City Street (Very Early WIP) Perceptual phenomenon?

[Mr. Fahrenheit]

Its eventually going to be a rainy city street hopefully. Right now its really just a proof of concept seeing how reflections should work. Also do the glows come off as too obtrusive?

Hopefully I will include things like depth of field and glowy stuff.

Tips and C+C would be awesome!

[Night]

Why do the lampposts reflect as colums of light on the water?
Also, what are the spiky light sources in the distance? I would assume they too are lampposts; but I can't understand why is the radius of the light so large compared to the 2 in the foreground.

I suggest tat you leave the water still, meaning that you won't see the waves on the unlit part of the water (the whole middle area pretty much), and even with that wil see very little on the lit parts of the water.
edit
wow, that's awkward was sure it's supposed to be water from thelines on the road. 

Too much contrast between the reflection and the road, tone down the brightest colour of the refection, and the light should scatter around the road more, would soidify it too. 
Still the same complaint about the light size in the distance though, should become smaller as it gets farther.

man I'm going to sleep, too tired for this now by the looks of things

[Gamer36]

I'm not pixel master, or a very good artist, but from looking at plenty of bright lights, I can see that your "flares" in the back aren't very accurate. Here are two references I got off the Internet, credit to http://blogs.lib.unc.edu/morton/ and http://maradong.deviantart.com/, respectively.




(oops... just noticed how big that image is. not sure if I should leave it, or link to it off site. is there a spolier function?)

In the fist image, you can see that there are many light rays coming off the light, like in yours. Just like yours, there is a light glow around the light source as well. If you pay close attention to this image, though, you can see the lack of symmetry. Some light rays are thick, some are thin. They also vary in length (how short or far away from the source they start to fade), and angle.

The second image will help you with reflections. In your artwork, the reflection goes the length of the road. As you can see in the picture (most evident with the left-most lamp), this is not always the case. I assume this is a wet road, due to the shiny reflections. Just re-read the OP, saw that it is a rainy road! If the road was flooded, it would make sense to have the reflection be equally bright the length of the road. Since the reflections are at the edge of the road, it is plausible that the sides of the road are covered in water (roads curve downwards at the edges). Also, why do the farther back lights have "flares", but not the front ones?

About the figures in the middle of the road, I'm assuming they are some being that stands on two legs, no? The reflections closer to us seem to be around the figures' waists. Was this intentional, to show that the road was flooded? If so, maybe put some disturbances in the water around them. If not, raise them up a few pixels, so the reflections don't seem to be floating.

I apologize for the long winded reply, hope it helps!

[Johasu]

The only problem I see is that you are reflecting the light from the bottom of the posts instead of transposed out into the street a bit [line of sight to point of reflection].  This makes your scene feel sort of bowl shaped on the street.
The light shouldn't shine directly off of the ground at the foot of the post like this because at that angle you would have to be more above the lights to see it shine like that.  (correct?)

http://www.ambient-mixer.com/images_template/1/f/1/1f1d36ceaca560be1470c437c0eaee98_full.jpg
I found an image here that shows what I am talking about.  The closer you are to the posts the more together the reflected light will appear, and the further you are away the longer the shine will appear on the street.  But even at a distance you don't see the light shining directly below the lights (even when they are shining straight down on the ground like these overhanging lights.)
 

I just saw two other replies but I don't see that they mentioned this so I am posting.

[Decroded]

as mentioned ur coronas are off balance so should be a larger and softer ball of light with a more sudden transition to soft glow and subtle streaks coming out at less symetrical angles (on each flare itself)

with ur reflections u need to dull them down.
at the moment if u add up the amount of light reflected it is way more energy than the light itself so perhaps u need to fimd a balance there.
u also seem to have angled every reflection instead of just vertical.

maybe use a different base colour for the street material instead of recycling one found in the light glow.

[Mr. Fahrenheit]

Thanks for all the comments guys they are really helpful. I've been a little preoccupied with secret santa though, so after that you should see some updates.