Ground night lighting way too dark! How to change?

[martinlest2 58]

I don't fly at night in FS9 much as things are usually so dark I can't see what I am doing. Before I go round scrabbling through dozens of possible settings and trying to change this by trial and error, maybe someone could help me with what they feel may be the most likely suspects. Once upon a time, lighting and night seemed fine but clearly some settings have been altered somehow... In any case, it takes a lot of the pleasure out of flying at night - especially upon arrival at the destination airport, where, even with landing lights on, it's very hard to see where one is going.

 

The screenshots are approach to KJFK (FSDreamTeam version) - not taken over water of course!! The lighting seems to get even dimmer as I pan aruond, away from straight ahead.

 

I have the following software installed and active - some may be irrelevant, but I'll list them anyway: REX, SweetFX, Ultimate Terrain, GE Pro, Flight Environment... probably others I don't recall as I write this.

 

Experimenting a bit, earlier tonight, made me think it's UT, as lights around non-UT zones, say Sydney, are a lot brighter than where UT is active, around New York, or Chicago, or London. But that said, I then tried around Mexico City (no UT there) and the general city lighting (streets/houses) is as dim as around NY, so I am not so sure now. Also, should the FSDT KJFK look so dim as this (I only just bought it)? Once off the runway, I could hardly find the taxiways, even with landing lights on. With just taxi lights (PMDG 737NG) it was impossible.

 

How to give the night lighting a big boost then? I already have a good deal of payware installed, so would prefer not to install anything else. I should be able to fix this with the software I have, no? FS9.cfg setting???

 

OK, the screenshots..  The last two are Mexico City, and then Sydney (much better, but why when Mexico is so dark?), BTW; others KJFK, as I said..  I attach my UT settings too, at the end, just in case..

 

Thanks!

Martin

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Groovin_DC-10 50]

Disable "Use Special Urban Night Textures" in UT.

 

Not sure why your airport environment is dark.  Did you enable pitch black night in REX?

[martinlest2 58]

Yes, turning off the special urban textures seems to help (only tried one location so far, but looks promising). But I only had that option checked for USA.. won't make any difference to EGLL etc., where the box was not ticked.

 

No, I don't have the REX pitch black night checked. There are some other threads about this, so will keep looking whilst awaiting more input here!

 

Thanks  ^_^