I downloaded and installed the freeware FSX-native version of Eagle Rotorcraft Simulation's Piaggio P.180 Avanti.  I thought it was working fine (a bit high-powered, but I've never flown a real P.180, so I don't know how realistic that was), but then I tried it at night.  I turned on the gauge lights, and most of the gauges (including the Attitude Indicator and digital autopilot number displays) were washed out so that they did not display.  They glowed, but the numbers and the artificial horizon (among other things) went away.  This only happened in the VC, but like most people, I much prefer the VC to the 2D instrument panel in FSX.  Can anyone figure out how I might fix this problem?

Bump:)  Has anyone on here had problems with the gauges of their add-on aircraft's VC lighting up and not showing what is on them?

The aircraft is somehow slowing my loading times to the extreme and I just can't be arsed to investigate any further, but from what I could see, the lightmaps are too bright indeed. You can try to edit the "_L.dds" textures in the "texture" folder. Load them into DXTBMP (Google) and load the alpha channel into an image editor of your choice and darken it (might just work in MS Paint as well). After editing, load the alpha channel back into DXTBMP and save the edited texture. You might need to load a different plane and then switch back to the P180 to see the effect or - worst case - restart FSX. See if that works. If not, you can also try darkening the light map itself. Or go all out and simply delete the lightmaps if you can live with a darker cockpit (there should be a flood light in the cockpit).

Is this Mario's plane or was it a new one tweaked by that company? I downloaded a Piaggio about a year ago native to fsx. The lights seem ok to me.

Native conversion. Mario's v2.0 was a FS9 model made compatible with FSX.

Is this Mario's plane or was it a new one tweaked by that company? I downloaded a Piaggio about a year ago native to fsx. The lights seem ok to me.

From their website...

 

 

Eagle Rotorcraft Simulations presents to you, the Piaggio P-180 Avanti, originally designed by Mario Noriega, now converted to a native FSX model.

http://eaglerotorcraftsimulations.com/fsx_p180.php

Solved!  It turns out that Mario Noriega released a new FSX-native version (v3) that came after the Eagle Rotorcraftt version.  Ironically, it was Eagle's denunciation of this independent release that led me to it...and its panel lights work at night!

Here's where I found the information i needed to search for v3

http://www.eaglerotorcraftsimulations.com/forums/thread-303.html