>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.Hi Paul,ASX has no effect on the stars and when they appear. I have to disagree that it's very cool. Bloomin' awful would be closer to the truth.That's not to take anything away from Jim and his team - their sky textures look great.The premature star visibility problem lies firmly at the door of Microsoft. I'm a bit disappointed none of the ACES team have added to this discussion. I can't believe they haven't noticed the message title:-(Cheers,

Hi All,A few things:ASX/X Graphics do not have any effect on this.The issue here is how FS handles light and lighting. Light sources are either On or Off and there are no transitions from within the specific source itself. City lights all come on at the same time. Road lights all come on at the same time. Car lights all come on at the same time. Runway lights, the same thing. I think you get the idea!Stars are the same way, either On or Off. What we really need is a way to control transitions within the source itself. Then, someone like Chris here, could control when certain stars come On or Off, based on location in the sky and brightness.Thanks,Jimhttp://www.hifisim.com/banners/hifi-community-sigbanner.jpghttp://www.hifisim.com/

Hi Jim,<>I didn't think they did and you've confirmed it.<>Oh. I thought they'd be on all the time (just as in the real world) and would only become visible when the sky darkened. Perhaps the stars are becoming visible at the right time relative to the colour and amount of light in the sky? What is wrong is the colour and amount of light in the sky when the sun gets close to the horizon. It goes dark far too early.If a way can be found of not decreasing the ambient light by as much until the sun has set it may resolve the problem of the stars being visible too soon. But that requires tapping into the inner depths of the FSX executable and very few outside of Microsoft have that skill or knowledge.The problem of all the stars becoming visible at the same time still requires addressing but only when the premature sky darkening can be resolved if indeed it can.

Ray, I'm glad you like it! Thanks for the comments. If you have any ideas for new features, let me know. If there is a way of dynamically updating the stars that would open up many interesting possibilies, but it may not be possible in FSX.Yes, the lighting could be improved a lot. Still, the basic stars display (24 bit) in FSX is a huge advance. The FS2004 version of AutoStar could display comets, but the display was relatively crude as the star brightness dynamic range was limited to about 3:1.There have been significant improvements in FS. But there is still work to do, as the saying goes....Best regards, Chris