Sun glare simulation

[YoYo]

Guys. Excuse me, but what is this?

This is clearly a problem and poor lighting modeling (sorry). Instead of the sun, we have a nuclear explosion. This has already been reported as a bug, yet the image is repeated in the your new preview.

Not only does it not look realistic in 2D on a monitor, but it also looks terrible in VR, taking up all the space and making 2/3 of the sky invisible. Request to improve this, because such a sun could have been in Skyrim in 2011, but not the simulator :)!

The screen above probably shows the sun heading towards evening, it is some early evening.

I give a few examples, it is clearly visible that the Sun and the effect in IL-2 Korea are overscaled.

Pleas fix this issue.

Btw.

The sun in MSFS2024, early evening as well.

Edited July 7 by YoYo

[belphegor]

I think the sun is fine, and if anything, not quite bright and blinding enough.  It's really hard to look in the direction of the sun and see anything but glare, and that's modeled much better in Il-2 than it is in some other sims I've played.

[Xtremist]

3 minutes ago, belphegor said:

I think the sun is fine, and if anything, not quite bright and blinding enough.  It's really hard to look in the direction of the sun and see anything but glare, and that's modeled much better in Il-2 than it is in some other sims I've played.

I have never seen the sun flooding the entire horizon with blinding white light, but maybe we have a different sun here in central europe. The first screenshot is really laughable, but there is a general problem with HDR in the game, and maybe this is one aspect of it. 

[eszyman]

I think the sun is fine, but the gun site disappearing against the clouds is a bit of an issue.
But on the topic of atmospherics.
Is there any chance that a rain effect could eventually be added to outside of the aircraft?
I mean, the rain both looks and sound so good now beating against the canopy, but the wing still looks as if it's dry outside...
Something to grow towards perhaps?

[YoYo]

2 minutes ago, eszyman said:

I think the sun is fine, but the gun site disappearing against the clouds is a bit of an issue.
But on the topic of atmospherics.
Is there any chance that a rain effect could eventually be added to outside of the aircraft?
I mean, the rain both looks and sound so good now beating against the canopy, but the wing still looks as if it's dry outside...
Something to grow towards perhaps?

The sun is completely out of place at any time of day. However, in the morning and evening, it's completely exaggerated (too much bloom, saturation, rays creating a huge halo). While it's difficult to look directly at the sun, it doesn't work, so the halo is so large that it covers two-thirds of the screen. Furthermore, in the morning and evening, it's much easier to look at the sun, which is low and doesn't blind you as it currently is in IL-2 Korea. Not only does it look bad in 2D, but it's completely awful in VR, where you see the actual sun and the effect. If you don't use VR, I'll tell you this: if you saw something like that in the sky around 5 PM in the evening, you'd run to the nearest shelter. 

[belphegor]

32 minutes ago, YoYo said:

The sun is completely out of place at any time of day. However, in the morning and evening, it's completely exaggerated (too much bloom, saturation, rays creating a huge halo). While it's difficult to look directly at the sun, it doesn't work, so the halo is so large that it covers two-thirds of the screen. Furthermore, in the morning and evening, it's much easier to look at the sun, which is low and doesn't blind you as it currently is in IL-2 Korea. Not only does it look bad in 2D, but it's completely awful in VR, where you see the actual sun and the effect. If you don't use VR, I'll tell you this: if you saw something like that in the sky around 5 PM in the evening, you'd run to the nearest shelter. 

I play exclusively in VR, but have somehow never mistaken the thermonuclear furnace in the sky with an impeding nuclear attack.

[YoYo]

7 minutes ago, belphegor said:

I play exclusively in VR, but have somehow never mistaken the thermonuclear furnace in the sky with an impeding nuclear attack.

No? Direct from VR:

 

Edited July 7 by YoYo

[YoYo]

In my opinion, it looks OK during the day when the sun is quite high, but the problem begins in the morning and at sunset and during the transit, when the sun is still quite low, up to 1/3 of the way above the horizon.

[belphegor]

57 minutes ago, YoYo said:

No? Direct from VR:

 

Yeah, that sun is still plenty high to have a lot of glare.  Looks basically OK to me.

[Whittle]

I just walked outside to look at the sun(!)

It's a clear day, with the sun low in the sky, and my vision looked nothing like YoYo's IL-2 screenshots - I could still see blue sky fairly close to it without wearing sunglasses. Secondly objects below the sun were not washed out by glare.

Another consideration is that sane individuals block the sun with their hand when needed. It's probably not worth simulating that action, but one compromise is to make the sun glare effect less dramatic than it currently is.

I would prefer to see the peak glare effect remain as it is, but taper off more sharply at angles further from the sun.

[Zakson85]

I hold a completely different view. In my opinion, what is currently presented in *Korea* is one of the best simulations of the sun's effect—and blinding glare in general. The gold standard remains the ancient *Cliffs of Dover*; in that game, looking at the sun simulated the eye's temporary inability to see into shadows. The current simulator handles this brilliantly, too. I certainly don't want the kind of sun seen in those HDR photos—the ones shown as examples of "realism" that had actually been butchered by smartphone HDR algorithms.

