The night scene is not displaying properly

[YoYo]

On 8/24/2026 at 10:18 PM, ComputerJones said:

Not that this is all that helpful but I did a night mission last night and had none of this banding at all....

I have a request: if you have HDR enabled, turn it off, check a flight at night, and let me know. I have an observation, but I need confirmation.

[Panthercules]

Well, that was interesting.  I was just trying a few tweaks to my graphics settings to see if I could improve things a bit.  I was doing daytime missions for the tests, and was still having some issues around Seoul with buildings and/or terrain popups and the ocasional stutter (especially with the Sabre - again, the F-51 results were noticeably better, though still not perfect).  Just for grins, I tried another midnight mission with the F-51 and then with the Sabre, and lo and behold the night time skies (and city lights, etc.) looked wonderful.  No hint of the banding and other problems I saw in my previous night-time attempts.  Here are some shots of the mission and graphics settings, FWIW:

 

Edited August 25 by Panthercules

[Panthercules]

While the night looked pretty nice with the above settings, I wasn't thrilled with the way things looked in the daytime, so I ran a bunch of more or less randomly scattered tests with various changes, and wound up with the following settings as my best quality/performance so far - and fortunately the night skies over Seoul still looked very nice with these settings:

 

[AEthelraedUnraed]

12 hours ago, Panthercules said:

Well, that was interesting.  I was just trying a few tweaks to my graphics settings to see if I could improve things a bit.  I was doing daytime missions for the tests, and was still having some issues around Seoul with buildings and/or terrain popups and the ocasional stutter (especially with the Sabre - again, the F-51 results were noticeably better, though still not perfect).  Just for grins, I tried another midnight mission with the F-51 and then with the Sabre, and lo and behold the night time skies (and city lights, etc.) looked wonderful.  No hint of the banding and other problems I saw in my previous night-time attempts.  Here are some shots of the mission and graphics settings, FWIW:

 

Do you still remember what settings you changed that fixed the issue?

[Panthercules]

no - I changed pretty much everything at some point during the tests.  I posted screenshots of the two sets of graphics settings that worked for nighttime though, so comparing those might provide some clues.

 

[IDcod]

The same problem with any settings. Both in 2D and in VR. Graphics card 4080s, driver 610.88 and 616.56. Night flights

are not possible.

 

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Edited August 26 by IDcod

[IDcod]

Everything worked out — I enabled HDR in Il2. Now the graphics look normal at night.

[YoYo]

11 hours ago, IDcod said:

Everything worked out — I enabled HDR in Il2. Now the graphics look normal at night.

That's exactly what I was going to write. That's right, something was indeed fixed in Ptach 1.003 (previously, enabling HDR 100% didn't solve the problem I suppose). But I still think something's wrong. Enabling HDR shouldn't change the environment so much that disabling it creates such a problem with texture display at night. The developers are missing something here. I don't like the HDR itself; it creates bloom on the indicators of gauges, creates a strangely shifting bloom on the water (rivers), etc. Generally, whether you have HDR on or off, night should still look good, but it doesn't. However, I consider this a temporary solution, and at least you can finally fly at night.).

The problem with uneven rendering of lighting in VR between the left and right eyes still exists, and HDR obviously doesn't solve it (external view). It's still a bug here.

Edited August 27 by YoYo

[AEthelraedUnraed]

On my 2060, HDR On didn't solve the issue unfortunately 😞

[YoYo]

8 hours ago, AEthelraedUnraed said:

On my 2060, HDR On didn't solve the issue unfortunately 😞

That's why I think it's not just an HDR issue, but a lack of implementation, perhaps some faulty shaders or something. Even with HDR turned off, the night should still look fine, but it doesn't. It could also be a lack of properly compiled PBR textures or something (as someone mentioned). This issue should definitely be further monitored by the developers and resolved.

With HDR, it looks pretty good for me right now. Maybe more light on the clouds would be nice if there's a full moon, but overall, it's not bad:

[Dash,Polder]

Night time capture directly off the right lens. 

 

Looks like a tear in the fabric of space and time.  Note how distant mountain ranges are solid block mono tones.  The clouds really tear up in relation to light sources, in this case the moon. 

[Dash,Polder]

Even worse closer to sunsets.

Odd since there is a proper render going on in the mirror.

 

Edited August 29 by Dash,Polder

[YoYo]

In short, something's still not right here. I hope work on improving the night lighting continues.

[Panthercules]

I don't think that HDR is the problem (or the solution) here - in both of the most recent posts of mine above you'll note that I had HDR disabled, and night looked really nice in both.  Perhaps there's some issue about HDR in combination with something else that might be going on here, but it doesn't seem like HDR alone is really the issue either way, based on what I've seen so far at least.

[YoYo]

I checked how things look after update 1.004 with HDR disabled, and—bingo!
The night-time color rendering (in VR) has been fixed. It looks pretty good now. Thank you! 👍

However, there is still a VR bug where the lighting renders strongly in one eye but barely at all in the other (ground lights, airfields, cities). This only affects the external view (F2, F3); the pilot's perspective is fine. That part still needs fixing. ⚠️

[Regingrave]

Hi everyone! This kind of color banding can naturally occur on Low graphic settings, unfortunately this is a necessary compromise to increase performance. Though it shouldn't occur on any presets above Low, it that case this is a bug we'll have to investigate.
I did some research on that, seems to not be tied with HDR directly.

[YoYo]

6 hours ago, Regingrave said:

Hi everyone! This kind of color banding can naturally occur on Low graphic settings, unfortunately this is a necessary compromise to increase performance. Though it shouldn't occur on any presets above Low, it that case this is a bug we'll have to investigate.
I did some research on that, seems to not be tied with HDR directly.

Okay, although I had this problem before the patch and not after, so something must have been fixed (at least for me).

There remains the issue of the lighting in the external views, which are buggy in VR. 

Thank you.

[Valis]

19 hours ago, Regingrave said:

Hi everyone! This kind of color banding can naturally occur on Low graphic settings, unfortunately this is a necessary compromise to increase performance. Though it shouldn't occur on any presets above Low, it that case this is a bug we'll have to investigate.
I did some research on that, seems to not be tied with HDR directly.

This is a comparison between HDR off and HDR on (Ultra GFX setting).

Notice the banding/posterization in the dark parts (cockpit frame, tunnel vision) when HDR is off. With HDR on everything looks blended and natural. 

 

Edited October 2 by Valis

[AEthelraedUnraed]

21 hours ago, Regingrave said:

Hi everyone! This kind of color banding can naturally occur on Low graphic settings, unfortunately this is a necessary compromise to increase performance. Though it shouldn't occur on any presets above Low, it that case this is a bug we'll have to investigate.
I did some research on that, seems to not be tied with HDR directly.

Well, that's a bummer. It does make night missions pretty much unplayable. It also kinda surprises me; I expect some banding, but not the sky turning purple.

Would you mind sharing which of the graphics settings is responsible? Then I can turn these up whenever I'm flying a night mission.

[Valis]

For me the night sky is lovely - but inside the cockpit is like an 8bit acid trip.

These are my settings. I also tried with SSAO and Indirect Lighting but no difference.

(AMD 9070XT with no Reshade or any of that stuff. Completely vanilla)