HiI've recently calibrated my monitor and colorsynced it as I'm getting into photography a bit more and want to have more accurate results. A friend of mine did this for me and everything on the photo front looks so much better now. The trouble is that FSX now looks too dark and a bit lacking in contrast. I was wondering, rather than having to adjust my setting all the time, if there is some way, maybe through one of the .cfg files, of adjusting these values so that they automatically load each time?CheersDel

Try doing a search for the enbseries mod, might be what you are looking for.

Try doing a search for the enbseries mod, might be what you are looking for.

+1 I agree the ENB mod will probably do the trick for you since you can adjust the darking, contrast, and color saturation in it. As well as the fact that it looks quite nice if you dont go overboard with the settings and set it up properly.You can find some preset ENB ini's from John Venema at the ORBX board, Tim Fuschs at the REX board, NickN at the GEX board on simforums, and probably more floating around. Personally I have tried all of them and dont care for the ones by John (ORBX) or Tim's (REX) because they are a bit much for my taste and add too much reflection and brightness off of white surfaces. I think NickN's is a good one to start with and you can tweak it to your liking from there. He also has a setup guide for it posted here as well as a link to download it: http://www.simforums.com/Forums/enb-bloom-mod-nicks-cOnfig-updated_topic32482.htmlJust make sure you dont let it control your AnisotropicFiltering or Antialiasing or you could have some issues, Nick's settings has then turned off, but some of the other ini's that I have downloaded have them turned on.Also, another note on it. You can tweak the setting while FSX is going so that you dont have to reboot FSX everytime you want to test a new setting. All you need to do is turn FSX into windowed mode, open the ENB ini file and make your adjustment, then go back to FSX and put it back into fullscreen mode and the new settings will be visible.Here are some other suggestions I put together to help you set it up for daytime use. Night time will be different from what is shown here but if you need some night time settings just ask.[REFLECTION]ReflectionPower=100 <- reduce to 60ChromePower=100 <reduce to 60UseCurrentFrameReflection=1ReflectionQuality=1ReflectionSourceSpecular=50ReflectionSourceTFactor=50UseAdditiveReflection=1ReflectionDepthBias=0UseLowResReflection=1ReflectionSinglePass=1UseEnvBump=0 <- Try setting to 0 (zero), setting at 1 will turn it one but can add to much brightnessEnvBumpAmount=100EnvBumpOffset=100ReflectionFlip=0Some other note worth settings to adjust are below in bold[bLOOM]BloomPowerDay=7 <- A setting of around 4 to 6 is pretty good here to give some glare off the clouds, but not to much. The higher the number the more glare and whiteness off the clouds BloomFadeTime=400BloomConstantDay=1BloomQuality=0BloomScreenLevelDay=75 <- A setting here of around 35 will also help cut out the glareBloomCurveDay=0 BloomPowerNight=18BloomConstantNight=2BloomCurveNight=0BloomScreenLevelNight=20BloomAdaptationScreenLevel=40BloomAdaptationMultiplier=50BloomAllowOversaturation=1BloomMaxLimit=100[colorCORRECTION]DarkeningAmountDay=30 <- Way to dark in my opinion. A value of around 4 to 7 will darken the ground a little more than default but not make it look as washed out as default FSXScreenLevelDay=70 <- A value of around 30 works well hereScreenLevelNight=1DarkeningAmountNight=15GammaCurveDay=0 <- If the values above are set then 1 works good hereGammaCurveNight=-2ColorSaturationDay=0 <- Setting to 0 (zero) or 1 is probably the most that should be used. The higher the value the more staturated the look and more cartoon likeColorSaturationNight=0UsePaletteTexture=0

Thanks guys, that's spot on. Will experiment a bit with settings to get it just right for my monitor but looks better already just with a simple gamma change.CheersD.

