No amateur astronomers on the ACES team then!

[Paul J 349]

. . just to add a little flavour, Ray - to that of stars showing whilst the sun is above the horizon - back in 1963 on a ferry ride in a Folland Gnat at or somewhere above 44,000 ft. with tops at about 8000 - midday - I was utterly amazed to see a dark blue sky with stars quite visible directly above, the sky fading progressively lighter down toward the horizon. I hadn't ever been that high before. That day I also learned why canopies are covered with soft cotton cloth!Regards,

[Ray Proudfoot 8,919]

Hi Paul,That sounds spectacular! I've not been that high myself but do remember how dark the skies went during the total solar eclipse I witnessed in 1973 in a ship off the coast of Mauretania.Some stars were visible in a sky as dark as one about 15-20 minutes after sunset but my main attention of course was on the totally eclipsed sun.Having seen photographs taken by passengers on Concorde the sky is nearly black at FL530 and higher. FSX is getting better in that respect but still some way short of total realism.Cheers,

[Paul J 349]

for sure, Ray, but my enjoyment for FSX is certainly increasing daily, though. With the right hardware, and the addons NOW beginning to show - it's becoming a much better sim than FS9. We need some big iron aircraft to replace the default ones, but they will come! This month I have bought the Eaglesoft Citation II, ASX, UTX and Aersoft's Aspen, so she's becoming more real by the day!:-beerchug

[Ray Proudfoot 8,919]

Hi Paul,I'm dipping my toe cautiously into the FSX pond too. My main PC isn't really fast enough to run it realistically but at least it's flyable which it certainly wasn't pre-SP1.As I have Project Magenta software I'm not reliant on panels and have copied the PMDG737 to FSX with pretty good results. I just need PSS to modify Concorde.I too have ASX and the skies do look very good providing I don't fly around sunset. I seem to have turned full circle :-)Cheers,

[Paul J 349]

Ray, my friend - you need some more ram. It will make the world of difference! A P4@3gig ought to be good, and the 1950 is excellent! but XP and FSX combined will gobble up 1.3 - 1.5 gig on a two-gig system. This means you're swapping - and not with swimsuit models, either! :-lol

[Guest cwright]

Ray, here's an example showing how you can cull stars for dusk flying. The first shot shows the standard stars, the second is with exponent set to 2.5, brightness set to 15. Virtually no stars are visible - the bright one is Venus!Best regards, Chrishttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/174032.jpghttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/174033.jpg

[Ray Proudfoot 8,919]

Hi Paul,Confucius say "more RAM does not make for better frame rates" ;-)Yes, it would make things smoother and load times would undoubtedly decrease but I wouldn't get higher frame rates. My P4 is 2.5 years old and I bought the X1950 to get another year out of it but it's not as fast as your XTX.Even in FS9 with addon airports such as FlyTampa and 100% UT Ai aircraft frame rates do struggle to get above low teens. I'll wait until the successor to the E6700 comes out and then reevaluate things.Fat chance of your final suggestion ;-)

[Ray Proudfoot 8,919]

Hi Paul,The second shot looks great for dusk flying but once it went fully dark would the number of stars match or exceed those in the first shot?Ideally I would love to see the Milky Way once it's fully dark. Would that be possible without making adjustments to the star brightness and dynamic range using your program?Cheers,

[Guest cwright]

Ray, unfortunately not. I don't know if it's possible to change the star data while FSX is running. It's probably impossible. The only way would be to save the flight, exit and run AutoStar, run FSX and reload the flight. You can save the settings in AutoStar, so you could save settings as e.g. 'early dusk', 'late dusk' and 'night'. If you used the FSX demo you'll recall that the Milky Way was pretty bright. I was disappointed to see that in the retail it was so dark as to be virtually invisible (some people had complained that it was too bright in the demo). I've noticed that SP1 has brightened it a bit so it is visible now, although darker than the demo. By the way, changing the stars with AutoStar should make no difference to the Milky Way.Best regards, Chris

[FlyingsCool 3]

Ray,You may want to check out the thread by Bill Learning that was recently dug out of the archives for some reason. 2 GB might really help you. If you are swapping, it will decrease stuttering and increase frames to a degree (though the 512 MB vid card should be mitigating things).I was much happier when I upgraded my laptop to 2GB. FSX ran on it before, but was a major pain. I felt much "lighter" when I upgraded and much easier to run.Though I must say that my AMD 2500 OC@3200/1 GB/128 MB ATI 9800 pro runs FSX quite well with scenery sliders rather high, though I need to keep air traffic off. I don't use that machine much at the moment. But if I do start to, I'll probably look into getting another GB for it. I think we're only talking $50 for it.BTW, I'm very intrigued by the thought of dynamically controlling star brightness. Wonder if it's possible.I must say, however, I'm not really fond of FS at night, however. The glowing lakes and ground REALLY annoy me.Thomas[a href=http://www.flyingscool.com] http://www.flyingscool.com/images/Signature.jpg [/a]I like using VC's :-)N15802 KASH '73 Piper Cherokee Challenger 180

[Guest weeniemcween]

Activesky X Graphics can help mitigate that glowing.

[Ray Proudfoot 8,919]

Hi Chris,When Pete Dowson comes back from holiday next week I'll ask him about this. I know him pretty well and he's created fixes for previous versions of FS. He'll know what is possible and what isn't.I never looked at the Milky Way in the demo. My graphics card (ATI 9800Pro 128Mb) just wasn't fast enough and at the time so many other things had a higher priority.Cheers,

[Ray Proudfoot 8,919]

Hi Thomas,I use FSAutoStart to terminate non-essential programs and services in XP and performance in FSX is quite fluid. I'm not aware of any serious stuttering when I launch FSX using this process. When I don't use FSAutoStart performance does suffer.I appreciate RAM is pretty cheap and if I have two spare slots for another 1Gb I'll consider it. I have a feeling my 1Gb comprises 2 matched 512Mb sticks.I found changing from the 9800Pro made a huge difference to FSX performance. Most of my sliders are towards the right with compromises for Ai traffic and other dynamic objects.I'll speak to Pete Dowson about the star issue.Cheers,

[Ray Proudfoot 8,919]

Hi Chris,I've installed your program and what a difference it makes to the night sky! Comet West looked brilliant as did M31 (how long since I've seen that in our polluted skies!).Of course that was using your Comet West saved situation. Trust me to investigate all this just as the summer solstice occurs!:-lol It must have taken you a long time to research this and write the program - well done.I flew an evening flight from Malaga to Manchester last night and the problem of the stars appearing whilst the sun is above the horizon is just the tip of the iceberg. With the sun still several degrees above the horizon the sky to the east is already very dark with many stars visible even in the direction of the setting sun. Even if we take the stars out of the equation it's still an extremely inaccurate depiction of how the skies look near sunrise / sunset.When you consider how good the clouds look in FSX for the ACES team to have got the lighting so wrong is very disappointing. I grant it isn't easy but nothing in FSX is easy but they've accomplished so much in other areas.Maybe next time we can finally get accurately lit skies around sunrise/sunset. In the meantime I'll enjoy the realistic night skies your program has made possible.Thanks once again.

[Paul J 349]

Ray, et al; I have the ASX suite installed since release, and didn't look until your post and then last night I flew from Aspen to SaltLake - and guess what? - stars slowly appearing with the sun well above the horizon! - so I guess somebody on Jim Skorna's team was well aware of this. Very cool.http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/174150.jpg