To anyone that can help:I had a misadventure with Partition Magic and my computer yesterday....I ended up with it corrupting my entire FS9 partition. I have spent almost 20 hours trying to reinstall 3 years worth of FS9, payware and freeware planes and scenery. EVERYTHING had been running smoothly (minimal stutters and minimal blurring) before this happened. I am now about 90% back to where I was before....I only need to install about 5 of my payware planes. I've been tweaking settings (in the FS9.cfg and within the sim) then running FS9 after adding each new software. Everything has continued to hum along great with adequate FPS, smooth texture loading and crisp, clear visuals. I have Ultimate Terrain, BEV, 38m Mesh, Ground Environment PRO, Ultimate Traffic installed and working well together (as they had done before). I am having ONE MAJOR ISSUE THAT I JUST CAN"T SEEM TO SOLVE......and that concerns night lighting.My airport taxi, runway, strobes.....AND my Ultimate Terrain enhanced night lights on the major roads (the ones that seem to hover above the surrounding surface) appear too large,bloated, blobby, fuzzy looking and not sharply defined. Before my need to reinstall everything, these lights looked small, very defined, and gave off a hint of a radiating star pattern......they really looked good. I've tried all sorts of fixes: substituting many different "HALO.BMP" for different looking airport lighting (downloaded from Avsim, etc); I've adjusted the "runway lights SCALER sections" (in FS9.cfg) varying the settings greatly from 1.0 for each (on the four lines) down to .005 for each. This has NOT generated any change in the size nor intensity of those lights, regardless of which HALO.BMP was installed(as all postings say that it should). It seems to affect the ULTIMATE TERRAIN lights exactly the same way, that is why I'm asking (no begging) for some help to troubleshoot this problem. I also noticed something that "MAY" have an impact. When my hard drive partition "E" with FS9 and addons became corrupted, I reformated that partition and reinstalled everything from scratch. Because FS9.cfg "lives" on my C drive partition it didn't get affected. All of the tweaks that I had made to it over the past few years ....based on what I've learned from different forums (and real smart folks) were still showing in the cfg. When I reinstalled FS9, all seemed well....and it seemed like that previous FS9.cfg was still the primary one providing imput to the sim.The thing that seems strange to me, however, is that when I made the runway lighting scaler changes (then fired up the sim and checked the lights at night), there didn't seem to be ANY difference in size, fuzziness, etc. There was a slight difference in the appearance of all the lights when I compared the affects of using different HALO.BMPs. That was seen in all runway and in Ultimate Terrain lights. When I read through my FS9.cfg, I noticed that lines referencing the VIDEO card showed my previously installed card and not the new one that I've recently installed. SO.....I'm guessing that perhaps there is an incomplete communication between FS9 and the FS9.cfg?????I read somewhere (and can't seem to find it now) that there is a way to FORCE FS9 TO GENERATE A NEW FS9.cfg.......can you tell me how to do that? Perhaps if I start out with a FRESH cfg., and then make the line number changes and save them, the lighting problem will be fixed???? And....if that doesn't work, can any one you suggest other fixes that will make these lights look normal (like they had been before)??Please help!,Mike

Mike; Here's what I have in my FS9.cfg:-DISPLAY- (replace dashes with square brackets)UPPER_FRAMERATE_LIMIT=35TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=100TextureMaxLoad=10RUNWAY_LIGHTS_SURFACE_SCALAR=0.7RUNWAY_LIGHTS_VASI_SCALAR=0.7 RUNWAY_LIGHTS_APPROACH_SCALAR=1.0 RUNWAY_LIGHTS_STROBE_SCALAR=1.0Notice the spelling of the word "SCALAR"..."SCALeR" won't cut it.All you have to do is rename your fs9.cfg to something like fs9.bak, and FS9 will generate a new config file next time you open it.CheersBob ScottATP IMEL Gulfstream II-III-IV-VSantiago de Chile

Wow.....First, I'm going to change that spelling and check out whether that makes a difference. Hopefully that will work. Then, I want to generate that new cfg. file (see if it "senses" that I have a different video card. Thanks Bob

If changing the SCALAR spelling doesn't cut it, delete the FS9 config then start FS9 again and a new one will be generated. Then it's a matter of changing the settings to your preference.Bob

Hi Mike. Hope I can help a bit. I had a similar problem with my textures especially after installing some mega scenery and as you, ultimate terrain. The simple fix for me was sliding my Mip Mapping slider in scenery preferences all the way to the right to I think 8.That defined all my textures including night lighting nice and crisp. Maybe you already have it set to 8 but if not, give it a try.Hope it helps. Regards, Tom

I tried it....my MIPMAP was on 4, I moved it to 8It didn't make any difference for the lights.Thanks anyway.....I'm still looking for a solution.Mike

Bob,I corrected the misspelling on the cfg and saved it...then ran FS9 again.......STILL NO difference in the lights.Perhaps I had that "SPECIAL" halo.BMP in my previous setup that made the lights just perfect for my needs. Since I lost everything and had to reinstall everything from scratch, I've downloaded about 6 different runway light correcting files from the AVSIM library. I've installed each and checked the result after each, but none made that big of a difference. Nothing looks close to what I remember seeing before. I'm going to keep looking for additional downloads -and- still try to figure out if there is some additional tweaking I can do to the FS9.cfg, the video card, etc.Anything else that you can think of??Mike

You might also look through your FS9.cfg to see if there are duplicate scalar definitions...in fact a duplicate DISPLAY section. I think FS9 uses the last one it finds. Used to see this alot with the display adapter section when swapping drivers and settings around...drove me nuts until I realized the section I was changing was followed by a duplicate that was overriding the changed settings.RegardsBob ScottATP IMEL Gulfstream II-III-IV-VSantiago de Chile

I did.....there aren't. This really is crazy....especially since making large changes to the scalar settings don't seem to change anything?Since I last posted, I went into the video card control panel and made gross changes (switching from outright QUALITY to PERFORMANCE and back)....noting that doing that made AA and AF shifts especially. When viewing the results on the sim, it was apparent how that affected the overall look of the sim, yet that had no affect on how those LIGHTS looked.Perhaps you can copy and send the "HALO.BMP" that you are using, from your FS9 TEXTURE folder? I can install it and see how it appears. I'd be grateful. My e-mail is: [email protected]

Why don't you upload a screenshot for us to see?Marco

Good idea.....please tell tell me how to do that. Mike

>Good idea.....please tell tell me how to do that. >>MikePress the PrintScreen key (right of F12 key), then exit FS9, open MS Paint, choose "Paste", then save the image as a JPEG.When replying, choose "Click here to choose your attachments", then choose the JPEG file you saved, then check "JPEG image file" and "Check this box if you wish to embed attachment URL in the message text box.", and finally "Upload file!"Marco

Great instructions......I'll upload the screenshot(s) later today when I get home.Mike

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Your thoughts on this parallel what I also thought....that since changing those values had no obvious change in the sim, it didn't seem like the cfg and FS9 were talking with each other. I did some more testing, however, and found that if I made some changes in the sim's settings, those changes DID SHOW UP ON THE CONFIG, as different numbers. So......it seems that (at least) the config file and FS9 are communicating.Mike