Help w/ C172 G1000 Lights

[gman! 1]

Hello everyone,I am having great fun in the C172 G1000 but at night time all this fun comes to an end. At night it is very hard to see the G1000's MFD and PFD due to darkness and to fix this I have to turn on the dome Lights. Do any of you know if there is a way to not make dome lights come on so the whole cockpit isn't lighted and the alpha channel on the windscreen doesn't become brighter (exp. with the dome lights on at night the alpha channel becomes stronger and the reflections on the windscreen make it very hard to see). To make it clearer, can I make only the instruments light up or the panel, and not the whole cockpit, or can I turn the dome light off, making only the instruments lighted?Sorry guys I posted this in the wrong forum, can a mod please move this in the MS FSX forum. Thanks

[gman! 1]

Hello everyone,I am having great fun in the C172 G1000 but at night time all this fun comes to an end. At night it is very hard to see the G1000's MFD and PFD due to darkness and to fix this I have to turn on the dome Lights. Do any of you know if there is a way to not make dome lights come on so the whole cockpit isn't lighted and the alpha channel on the windscreen doesn't become brighter (exp. with the dome lights on at night the alpha channel becomes stronger and the reflections on the windscreen make it very hard to see). To make it clearer, can I make only the instruments light up or the panel, and not the whole cockpit, or can I turn the dome light off, making only the instruments lighted?Sorry guys I posted this in the wrong forum, can a mod please move this in the MS FSX forum. Thanks

Sorry to double post but trying to make sure this thread is not lost. If it is possible and not to much, can someone please move this to the MS FSX subforum. Thanks in advance.

[n4gix 4,947]

Simply comment out the vclight .fx file entry in the aircraft.cfg file to remove the dome light...

[gman! 1]

Simply comment out the vclight .fx file entry in the aircraft.cfg file to remove the dome light...

So simple but a smart idea, I will try this out as soon as I have time and will report back. I hope the g1000 display gets brighter though, without the dome lights of course. Thanks :(

[gman! 1]

The CFG mod was good enough, thanks very much for the help n4gix. The cockpit textures still light up when I turn on the radio/panel lights gauge on the C172, but the alpha channel/reflection on the windscreen does not get brighter, so it is good enough. Thanks again ;). I think I will just change the name of reflection file on the C172 to .bak, so I do not get reflections at all.EDIT: Hey, everyone and n4gix, I found a texture in the C172 folder called "c172_interior_t_night.dds". I I will copy and rename the "C172_Interior_T.dds" normal daytime interior texture file to "c172_interior_t_night.dds" and see if this will remove the cockpit getting bright at night. In fact, I found a bunch of files with "night" in them, so I will take the daytime files, rename them with the night suffix, and see how that works out. I'll report back after I get some time to start FS and test it out :).

[n4gix 4,947]

You will find that EVERY such texture is now much "brighter" than previously......you see, the xxx_night.dds textures are deliberately made much darker than the daytime textures. If anything you'd want to make them even DARKER if you wish to lower the ambient lighting.. :( Any bitmap with the _night suffix is automatically used whenever the panel lights switch is turned on.

[gman! 1]

You will find that EVERY such texture is now much "brighter" than previously......you see, the xxx_night.dds textures are deliberately made much darker than the daytime textures. If anything you'd want to make them even DARKER if you wish to lower the ambient lighting.. :( Any bitmap with the _night suffix is automatically used whenever the panel lights switch is turned on.

But when I opened the "night" files in DXTBmp, they were textures that are used when the panel light is turned on, night for the amount of light at night time. Such as C172_1_night_C.dds texture and all the other textures with "night" where the textures I saw when I turned on the radio lights at night time. If I do not turn on the lights at night time, then the C172_1_C.dds texture is shown, but it is darker because it is night. FSX can apply dynamic lighting, or in other words post-processing to texture files depending on many variables. One variable is sun direction. If you turn your plane away from the sun in the cockpit view, even without the cockpit shadows options enabled, the panel will get slightly darker. If you fly your plane at sunset or sunrise, the cockpit textures are the color of the sun. If you fly at a different time of day, the coloring of the cockpit textures will be different as well. If there were textures for all the different types of day and seasons, there would be tens upon hundreds of variations of one texture. The 2 variations of each texture file, one for normal day/night, and one for panel lights at night, show that FSX applies post-processingAn example is when I use my default cold and dark, default flight at night time. Before touching anything on the panel, with no lights on our anything, even with avionics and battery on, I can tell the C172_1_C file is being shown, because it is they only variation of the texture without the backlighting you get with the C172_1_night_C.dds. :(For example if you like, inspect the night files in DXTBmp, then start up FS with a C172 at night. The textures you see can't be the textures with "night" in them because they are too dim, and you can see the "night" textures come on when you turn the panel light on at night.Thanks for the excellent help again, and I hope the tone did not sound bad, if it did to you.EDIT: Just re-read your post, it seems like you did not understand my statement (not your fault, my wording is horrible). I am going to take the textures without "night" which are dark, bright, yellow, red, etc. according to time of day, and rename them to the files that have "night" in them, and then I will replace the "night" files with the non-backlighted textures. Resulting in the same brightness of the cockpit, even if I turn panel lights on at night. This will make it easier to see outside, because the cockpit will be darker, and it will make the gauges easier to read, because they will still be bright, plus brighter than the background. :(BTW: I keep a back up of all my planes without any mods to them. Just incase something goes wrong... :(. And to rename all these files at once, I am using an excellent tool called ReNamer (freeware). I've used many renamer tools in the past and they just didn't do what I wanted, or even the basic stuff. Most of the time they were just bad though. This does exactly what I want, and more. I'll post a link if anyone wants it. Its a good app to download, even if you don't need it right now, because someday, and trust me on this, some of you will need it.Renamer: http://www.download.com/ReNamer/3000-2248_....html?tag=mncol

[gman! 1]

Just tried out the texture renaming. You were right, the textures were brighter. It seems like a light is applied to the textures when you switch the panel light on, even with the dome light line taken out of the CFG. I think I'll keep my C172 the way it is now, no dome light and no reflections. Thanks for the great help, and good look on your projects at eaglesoft.

[n4gix 4,947]

Just tried out the texture renaming. You were right, the textures were brighter. It seems like a light is applied to the textures when you switch the panel light on, even with the dome light line taken out of the CFG. I think I'll keep my C172 the way it is now, no dome light and no reflections. Thanks for the great help, and good look on your projects at eaglesoft.

I do believe that is what I said. You're trying to teach grandpa how to suck eggs, seeing as how I authored the white paper on "FS Lighting" for MS/ACES*... :( :( Unlike FS9 (and the previous two versions), FSX applies what is effectively a bright white (255,255.255) light source and adds (Additive Mode) it to the xxx_night texture variants, unless special steps are taken to change that behavior in the source files of the 3d model's FSX Material settings prior to compiling the .mdl file. One of the hardest things to accomplish now is to get the 2d panel and VC panel to not only have synchronized, but balanced lighting at all times. One of techniques I use is to adjust the balance such that there's practically no difference in the background panel's lighting whether the panel light switch is on or off. Once I've found that balance, then I can begin adding in the actual lighting effect I want. :( *Note: FSX Emissive Textures And How they Relate to Virtual Cockpit Lighting