Live time/weather flight over Netherlands in the Seneca.
Way too dark. .NL is light-poluted to shit. Every street is lit, everyone is thinking their front porch is so awesome it needs a spotlight, every bridge or monument is lit and then there’s a whole region covered in glass growing houses that are lit like the day. The sky should be a dirty orange glow over most of the country.
This was somewhere over Gelderland or Overijssel, which I think are some of the lesser-populated provincies, toch? I believe the community ahead at this point was Almelo.
Not saying you’re wrong, you’d know better than I would. But this was more rural NL, and looks pretty dark in a night time satellite view. I wasn’t over Rotterdam. :)
Heh well if its Almelo… Haha!
Does the game actually light up the night sky orange or yellow when you get near cities?
I remember that from my childhood well when we lived in the city of Doha in Qatar. We used to visit some friends on Fridays in Umm Said, and driving the hour long drive back to Doha, we would hit total darkness when we could see the stars clearly, and then the horizon would glow orange, brighter and brighter as we got closer to Doha.
It definitely does to an extent, although perhaps not as much as it should.
This is me just outside Chicago, to the NW of KPWK, at about 16000’ with clear skies and the aerosol density cranked up a bit to get some diffusion in the atmosphere. You can clearly see where the bulk of the lighting from the city is, and the near total darkness of the lake to the left.
It’s hard to tell, but it feels like it’s showing some refracted light from towns on the east side of the lake, too, if you look a bit further east. There are some blobs on the horizon that could be east-shore towns.
I had a few minutes, so I slewed across the lake to that light. It’s definitely Holland and Grand Rapids.
More impressive, here’s looking back across the lake from there to Chicago. Definitely looks like there’s a giant city 80 miles away or so. (There’s a smaller splotch of light where Milwaukee would be, too).
That’s actually a lot better than I thought it would be.
Edit: Another thing of note… see how you can easily make out details of the plane in the first two photos due to light in the atmosphere? It’s not just a black hole in the shape of the plane over the ground below? The same plane in roughly the same position was in the second two photos, but it’s a lot harder to see because the overall illumination is less. Definitely some smarts in the rendering there.
Updated my little airport… Latest SDK, fixed the windsock direction bug, added some more small details to the area.
I started the Padegonia bush trip. It’s already gorgeous.
Out my left window.
Out my right window.
This is a strange little plane. The engine sounds like there’s something wrong with it.
I’ve been in small planes at night and for me the biggest item missing is moonglow (when visible and not cloudy.) It is NOT as pitch dark as the game displays it most of the time. Sure, no moon and overcast is going to be a bad time while flying, but VFR night flying is perfectly viable in clear settings and following roadways and cities for a reason, it’s quite visible. I believe the required minimum sight distance at night is 3 miles for VFR.
I’m back to civilization in Asian Russia. Came down the Ob River, and finally down the Tom River a little to get to the city of Tomsk. This should get me back to the railroad, but instead of following the railway from here, I’m going to keep following the Tom River down to Kemorovo, and try to find the Trans-Siberian railroad again from there.
Hills! I spot hills! Is Flat Russia finally at an end?
The terrain really does change a lot hereafter. It feels strange to see elevation changes and hills again.
Even cities look quite different when they’re designed around hills, rather than just flat plains.
Great screenshots man. Might I say you picked one of the BEST planes (turboprop but you know what I mean) in the game to do your trip with. Love that thing.
We were talking about how lit up the sky and roads are when flying and I saw this picture on reddit. This is FROM SPACE. The reason it caught my eye is this is part of the state I live in. Now imagine how bright flying over some of those cities is.
Changing terrain.
And some snow.
I wonder if that’s just odds or luck, whether bing maps captures a time when there’s snow on the ground.
I think I have a new favorite airplane…
Britten Norman BN-2 Islander just came out today. Full set of steam gauges plus a GPS, awesome STOL capabilities, a bunch of liveries and I expect a ton more will come. Probably of interest to you cargo and pax-hauling types!
Approaching Tayshet, a city big enough to have an airport!
I think I’d love this part of Russia in real life, it’s all really pretty, heading Southeast towards Irkutsk.
One of the Twin Otters is supposedly available now. I can’t wait to try it.
Twotter’s still a ways off before it ships, alas.
I’ve been eyeing it myself. I think it may become the first third party aircraft I buy for MSFS.