Hello everyone, can someone explain why it's so dark at night.I know that it's dark when you fly at night. But not so darkCan tell you that i've flown much hr in the night but before it wasn't that dark before yesterday/ Kristoffer

Because the earth is between you and the sun. So it is dark. Or what do you mean?

hehe, is that what happens!? learn somthing new every day ;)-Travis

If you are feeling a little bit afraid, you can turn the lights on a little bit. I won't tell anyone...

I find the cockpit kind of dark at night in a cold and dark setting (insert various snarky comments about cold and dark being true here). But, it's so dark I sometimes have trouble finding the battery switch to get things started. But, I kind of assumed that was just a monitor setting of mine. So, OP, if that's what bothers you, try changing the monitor settings.

It's hard to simulate "dark" on a comp screen. Walk into a room with shades and bright lights, and turn off the light.What do you see?Now? Nothing. 30 minutes from now? A good bit, but no distinct color - just shapes.Which one do you simulate in the sim? Which one's more appropriate? Eyes adapt. The sim hasn't been programmed to change the light based on your exposure to darkness, really. You can adjust this using some tweaks to an add-on like ENB. Other than that, there's not much you can do.Maybe you can sim a flashlight...

Maybe you can sim a flashlight...

Actually Kyle, someone suggested that not so long ago around here. It would be pretty cool if you could operate a flashlight with the mouse while in the cockpit!

It would be pretty cool if you could operate a flashlight with the mouse while in the cockpit!

It would be very handy. Some nights, I'm stabbing around aimlessly at the top of the panel to get the flood on.

Hello everyone, can someone explain why it's so dark at night.I know that it's dark when you fly at night. But not so darkCan tell you that i've flown much hr in the night but before it wasn't that dark before yesterday/ Kristoffer

I know this isn't answering your question, but flying at night truly is "dark". Very dark like a few mentioned above. The cockpit swallows up anything you misplace at night.The ground is completely dark besides urban areas, houses, and lighted highways. Therein lies the problem when single engine at night. Loose the engine and you're SOL as far as finding a field goes (unless you're out on one of those rare bright nights).

It's so dark because that's how it is in real life. When you're miles away from the nearest light on the ground, and below an overcast layer with no moon, there really is nothing to see out there. I was in this situation 2 weeks ago. I looked outside, and there was nothing to see. It made me take an extra long look at the instruments to ensure we were going in the right direction. If we hit anything, we'd never have a chance to see it coming. Kinda scary.Paul

If your instruments themselves are not illuminated well take a look at your monitor mode style settings. Out of the box black is often compressed to reduce lag on LCD monitors. Same with automatic dynamic contrast.On your video card settings you should find a curve setting and you can adjust gamma and then raise the dark section of the curve to expand black.Become familiar with the location of the cabin light switch and battery switch so you can find it in the dark. I think you can have FS hints enabled to show hot spot locations, don't recall on the PMDG at the moment.There is a thread in the 737NG forum about trying to adjust in aircraft.cfg the natural night illumination. It didn't work too well. It seems that the values are a mask, not absolute, for the FS supplied environment illumination.

Why stumble around in the dark looking for a switch? All you need to do is map a key or a button to the switch you wish to engage. FSUIPC (reg ver) does this easily.Jim D.