Here are a few night shots

Allen,

I was 'studying' those shots last night and was struggling with myself whether to post anything in reply but I finally decided I should just in case you were still prepared to make some changes and were looking for some feedback.

Well, to be blunt I am not terribly impressed. There a few problems with the above shots: the whole thing is just too dim, in the USA predominant color of street lights is yellow sodium and last but not least lights tend to illuminate sidewalk, streets (this is the reason they exist !) so representing lights as small 'points' only is not correct.

I can see if I can counter this with what Chris Arrington's lights look like. He is an accomplished pilot and his rendition of night lights is the best so far. You can also download his file from the Avsim library (fs2night.zip) yourself and see what it looks like.

Best,
Michael J.

Here is another early, high-density light type, preview (still not final, and in development)... It is best seen in a darkened room. The product will have various choices of light density, with other factors.

This picture is north of Atlanta looking at an exit of I-85.

 

Steve,

This is definitely a significant improvement. I still have to wait for a few hours for better viewing opportunity but it definitely looks like a step in the right direction.

Michael J.

 I can't take this anymore . . . please release the software . . . must have this software . . .

I just don't want to fly anymore until I have this software!

We are limited by the background FS2004 texture however. We could not really add new lights without doing all the FS night textures. This would be a pretty big undertaking... And it is not just that, the whole USA landclass would have to be done because for all we know FS has this section as farmland.

We truly are fairly limited... Except for almost every road.

Steve Halpern wrote: ... because for all we know FS has this section as farmland

I guess this one settles it ...

Michael J.

in the pictures what type of mesh,Landclass are you using and are the night textures default

The pic Steve made was far better than the first two pics at the top of this thread. Just IMO.

I have to say that the new "brighter" street lights makes the city look treeless. Most of the time when you're flying over a major urban residential area, most of the street lights are obscured by trees and are not immediately visible. I believe the original screenshot in this thread looks more realistic IMHO.

Regards,

Joshua Robertson

I live in the Los Angeles area and from my standpoint, I'm able to look down on the region usually from mountain roads that offer majestic views of the cityscape. What I see (at least for the Los Angeles region) is that it is possible to make out a few details about streets, highways, and freeways... but most of the time, all you see is blackness with lights that seem to have been placed randomly but in actuality are the poarch lights and patio lights of residential houses. The reason is (and I know this from experience) because the street lights are obscured mostly by trees and sometimes by houses.

Regards,
Joshua Robertson

rojomoyo wrote: The reason is (and I know this from experience) because the street lights are obscured mostly by trees and sometimes by houses

That may be fine in some remote part of LA but I flew a few times at night over LA in a small aircraft and believe me - trees do not obscure 99% of lights in the metropolitan LA. LA got to be one of the brightest and best lit cities in the whole USA. As a matter of fact it is so bright I had hard time navigating VFR and finding airports - city lights are so strong that airport lights are hard to see - only with the help of the Socal approach I was able to find Burbank airport - and this is not a small airport. At one point in desperation I asked my passengers to look for any airport beacon lights and they could not see any despite so many airports in the LA area - so blinding are all other lights. LA is one big broche of lights - it is actually quite a site.

Michael J.

I am eagerly awaiting the release of USA Roads.

I also use the FSGenesis mesh ( all of them ) and from what I am seeing so far, USA Roads should be a perfect companion for FSG Mesh.

 As regards night lighting: As a lifetime resident of Southern California, I too can agree with Michael J. regarding the amount of lights in the greater Los Angeles / Orange County Megalopolis. However as Joshua mentioned, there are a lot of trees anywhere where people live, and a lot of people live here. I wish they could display the trees in a more numerous manner in FS9, but I don't think trees should be a concern to the lighting of the roads.

As Michael J. mentioned, adjacent malls etcetera, would have been interesting but some enterprising scenery developer probably has a USA Malls ETC on the drawing board as we type.

It would be nice to have an intensity slider for the night lighting, but in lieu of that, go brighter because it can be easily toned down within FS9 weather.

Meanwhile, I'm feeling like a kid counting the days till Christmas!

 

 

Michael,

What file is that that multiplies the trees?

On LA - I've seen the city many times from the air on UAL flights going into KLAX and it's SUPER bright... ;)

Ryan