[YoYo]

6 minutes ago, Zakson85 said:

I hold a completely different view. In my opinion, what is currently presented in *Korea* is one of the best simulations of the sun's effect—and blinding glare in general. The gold standard remains the ancient *Cliffs of Dover*; in that game, looking at the sun simulated the eye's temporary inability to see into shadows. The current simulator handles this brilliantly, too. I certainly don't want the kind of sun seen in those HDR photos—the ones shown as examples of "realism" that had actually been butchered by smartphone HDR algorithms.

You know, the glare effect is okay if you're looking at the sun around 12:00 and straight up at the sky, but it doesn't look that way in the evening and morning. Glare doesn't occur in such a large or large quantity that it takes up a third of the sky. That's the problem.

There are so many natural photos out there; just search for them on Google. Besides, all you have to do is go outside. It's morning here for me, around 9:45 (Europe), the sky is blue, no clouds, I can look directly at the sun without any problem, and it's basically the size of a coin with a small halo. Korea is closer to the equator, so the effect should not look like this.

[Zakson85]

At an elevation of 20' , the sun blinds me personally. Looking toward the bright light isn't comfortable for me without sunglasses. So, as I wrote earlier, in MY opinion, the way it is now is fine. ;)

[Husar]

For me personally the sun changing all screen is not the best solution, partial brightness in direct line of sun would be better.

[MajorMagee]

The current problem is that too much of the sky is being obscured when the sun is low in the sky.

Real Photo

In game

[skywalker22]

Might be, that the sun as an object itself, is just too big in the game (too close to earth, if it is it's own 3d object in space).

Edited July 13 by skywalker22

[YoYo]

That's right. That's my opinion too. Someone posted such a photo in the Screenshots section, but I still see a huge explosion of a nuclear device on the horizon, not the sun ;).

[MajorMagee]

No changes yet. This looks like a 100 Megaton blast over Inchon as seen from Seoul.

This is a 78 degree angle of view so the sun's apparent diameter should be 18.25 pixels wide (0.53 degrees). Inserted green circle to show scale. That's a lot of extra added glare!

Edited July 18 by MajorMagee

[YoYo]

4 hours ago, MajorMagee said:

No changes yet. This looks like a 100 Megaton blast over Inchon as seen from Seoul.

This is a 78 degree angle of view so the sun's apparent diameter should be 18.25 pixels wide (0.53 degrees). Inserted green circle to show scale. That's a lot of extra added glare!

Oh, boy! This really looks phenomenal ! 

I asked Chat GPT to improve this screenshot and make it more natural and true to life (without any hints as to what to do!). Here's the result.

Any questions? 😎

Edited July 18 by YoYo

[MajorMagee]

Gemini AI suggested turning off HDR and Bloom. It's certainly different. More diffused, but still covers way too much of the sky.

 

Quote

 

What you are seeing in Korea: IL-2 Series is a textbook case of an engine overcompensating for physics. The massive blown-out halo around the sun at sunrise and sunset highlights the tension between rendering accurate physics and making a simulator playable.

The Atmospheric Scatter Loop: The developers at 1C Games built a new physical module for atmospheric ray-tracing in the Korea series engine. At sunrise and sunset, light rays travel through the thickest, densest part of the virtual atmosphere. The engine mathematically scales up the scattering effect (the forward scatter of light hitting dust/moisture particles), resulting in a "radioactive," overly saturated bloom.

Screen-Space Auto-Exposure Limitations: Flight simulators use auto-exposure to mimic the human eye or a camera adapting to light changes. However, when the sun is on the horizon, it fills a massive percentage of your view. The engine’s tone-mapper cannot handle a pinpoint light source of that intensity without blowing out the neighboring pixels.

 

 

Edited July 21 by MajorMagee

[FuriousMeow]

The sun is fine, except near the horizon line where there's too much scattering making this giant blobs around the sun. 

You think that looks like a thermonuclear device went off? With HDR enabled in Windows with a HDR capable monitor there's a hill shaped bright white blob on the horizon. Screenshot don't do it justice because of a weird grey scale/washout effect that seems to only occur with Wndows HDR enabled, so crap phone pic instead. 

Follow cam phone Pic added looks like half the globe about to become glass.

 

Edited July 21 by FuriousMeow

[Rocket_Knut]

34 minutes ago, FuriousMeow said:

"...With HDR enabled in Windows with a HDR capable monitor there's a hill shaped bright white blob on the horizon. Screenshot don't do it justice because of a weird grey scale/washout effect that seems to only occur with Wndows HDR enabled..."

 

No idea, what you´re on about since this got fixed weeks ago.  Hence the thread mentioning it got moved to the "suggestions"-section. So, not an issue anymore, job done, move on. 😉

[FuriousMeow]

8 minutes ago, Rocket_Knut said:

No idea, what you´re on about since this got fixed weeks ago.  Hence the thread mentioning it got moved to the "suggestions"-section. So, not an issue anymore, job done, move on. 😉

What got fixed weeks ago?

 

You might notice the last post in this thread prior to me was this past Saturday. That's not weeks ago that people are still talking about the huge blob on the horizon.

 

If you mean the grayscale/washout - its not fixed. Just took one with Window 11 HDR enabled and without:

 

 

[MajorMagee]

I'm still hoping that we end up with something more like YoYo's Chat GPT version.

[Rocket_Knut]

16 minutes ago, FuriousMeow said:

What got fixed weeks ago? 

 

You know, what sarcasm is do you? 😉