night darkness

[ARM505]

Funny how a seemingly easily solved point always ends up being debated on these forums.

I have flown many hours at night with varying degrees of moonlight in light aircraft and airliners (although not much ambient light gets into them due to the pretty small windscreens re cockpit lighting) and the current night light seems far too bright, moonlight or not. Night is dark. This sounds blindingly (pardon the pun) obvious, but sims like DCS A10 get it right, ie on a moonless night you can't see a thing if there aren't lights on the ground. It's like flying in an inkwell. I flew with a full moon just the other night, and while it does light up things very well, it doesn't give perfect vision, although you could fly without lights very easily (you'd have to be pretty lucky to land however IMHO). Still, one shouldn't be able to see individual trees many kilometers away, as is now the case as demonstrated by these shots, or the instrument panel with perfect clarity. When practicing electrical failure in light aircraft, moonlight was not sufficient to see all instruments with any degree of accuracy, although a Cherokee doesn't have a transparent roof! Also, the colour is totally wrong - moonlight tends to wash out all colours, ending up with a kind of black and white effect. It's a totally artificial look at present - pre patch gets my vote, for what it's worth.