New Global Textures and Night Lights [level 12 version] 1.0

Global night light textures for Orbiter 2016 & 2024

Maximum resolution in this version: level 12 (262,144 x 131,072 pixels globally, 153 m/px at the equator)

File size: 4.79 GiB (uncompressed surf.tree + mask tree: 4.81 GiB)



The new textures feature:

- Global coverage of Google maps imagery without major seams. In some areas if you look very closely you will see the google logo, but it's very small and faint (most of the areas where you can see it more easily (i.e. in the tropical rainforests) are usually covered by clouds anyway). I removed it on all water surfaces where it would stand out the most.
Areas with the biggest improvements: Antarctica, Greenland, Svalbard

- A global and highly detailed land-sea mask, so you will see reflections off tiny lakes, rivers and of course the sea.

- Global coverage of night lights, even on small islands and atolls - but unfortunately not over water, which seems to be a limitation of the architecture of Orbiter at this point.

- Realistic global sea ice cover derived from actual satellite data


I recommend a setting of 0.4 to 0.8 for the planetary night lights and 10-30 for the ambient light level (Options Tab) depending on the moon phase.

Unfortunately, due to limitations of Orbiter, no night lights can be shown offshore at the moment, even if they are present in the textures.

In case you have questions or suggestions please refer to the corresponding development thread.
You will also find loads of screenshots there.

Have fun with it!

=== Acknowledgements ===

This texture has been created with OpenStreetMap "dark" map data distributed by terrestris GmbH & Co. KG (© OpenStreetMap contributors, © Natural Earth Data, © GEBCO Bathymetric Compilation Group 2019, © terrestris) and VIIRS nighttime lights data produced by the Earth Observation Group, Payne Institute for Public Policy, Colorado School of Mines.

The land-sea mask of the final version was created by using Google Maps data and 1 km Arctic Sea Ice data of May 30, 2025 (thanks to the Institute of Environmental Physics, University of Bremen for the provision of the merged MODIS-AMSR2 1 km sea-ice concentration data at https://data.seaice.uni-bremen.de/modis_amsr2)
The Antarctic sea ice cover was added with thanks from: https://data.niaid.nih.gov/resources?id=zenodo_11196870

Thank you to everyone who provided input, help and encouragement during the development of these textures, in particular @misha.physics!

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Screenshots:

US East Coast (Boston, NYC, Philadelphia)



Taiwan:



Japan (Tokyo & Nagoya):



Western Greenland with meltwater lakes on the ice sheet:



Sri Lanka, Chennai & Bangalore in Southern India:



Nile delta, Middle East & Cyprus:



Italy:



Rhine valley, Paris, Belgium, Luxembourg, Netherlands & Great Britain:



Reflections from the congo river: