I have been with FSX since it was released and most of my flying has been during the day (simulator) however, lately I have been trying night flying and I have observed something very disturbing. The panel texture, wing and aircraft body shows blotches of colors whereas in daylight the colors are solid. I have added so much mush to FSX and made so many modifications and tweaks and don't know if this is normal for FSX at night. In the past I have installed FSX, OS's, equipment and do not remember how many times I have reinstalled everything and hoping I can find out if this is normal before I go through the lengthy process again for the last time before I just call it quits.Thanks

Can you post a screen shot of your problem areas to take at look at?

Thanks for responding. I hope the photos are right for posting.This is Aerosim 777 VC.This is Aerosim 777 2D cockpit.This is PMDG 747-400 2D cockpitWhen also observing the wing views, the basic outlines, sections are there but discolorization (blotches of another color) are also there.When I turn on "panel lights" the blotches of other colors are removed however there is no wing panel lights to turn on.

Have a closer look at your sky and water textures - do they also show those colour blotches?Wolfgang

Thanks. I took closer look at sky and water and they appear OK. I am attaching more shots at different time to show panel, water and sky. I think the last photos were too large so I reduced these in paint to 30% of default. The times are identified in the photo titles.As you may be able to see, the panel is still with problem. It is strange but I never noticed this before.

Have you changed any monitor settings lately (brightness, contrast, balance,..)?

On your first scenery image i can see some banding in the sky, the colors are not blending together well. So, i dont think its just the cockpits. In the FSX display menu check to see if your resolution is set to 32 bit eg: (1600x1200x32). Also open your video control panel in windows, probably by right clicking on the desktop, and check to see if color depth is set correctly in there too.Its not your monitor settings because if it was the problem would not show up on my screen, but i can definately see it from here. Its a processing problem, check to see if everything is 32 bit quality.David. :(

I have the same problem, just figured it is what it is. I noticed your using a 285, I have the 260.

As I mentioned before - I do not know when or how this happened but I do not honestly believe it has always been like this. I strongly suspect that it may have something to do with some addon. I am presently using the latest nVidia drivers with the latest inspector. I think I will try an earlier driver (197.45) with nHancer and see what happens.

I have the same issue and colour bandings, with panels, sky textures and water textures also during daytime, but more visible at dusk, night and dawn. During dusk and dawn also the land textures get colour blotches. I have it in FS9 and FSX. I first noticed it when swtching to my high rated LG Flatron M2762 27" monitor. I first thought it is the monitor but then found out that also my old 17" monitor had the same issue, but because of its size it was harder to see. Changing drivers had no effectCould the colour bandings and the blotches be effected by the fact, that my monitors have a max colour depth of 16.7 million colours (24 bit) while FSX and FS9 are running with 32 bit? My GPU (9600GT) has only settings for 16 or 32 bit but not for 24 bit.Any ideas?Thanks, Wolfgang

After looking at the subsequent postings, I take it that there are those that do not have this problem. That being the case, I wonder why some of us are experiencing this and what may it be associated with. If I am not mistaken, I do not believe that cmpbellsjc or OArturO have this problem. What is it in common with the rest of us?

In a previous post i mentioned that the first scenery image had banding in the sky, but it looks like it might just be jpeg compression. My bad.If your sure your scenery and sky look good than you might just be dealing with texture problems that go way back to when textures were first introducedto msfs.Without a dedicated night texture, flight sim does not do a good job of darkening textures. When day-time textures are darkened its almost like a 'luminesance'function is used rather than a 'brightness' function, which causes color saturation oriented blotchyness.In all honesty the 777 VC you have there doesnt look like fantastic quality and you might be dealing with extremely bad DXT compression on the textures, and alsothe absense of a dedicated night texture. The pmdg panel there is 2d and although im sure it has a dedicated night bitmap, its not on, and as the sim darkens the daytexture to look like night it messes it up.Do any of your aircraft look proper at night?David.edit: @Wolfgang: Your monitor is top notch at 24 bit. 32 bits is broken up into four 8bit parts, red, green and blue are 8bits each which makes your 24bits and and the remaining 8bits is used for alpha channels which control things like transparency and reflections. As the last 8bits are only intended to affect the way the red, green and blue are displayed, a monitor only needs to display the 24 color bits. If your getting banding all over the place, then definately check all of your quality settings in fsx and nvidia control panel, maybe also the monitor cable.

David, many thanks four your reply. I have checked the settings again and also the cable. No improvements. BTW I have the problems with RGB and HDMI connection, so I think one can rule out a bad cable.Actually I had already given up finding the cause of the problem, but this thread gave me some new motivation.I now suspect it could be a display driver issue. It seems that my monitor is not recognized by the system by name but only as plug & play. So I think there are only some default monitor drivers installed. I'll try to install the proper LG drivers tonight.Wolfgang

I am disappointed that no one was able to suggest what problem actually is and assume from the responses that this condition is normal for FSX scenery at night.Thanks to all that offered suggestions and ideas.

FSX uses old pixel and vertex shader versions. Probably to make it compatible with old hardware. you wont see these problems with new games. Also the problem is emphasized by good quality monitors that have high contrast ratios, they reaaly define the poorer quality of the old pixel shader versions. Bummer. :( David.