I have a pretty decent system:i5-750 OC'ed to 4GHZATI HD 59708 gigs of RAMI noticed something very strange...when flying LAX during the day, FPS is at 30...when flying LAX at dusk, FPS is at 15... can UTX night lighting really make that big of a difference? Anything I can do to reduce this hit short of removing UTX night lights?Thanks

Taken from NickN FSX set up instuctions.THE FOLLOWING IS ONLY A SUGGESTION. THIS IS HOW I PERSONALLY SET UP UTX.. You may wish to set it up differently FOR USA and CANADANIGHT LIGHTING – DISABLE NIGHT LIGHTING for MAJOR ROADS but if you have a decent system leave night lighting enabled for INTERSECTIONS. If you disable Intersection lighting you will get even better performance however I like the feature and it works well with the GEX patch for UTX and GEX night lighting. FOR EUROPE – There is only ONE night lighting option… you will need to decide if you want this on or off but be aware, night lighting is a major performance killer. ========================================= Hope it helps,Glen

can UTX night lighting really make that big of a difference?

Yes.

Anything I can do to reduce this hit short of removing UTX night lights?

Yes, there are two things you can do.1. Turn off the intersection lights and just run the street lights, or turn off the street lights and just use the intersection light. Probably running just the street lights with the intersection light off would look better.2. The light are linked to your scenery complexity slider in FSX. So if you turn down the scenery complexity slider the amount of lights will go down and improve performance, as well as some of the scenery object will go down also. You would have to experiment with the scenery complexity slider to find a balance that works for you. If you fly mostly airliners into after market airports then turning the scenery complexity slider probably wont ruin the looks of the airport much, however the default airports in FSX have a lot more linked to that slider, like the jetways for example, so lowering it can result in some jetways and/or other buildings missing. FSDreamteam sceneries are different though, you can turn the scenery complexity slider to normal and no jetways or buiildings will disappear at the airport, only smaller little object will be gone, not much though. This will vary between developers though as some link more to that slider than others.Aside from that there's not much else you can do. Those lights have always been considered a potential FPS killer even when they were introduced in FS9 back in the day. Of course with computers now the FPS hit using them in FS9 wont be as bad as in FSX just because FS9 can generally run a bit faster.