I have suddenly started experiencing a problem with my external lights. It seems that the lights themselves are invisible, even though I can see their effects. For example, the illumination on the tail and rear fuselage caused by the flashing red/orange tailfin light can be seen, but the light itself is INVISIBLE!!Does anyone know what the problem is, and how to correct it?

You most likely changed the halo.bmp with some third party add-on like REX, Active Sky Graphics or something like that.

The date of my halo.bmp file is quoted as 12/5/2006, so I don't think that is the problem.

If you have REX or ASG try restoring the default from within those apps and see what happens.

I don't have any effects addons installed....

Did you recently change graphics drivers then, that is another likely cause especially if you have an Nvidia graphics card.

I uninstalled Nhancer 2.5.9 recently. Could that have caused this problem?

It's possible I suppose, you could try removing the graphics drivers and reinstalling them again, it will most likely fix the problem.

I uninstalled the old (196.21) drivers, and installed the latest (258.96) drivers. The problem persists :(

Try repairing Acceleration or SP2. I had a similar thing going on and that solved it

Is it safe to do that? I don't want to make a mess of the entire installation. I assume that any addon scenery or aircraft folders remain untouched during this process?

The fact that you can still see the glow on the aircraft from the effect tells you that the effect is still working as that glow is part of the effect. So it would be unlikely to be a graphics card issue.Is this in one particular view or in all views? eg VC only or Spot view only.You could try checking your clipmode in the cameras.cfg file which is in the same directory as your fsx.cfg file.For example, here is my VC entry from my cameras.cfg with the clipmode set to minimum

[CameraDefinition.002]Title = Virtual CockpitGuid = {C95EAB58-9E4A-4E2A-A34C-D8D9D948F078}Description = This is the description of the virtual cockpit view.Origin = Virtual CockpitMomentumEffect = YesSnapPbhAdjust = SwivelSnapPbhReturn = FalsePanPbhAdjust = SwivelPanPbhReturn = FalseTrack = NoneShowAxis = YESAllowZoom = TRUEInitialZoom = 0.7SmoothZoomTime = 2.0ZoomPanScalar = 1.0ShowWeather = YesXyzAdjust = TRUEShowLensFlare=FALSECategory = CockpitPitchPanRate=30HeadingPanRate=75PanAcceleratorTime=0HotKeySelect=1ClipMode=Minimum

The thing is I am working on an airplane at the moment which, because it has such short wings, means the wing effects are not visible in the VC. Only by adding the ClipMode=Minimum line to the VC entry for the camera.cfg can I see the effects in the VC (even though I can still see the glow of the effect on the aircraft body ie the problem you describe but for me it is in the VC and external views are Ok).You're not using ezdok by any chance?

No, I'm not using EZDok. The lights are not visible in all views (external, VC, 2D etc). There is an update file available in the AVSIM Library (fsx_lights.zip), so I am going to back up the relevant files, and install that to see if it solves anything.EDIT: It didn't solve the problem :(One other thing I have noticed is that my custom Treescapes autogen appears to be loading quicker than it was previously. Why would this process suddenly speed up?

Would a system restore correct the problem? I uninstalled Madeira X, but I can't see that being significant.EDIT: Nope, that didn't work.

Damn, this is really frustrating me. Which files display the wingtip and tailfin lights?