I have a Dell 2405 monitor that I'm very happy with...uh, that is with one or two exceptions:1. During the dusk and dawn periods and when there are contrasting clouds at night, the banding is noticable. Rather, it's annoying to the point that I normally don't fly during dawn or dusk.2. I realize that "true black" on an LCD is next to impossible to achieve, except perhaps on a very high end model.Particularly as it relates to banding, are there any third-party tools that can help minimize banding? Daytime flying is steller but I miss flying dusk/dawn and I usually don't fly nights because of the limitations of the LCD.I'm using an nVidia 8800 gts 640 video card with the nHancer tuner.Thanks.Ed Lin, D.O.S.

That screen doesn't even appear to be a TN panel, so banding should be practically non-existant. I've got a TN panel and I can notice very slight bandind/dithering when viewing certain gradients in image editing programs, but it's nothing too severe. However, the banding at dusk and dawn in FS is not caused by the monitor but by FS itself. It would be visible on any monitor. You can confirm this by taking a screenshot, then using the Dropper tool or similar to get the RGB values for each pixel - you'll notice that all pixels within a "band" have the exact same RGB value.This happens due to low precision shaders, or when changing the brightness and other properties of a 24/32-bit texture too much. Had they used high precision (96-bit or more) or a dedicated "early dawn" sky texture, this might not have been so apparent.There's not much you can do about it. Turning down the brightness and turning off contrast and saturation enhancements in the monitor and display driver control panel might reduce the effect slightly.

You don't mention which flight simulator program you are using, but I find that FS9 will get sky color banding with the resolution set to 16 bit color instead of 32. This does not seem to matter in FSX.ArtBiostar TF560-A2+, Athlon 64X2-6000+, 4GB RAM, Geforce 8800GTS-320MB, 500W PSU, 250GB HD, FSX(SP1-SP2), Audigy SE sound, Vista Home Premium 32 bit, CH Yoke & Pedals, 22" WS LCD monitor