Is this happening for everyone during dawn or dusk, or just nighttime flying?

I was surprised to see yet another awnser to this old topic. I didn't notice this again after the service packs, but I might just be used to it. I'm also interested in a PMDG awnser.

 

Is this happening for everyone during dawn or dusk, or just nighttime flying?

 

Anytime

In real life cockpit and cabin lights will flicker off and on due to isolating the a/c electical systems from ground power. In other words a "Ground/Flight" switch as modelled in the VC10.

vololiberista

Ok, I am about 95 percent certain the cockpit lighting dimming out for a split seconds is related to either hard drive access times and/or scenery texture loading. I've pretty much caught this effect in the act, so to speak, after some extensive testing. When either the hard drive takes a drag :) or textures/autogen loads, I can see the lights dimming out in the cockpit. I can pretty much predict the lights will dim during such hardware stress times.

 

I am therefore going to diagnose the lights dimming phenomenon accordingly. As such, I really don't see a fix other than optimizing one's computer for a minimum of stuttering during simming sessions with the NGX. All of this from my admittedly non-professional results, but again I would be willing to bet money that it's a hardware related thing and not some kind of special effects modeling implemented by PMDG. :)

 

Signed,

 

John Thomas

 

Is this happening for everyone during dawn or dusk, or just nighttime flying?

 

All the time for me too, daytime or night. The LCD numeric displays on the MCP will flicker if there is no cockpit background or flood lighting activated. If background and flood lighting is activated, it too will flicker. Only for a split second. I'm now convinced this is happening when computer hardware running FSX and NGX is under high loads such as hard drive access or texture loading.

 

Signed,

 

John Thomas

I think you are exactly correct- I only experience this when the sun is coming up or down and the ambient light levels are changing. FSX does this odd thing of loading night and day textures during this time and gradually transitioning to the night from day textures during sunset, and the opposite during sunrise. It re-loads the textures whenever this happens, so I would fully agree it is a fact of texture/HDD access/load times.