+1 I agree the ENB mod will probably do the trick for you since you can adjust the darking, contrast, and color saturation in it. As well as the fact that it looks quite nice if you dont go overboard with the settings and set it up properly.You can find some preset ENB ini's from John Venema at the ORBX board, Tim Fuschs at the REX board, NickN at the GEX board on simforums, and probably more floating around. Personally I have tried all of them and dont care for the ones by John (ORBX) or Tim's (REX) because they are a bit much for my taste and add too much reflection and brightness off of white surfaces. I think NickN's is a good one to start with and you can tweak it to your liking from there. He also has a setup guide for it posted here as well as a link to download it: http://www.simforums.com/Forums/enb-bloom-mod-nicks-cOnfig-updated_topic32482.htmlJust make sure you dont let it control your AnisotropicFiltering or Antialiasing or you could have some issues, Nick's settings has then turned off, but some of the other ini's that I have downloaded have them turned on.Also, another note on it. You can tweak the setting while FSX is going so that you dont have to reboot FSX everytime you want to test a new setting. All you need to do is turn FSX into windowed mode, open the ENB ini file and make your adjustment, then go back to FSX and put it back into fullscreen mode and the new settings will be visible.Here are some other suggestions I put together to help you set it up for daytime use. Night time will be different from what is shown here but if you need some night time settings just ask.[REFLECTION]ReflectionPower=100 <- reduce to 60ChromePower=100 <reduce to 60UseCurrentFrameReflection=1ReflectionQuality=1ReflectionSourceSpecular=50ReflectionSourceTFactor=50UseAdditiveReflection=1ReflectionDepthBias=0UseLowResReflection=1ReflectionSinglePass=1UseEnvBump=0 <- Try setting to 0 (zero), setting at 1 will turn it one but can add to much brightnessEnvBumpAmount=100EnvBumpOffset=100ReflectionFlip=0Some other note worth settings to adjust are below in bold[bLOOM]BloomPowerDay=7 <- A setting of around 4 to 6 is pretty good here to give some glare off the clouds, but not to much. The higher the number the more glare and whiteness off the clouds BloomFadeTime=400BloomConstantDay=1BloomQuality=0BloomScreenLevelDay=75 <- A setting here of around 35 will also help cut out the glareBloomCurveDay=0 BloomPowerNight=18BloomConstantNight=2BloomCurveNight=0BloomScreenLevelNight=20BloomAdaptationScreenLevel=40BloomAdaptationMultiplier=50BloomAllowOversaturation=1BloomMaxLimit=100[colorCORRECTION]DarkeningAmountDay=30 <- Way to dark in my opinion. A value of around 4 to 7 will darken the ground a little more than default but not make it look as washed out as default FSXScreenLevelDay=70 <- A value of around 30 works well hereScreenLevelNight=1DarkeningAmountNight=15GammaCurveDay=0 <- If the values above are set then 1 works good hereGammaCurveNight=-2ColorSaturationDay=0 <- Setting to 0 (zero) or 1 is probably the most that should be used. The higher the value the more staturated the look and more cartoon likeColorSaturationNight=0UsePaletteTexture=0

Good info Sean. Thanks for sharing!Jim

Agreed! Thanks for sharing your settings!

HiI've recently calibrated my monitor and colorsynced it as I'm getting into photography a bit more and want to have more accurate results. A friend of mine did this for me and everything on the photo front looks so much better now. The trouble is that FSX now looks too dark and a bit lacking in contrast. I was wondering, rather than having to adjust my setting all the time, if there is some way, maybe through one of the .cfg files, of adjusting these values so that they automatically load each time?CheersDel

Hey Del,I have found this to be the case, and it especially is bothersome with re to how VCs display: if I amp up gamma to make the VC be visible enough, the scenery outside is way too washed out. My work around is to fly and dawn and dusk mostly, and then amp up gamma and contrast and all is well. I have never found a happy place and the ENB I don't like because I find image sharpness suffers. I kind of like an artificially high contrast world though, and use FSX's native BLOOM whenever it doesn't impact performance more than tolerable.Noel

Hey Del,I have found this to be the case, and it especially is bothersome with re to how VCs display: if I amp up gamma to make the VC be visible enough, the scenery outside is way too washed out. My work around is to fly and dawn and dusk mostly, and then amp up gamma and contrast and all is well. I have never found a happy place and the ENB I don't like because I find image sharpness suffers. I kind of like an artificially high contrast world though, and use FSX's native BLOOM whenever it doesn't impact performance more than tolerable.Noel

Besides ENB there is another solution to this problem. You can adjust your monitor manually according to your time of day flight OR you can use a small applet: Gamma Panel which basically sits in your tray (if you want) and upon selecting specific keys (defined previously) you get the monitor adjustment required. As an example I have Ctl ALT F2 to F10 for different brightness, Gamma & Contrast settings. It took me a while to find the best range of settings but once you have it done you are good to go and fly anytime of day.Pierre

+1 I agree the ENB mod will probably do the trick for you since you can adjust the darking, contrast, and color saturation in it. As well as the fact that it looks quite nice if you dont go overboard with the settings and set it up properly.................

A question- when installing the ENB mod, as described above, are there any issues with the fix "Bojote's Shader 3.0 mod" being already installed? Are these 2 mods that interact with each other, or totally different animals that are mutually exclusive?Thanks, and forgive my lack of knowledge... :)Bruce.

Good info Sean. Thanks for sharing!Jim

No problem Jim, hope it helps.

Agreed! Thanks for sharing your settings!

