cockpit lights and gauges to bright at night, taking years off my life.

[stampee 8]

Hi awl: I am still struggling with this BUG in fsx. Night flying is basically unusable with panel/cockpit/interior lights on inside the aircraft. It is like driving a car at night with the dome light on as far as I am concerned. This is idiotic at best. There is no keyboard switch other then shift-L and that leaves a LOT to be desired. Seeing glaring white interiors at night, gauges so bright they hurt my eyes and not being able to see out into the dark night because I have lost my night vision from the cockpit lighting is certainly not realistic or even usable.How does everyone else deal with this during night flying? Currently I am forced to shut off cockpit lightning, then I have to squint to read the dim gauges on landing. There has to be some happy medium.Right now I have only 2 options. Leave cockpit lights ON Shift-L and go blind from the inside/cockpit lighting or leave them off and go blind from squinting trying to read the gauges.Any advice would be GREATLY appreciated.1) Are there any mods to dim cockpit lights?2) What are some aircraft I could buy that have dimmable cockpit lightning? I fly with the virtual cockpit if anyone cares to know. I only want a simple aircraft I can do night approaches with that may have ILS capabilities but this is not imperative. Last night I tried the stock king air 350 and my eyes still are strained from the glaring cockpit lightning.Thanks to everyone.-Stampee

[coturnix 1]

Regarding question 2 Aerosoft

[thunderbolt294 0]

I know the AlphaSim Grumman Albatross has two different cockpit lights; the cockpit floods and the gauge backlights, which can be operated independent of each other.Also the Lotus Sim L-39 Albatros has a just gauge lighting control.And even the default F-18 has two different cockpit lights; a white flood and a red flood, when I fly the hornet at night I use the red flood light. Dino Cattaneo's planes also have a gauge back light separate from the main floods too.

[188AHC 2,138]

Look in the Aircraft and Panels forum. There is a tutorial on VC lighting that might help you.http://forums1.avsim.net/index.php?showtopic=70388

[Qatsimo 7]

I guess you tried all the possible options with the gamma setting of your monitor? If not, it could help a lot. I haven't experienced a single VC that would hurt my eyes at night. They look the same as the real ones on Airliners net. My monitor has a quick brightness adjustment button. During FS daytime i use the Game mode and during FS night a Custom setting which has almost zero brightness and contrast settings. Hope this helps,Gerrit

[ryanbatc 12,854]

Did you forget about this post???http://forums1.avsim.net/index.php?showtop...=caravan+lights

[Art_P 6]

I only want a simple aircraft I can do night approaches with that may have ILS capabilities but this is not imperative. Last night I tried the stock king air 350 and my eyes still are strained from the glaring cockpit lightning.

This is a different condition in each aircraft as is the solution. I had the same complaint with the Baron and have tried changing the virtual cockpit light effect. For a dimmer light, you could try changing light type 4 (light type is the first number after the light number) effect in the aircraft.cfg file to "fx_vclightGreH" provided you have this listed in your effects folder (I don't know if it's default FSX or not). This has the same affect on the KingAir as it does on the Baron.

[stampee 8]

Look in the Aircraft and Panels forum. There is a tutorial on VC lighting that might help you.http://forums1.avsim.net/index.php?showtopic=70388

Thankyou to everyone who responded. I tried the above link, but cannot find the tutorial. All of the links listed are bad or outdated.These are great suggestions for aircraft, I shall look into them.YES, I did forget about that last post I had made, My power supply died the day I made the post, and with the massive hair loss it entailed, I kind of forgot that post.I will look thru the link to Phil's post and see if I can figure out his suggestions.Thank you all once again to everyones great suggestions. Keep the ideas coming!_stampee

[n4gix 4,947]

Thankyou to everyone who responded. I tried the above link, but cannot find the tutorial. All of the links listed are bad or outdated.

The very last post (#58) was updated two weeks ago to provide current and working links to both the FS9 and FSX versions of my White Paper. I just checked and both links are still active... :(

[stampee 8]

Thank you very much. I am dl'ing the tutorials now. I look forward to learning something new.-Stampee