With add-ons like Alitude's Concord, AlphaSim's U2/SR71, and Eaglesoft's Citation X, I

>With add-ons like Alitude's Concord, AlphaSim's U2/SR71, and>Eaglesoft's Citation X, I

I think the problem is the darker sky in fs2004 is like a globe in that all the deep colour is at the north pole If that makes sense?.The deeper colour does not come close enough to the horizon to give the effect.Roll on the the holiday's:)John

Thanks 'tdragger', I guess the higher atmosphere look won't be present in FSX. Oh Well, thanks for the reply...

> I guess the higher atmosphere look won't be present in FSX. Oh Well, thanks for the reply... Ever consider checking your own monitor or video card settings?? Or maybe your light is just too bright :-lol

I share John's opinion.FS2004 does this already, but the dark color is mostly up and should be closer to the horizon.Speaking of which, I would love to be able to make suborbital hops with FSX with, say, SpaceShipOne or the X15. If it's not too much work, it would be nice to increase max altitude to 150km or so.--M

:-lol WingNut1 I was going to leave this topic alone as I see it's obvious this hasn't been considered and will not be addressed in the next version of FS. In FS2k4 if you climb to say 58,000ft, the sky is not nearly as dark as what you'd get in the real world. Editing texture in FS won't help in this area and in no could it ever all by itself. No matter how high you go you get no more than a 35,000ft level decrease (+/-) in sky darkness even at 60,000ft. Now I know this is not a space sim but neither was EF2000 (1994). In FS2k4 and FSX we have and will have planes like the U2, SR71, Citation X, and Concord that fly at extremely high altitudes. It's almost night at that high level of altitude; it's actually brighter below your aircraft from the suns glow on the earth. FSX seems as if it will use the same basic concept for the sky as FS2k4 with virtually no improvement in this area. X-Plane I believe (don't quote me) does a better job at high altitude flight or shall I say made a decent attempt. A friend told me Fly and FlyII made a better attempt in this area than Microsoft... The old Total Air War F22 sim from DID (1996) did an excellent job of depicting high altitude flight (like I said no one is asking for a space sim to fly to the moon). I'm sure 'tdragger' and the guys at Microsoft know full well what I'm talking about here, it just hasn't been addressed in FSX for one reason or another and that

"...Editing texture in FS won't help in this area and in no could it ever all by itself. No matter how high you go you get no more than a 35,000ft level decrease (+/-) in sky darkness even at 60,000ft...""...FSX seems as if it will use the same basic concept for the sky as FS2k4 with virtually no improvement in this area...""...There's no way a change in sky textures is going to resolve the unrealistic look of the sky at high altitudes. If that was the case many of our payware and freeware guys would have done it by now

"This latest response has a bunch of ideas, statements, and assumptions generated off Mike's short response."Assumptions based on things not seen Jason. :-hmmm You make a great point in stating you guys factored for flight well below 60,000ft even though FS2000 featured a Concord. We've made it to two version past FS2000 with the upper atmosphere looking almost no different than how the sky looks at much lower altitudes. It's not too unreasonable to think you guys just simply hadn't gotten around to simulating the upper atmosphere yet. It's a shame to find this out now as I would have edited whatever bitmap that needed this along time ago (which bitmap is it by the way because it would be interesting to finally see a darker sky in FS2k4 at higher altitudes). Like I said sims like TAW F22 (1994) and EF2000 (1992) had this along time ago without any user edits needed and flight in those sims were well below 60,000ft as well (if you were in it for the battle and not sight seeing).

I was only talking about my observations regarding fs2004, as I said roll on the holiday season:).Also I have ordered a new Aircraft today, a brand new Extra 300SExpect delivery in the next few days,so I have enough to keep me busy..It has a wingspan of 6 foot:)all the bestJohn

Would you like some cheese with your whine?James

Jason I forgot to say thanks for the response and no hard feelings I hope. It's great to see you guys in the forums finally and if nothing else ideas can be discussed and/or explained in detail. All of you have done great work on Flight Simulator over the years so I want to set the record straight that I like many others appreciate the hard work that's been put into each version of FS. I

Now this is what I'm talking about!!!Thanks ACES, this pic shows that higher altitude flight with planes like the Concord and Citation X will look so much better in FSX... :-beerchug http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/141893.jpg

I still don't see how something like this is currently possible in FS2k4. :-hmmm If it is, why hasn't it been done with programs like AS6 or Flight1's Flight Environment?

I see no one has answered my above question yet,"which bitmap is it by the way because it would be interesting to finally see a darker sky in FS2k4 at higher altitudes???"If what I'm seeing in this FSX photo is currently possible in FS9, I'd like to know exactly how to do it. Hopefully it's possible to get even more of a darker horizon as you climb to the more extreme altitudes.