Hi guys,anyone care to tell me where he has his hardware lights set to and what exatly happens with this setting?I used to have them at something like 4 with my Radeon 9800XT. I remember I had them up higher once but didn't really notice a difference and tuned them back as I thought a medium setting might help performance.Now that I have my 6800GT I dared to try some higher settings. I have them set to max now and this is quite a show especially at dawn and in a TS. I suddenly see colours in the sim I had never seen before. A lot of gold and reddish stuff especially in low visibility. The whole scenery as well as the aircraft seem to have a lot more depth. But still the effect is subtle so I ouldn't exactly tell what happens here.Can someone enlighten my how FS uses those lights?Alex

Hi Alex,This from the MSFS site:"Flight Simulator illuminates objects using more than one light source. Think of it as a movie set where many lights can be set up around a sound stage. Using the Hardware-Rendered Lights option, you can select how many lights you want the hardware (that is, your graphics card) to display. One light is used for the sun, and other lights are used for things like panel lighting, aircraft lights, and casting light on the surfaces of the aircraft. Experiment with this setting to find the level that works best for you. Selecting more lights may affect performance."I notice a nice difference having the setting maxed (especially as you say when the sun is low on the horizon). Though the performance hit can be ugly for some video cards.Cheers,Greg

Thx Greg.Seems it's always you. Just like the usual evening phone chat :-).Alex

Hi Alex!I have my MIPMAP setting on 4 and my 'Lights' setting at max. I use an ATI Radeon X800XT 256 card and like you said, the sunset and sunrise are awesome! I also find the sodium lighting at night to be bright, and well defined. It seems like there is a glow around the 'light standard' at about 3,000 feet and higher as I climb out from over populated terrain. With Hardware Ren Lights at full, my frame rates (locked) stay at between 29.2 and 30 FPS of the locked 30 FPS.Cheers!Mitch R.Dell XPS GEN 3Prescott 3.4 GHzATI Radeon X800XT 256 MB1 Gig 533 MHz RAM