

 

Ah, copy.

[P.Carrasco =Keep Flying=]

I saw the video of the friend landing on the aircraft carrier, I personally also landed at night and found the deck very dark without lights and I thought it is not possible that it really is so, there must be minimal lighting for the crew to work or everyone there has their NvG? I looked in the MR. Google and I was surprised!

Edited February 15, 2020 by Chacina
link

[Mars Exulte]

@chachina

Youtube videos are a terrible reference for what things look like at night due to the nature of how a camera works. In person your eyes adjust, not to mention your eyes are not a digital camera. End result if you were standing on the deck you'd probably be able to see a lot better just from ambient light. Not to mention you'd have a drop light if you were working on a plane, etc etc People aren't just milling about the deck in the dark during carrier ops

[wilbur81]

Hey, fellas...

 

started a thread over here: https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?p=4209793#post4209793 if you are finding that the new lighting is too much. I'm sure it looks great at night, but I couldn't even get there after I saw it during the day. Nineline, it looks as if they just ramped up the gamma settings by like 500 percent. I'm sure it was more sophisticated than that, but that's all I can see from my limited viewpoint. It's as if the highest gamma setting from before is now a 1. A '1' now dampens lighted objects but renders everything else shadowy and oddly colored compared to before.

Edited February 15, 2020 by wilbur81

[JIMJAM]

I just flew the Harrier at 2200 Batumi and well..... The stars are very big and very bright. Not sure why devs think we need cockpit glass reflections but the during the day it is annoying but the night is horrible. Looks like the CC cleaned it with a oily rag. VFR to the nearest airport and I couldn't even find it. All of the ground lights are neon and overly white. Needs more yellow. Not even going to pile on about the clouds.Reading the bug section these are the least of our worries but at least they are working on them. I was VR.