Those aren't actually my complete settings only partial areas that I use to tune. My night settings are different that what is listed there. Actually every time I think I have it dialed in, I end up fiddling with it more. The problem is that depending on which daytime sky set you use in REX you will get completely different looks in FSX when using the ENB mod. What I am and have been trying to do is get a daytime sky set that when used in conjunction with an REX daytime sky, is get a look that reflects what I see on a pretty normal day where I live. Granted the daytime sky can be more milky and white one day then the next be darker blue, but find one somewhere in the middle is the hardest part. I cant even imagine how many scratch pieces of papar I have on my desk with notes scribbled on it with the names of an REX daytime sky set and a number next to it rating how it looks in FSX combined with ENB turned on. One things for sure, I can not get the look I want of a brightness in the sky without using ENB.

A question- when installing the ENB mod, as described above, are there any issues with the fix "Bojote's Shader 3.0 mod" being already installed? Are these 2 mods that interact with each other, or totally different animals that are mutually exclusive?Thanks, and forgive my lack of knowledge... :)Bruce.

Bruce, I am pretty sure from what others have said, you can use ENB with Bojote's Shader 3.0 mod. I did a search here and saw a comment about someone using both. The only thing I think you can't use Bojote's Shader 3.0 mod with is FS Water Config and some of the REX water settings that use shader 2.0.I suppose you could just drop the ENB dll and ini into your root FSX folder and give it a shot. If it doesn't work properly or causes problems then all you have to do is remove those two files and you should be back to normal.

Besides ENB there is another solution to this problem. You can adjust your monitor manually according to your time of day flight OR you can use a small applet: Gamma Panel which basically sits in your tray (if you want) and upon selecting specific keys (defined previously) you get the monitor adjustment required. As an example I have Ctl ALT F2 to F10 for different brightness, Gamma & Contrast settings. It took me a while to find the best range of settings but once you have it done you are good to go and fly anytime of day.Pierre

Thanks for that Pierre. I have for many years used PowerStrip, which allows you to use hot keys to adjust contrast/gamma/brightness and color shift on the fly.

...........Bruce, I am pretty sure from what others have said, you can use ENB with Bojote's Shader 3.0 mod. I did a search here and saw a comment about someone using both. The only thing I think you can't use Bojote's Shader 3.0 mod with is FS Water Config and some of the REX water settings that use shader 2.0.I suppose you could just drop the ENB dll and ini into your root FSX folder and give it a shot. If it doesn't work properly or causes problems then all you have to do is remove those two files and you should be back to normal.

Thanks, much appreciated.Bruce.

Here are some other suggestions I put together to help you set it up for daytime use. Night time will be different from what is shown here but if you need some night time settings just ask.

Could you please list your favorie night time settings as well?Much thanks,Dirk.

Of course whatever sky textures you have installed plays a huge part in the overall brightness & contrast, which is actually the concept behind Shade. The first 4 pixels across the top of each sky texture are key pixels that control lighting in the sim. Shade alters the color of these pixels; when you see the "injecting Shade" dialog, your existing sky textures are in the process of being backed up to a temp folder while a second copy of each .bmp is custom tinted and sent back into the texture folder. When you see "unloading Shade" as you close the sim, the backup copies of your sky textures are being restored and the backup folder deleted. ...so that gives you an idea how powerful the sky textures can be in adjusting brightness & contrast in the sim.If you have a copy of photoshop you can record an "Action" that can later be run on a group of images in a batch process. An "Action" is a macro basically, say you open a single sky texture and record the process of selecting the first pixel, and then adjusting the brightness of it slightly, after that you move the selection to the 2nd pixel and darken it slightly. After that, record the process of saving and closing the .bmp. You can record any number of these process steps, and when you stop the recording these processes will all be saved into your new "Action". From the file menu you can then choose "Automate > Batch", and then direct PhotoShop to run that group of processes on an entire folder full of images. Obviously you'll want to copy the 140 sky texture .bmps to a temporary folder and run these actions on the copies rather than turning it loose in the main texture folder.FSX sky textures need to be 32 bit, if you started with 32 bit FSX sky textures, PhotoShop won't change that so no worries, just drop them in the texture folder and go. FS9 sky textures are 24 bit, you can use them too, but they'll need to be converted to 32 bit for use in FSX with the following imagetool command run from within a temp folder containing only the 140 sky texture .bmps. you wish to convert:imagetool -32 -nomip -brief -e bmp *.bmpHere's a map of which key pixels control what, this is from FS9 but the pixels appear to play the same role in FSX: Jim

+1 for Shade, it's great! Has lots of different profiles. Generally darkens the sim, adds shadow to the terrain in the crests of hills, also dynamic shadowing to the cockpit - when turning the cockpit gets lighter/darker relative to the sun. Great little add on and at no FPS hit.Regards,Tom