A quick guide for improved Night & Day lighting.

[Dotsie 0]

After flying around at night in FSX for a while I've noticed that night flying doesn't seem to resemble my experience (passenger) of flying. The ground is far too visible and ground lighting isn't contrasted enough against what should be a very dark background. Also I find the washed out effect means that landing lights are unable to pick out runway/taxiway details. With this in mind i started to adjust in-game brightness, contrast and gamma correction to achieve what i thought was a more satisfactory look to the night environment.Here is a picture comparison showing a 737-800 holding short. There is also a real picture for comparison taken before the sun has fully set. The settings used to create the more "realistic" environment are as follows. I used "ATI Tray Tools" to adjust this as it allows auto loading of these presets with profiles on game load, or assignment to hot-keys. In the adjusted version you will notice that outside of the landing lights very little is visible. Within the lights the runway number, verge and colours are all noticeably easier to differentiate. Also the city lights in the background are more vivid and stand out more.Before i made this change i found i could navigate both on the ground and in the air over a dark ocean quite easily by visual reference. Now its a lot easier to become disoriented visually in dark areas. Populated areas have a much higher visability.Night-time settingsBrightness = -1 (in range -100 to +100)Contrast = +19 (in range -40 to +400)Gamma = 1.35 (in range 0 to 3.40)http://img410.imageshack.us/img410/4509/nighttimeqv5.jpgHere is a link to a slide-show showing more examples and comparisons. It also contains adjustments to the day lighting which i find dull and again kinda washed out. Clouds now look brighter, more white and colours also more vivid. The difference is quite subtle.http://picasaweb.google.com/davidjamesbolg...709671996035890Daytime SettingsBrightness = +1 (in range -100 to +100)Contrast = +23 (in range -40 to +400)Gamma = 1.09 (in range 0 to 3.40)As for how i implement the different setting between i simply use "ATI Tray Tools" to assign colour profiles to hot-keys. One for Day one for Night. I would like some other opinions on the FSX lighting environment.P.S. I should note my monitor is set to (Brightness 80%, Contrast 100%)Dotsie.

[Mace 1,902]

Dotsie, did you know that you can control FSX ambient light settings in the FSX.cfg file?Try it and see what you think...RhettAMD 3700+ (@2585 mhz), eVGA 7800GT 256 (Guru3D 93.71), ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2gb Corsair XMS 3-3-3-8 (1T), WD 150 gig 10000rpm Raptor, WD 250gig 7200rpm SATA2, Seagate 120gb 5400 rpm external HD, CoolerMaster Praetorian

[Dotsie 0]

No i didn't, whats the config value. I've done a few more night flights now though and am extremely pleased with the manual adjustment method. Killing you instruments over the dark ocean on a moonless night is scary. Easy to see how you could fly it into the sea.Dotsie.

[ppo 67]

Yes that's the way to go for me too. I don't use presets however, I assign keys to brightness/contrast and change it according to the conditions of the flight day/night & wx. I used ATI tray tools with my old setup, but have since switched to Nvidia 8800GTS card. The same function is available with the Nview function. It works great. Actually I prefer night flying in those condx.Pierre

[Garrett67 1]

I didn't know there was either. Where can it be found and what is the value range? The night ambience has bothered me for a long time. Here is a night landing video of KBTL at night. I would hope to get at least a little bit closer to the 'lack' of light here. Obviously the camera is making it darker but it is closer to life than FS is.

[dokelly07 0]

Ill second that request. I am very interested as I have also found the nights to be too light, when compared to my real flying. What are the settings to change, has anyone done this within the config, thanks in advance!danon --

[Mace 1,902]

It was in Phil Taylors or Paul Langes blogs (in their archives now I am sure). Scroll about halfway down in the following link for an explanation of the ambient light settings:http://switchfxdesign.wordpress.com/2007/0...-sp1new-tweaks/The relevant entries are:GRAPHICS sectionDAY_THRESHOLD=NIGHT_THRESHOLD=values 0 to 65535RhettAMD 3700+ (@2585 mhz), eVGA 7800GT 256 (Guru3D 93.71), ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2gb Corsair XMS 3-3-3-8 (1T), WD 150 gig 10000rpm Raptor, WD 250gig 7200rpm SATA2, Seagate 120gb 5400 rpm external HD, CoolerMaster Praetorian

[dokelly07 0]

thanks Rhett,Im not sure this is what I am hunting. Will this change the time that the textures turn to night, or actualy darken the night. I will see and report back.Danon - -

[Dotsie 0]

Tried both settings on 1000 and 64000 but i can see no difference. Anyone else?Dotsie.