I've always spent most time in the simulator flying during the day or at least with some daylight left but I've finally decided to get into a lot more night flying.  I've been looking for a single add-on that will improve all of the lighting everywhere on the globe instead of buying all those hundreds of little add-on areas of night lighting you see in the payware stores that only cover small areas, I think that is a waste of money.

I did find this add-on here called 3D Lights V2 by Living Airports: https://secure.simmarket.com/living-airports-3d-lights-v2-p3d4-p3d5.phtml

That's the best I could find, I don't see anything better so I was wondering if anyone could tell me if this is a good solution or if there is any other better solutions to improve the night lighting in P3Dv5?

I still use FSX:SE to fly my older classic aircraft that doesn't work or I don't own yet for P3Dv5.  Is there any good, similar solutions for FSX?  I've not been able to find any.

 

I would very much appreciate advice that anyone could give to improve the lighting, thank you.

Living Airports really enhances my night flying, I highly recommend it. I understand there is v6 update en-route too.

22 hours ago, Ian S said:

Living Airports really enhances my night flying, I highly recommend it. I understand there is v6 update en-route too.

Thank you for your input, I really appreciate it.  I will purchase it then.  I have so many P3D aircraft that have great cockpit lighting so I think it will be fun to start doing some real night flying.  It does not say it is also FSX compatible like so many other P3D scenery enhancements are but maybe I can get it to work for it as well.

My 5 cents - i am skeptical about such addons as quite often they are a source of problems and sim instability / CTD.

Visual improvement is minor - like for example TOGA package.

I would say that using EA and playing with Reshade settings give way better results.

1 minute ago, Beardyman said:

My 5 cents - i am skeptical about such addons as quite often they are a source of problems and sim instability / CTD.

Visual improvement is minor - like for example TOGA package.

I would say that using EA and playing with Reshade settings give way better results.

I have a lots of add-ons of all kinds installed in P3Dv5 as well as FSX and I have not experienced any performance related issues as long as I make sure to install everything correctly.

Whether any visual improvements made to P3D are minor or not I think is a matter of opinion, everyone has different tastes.  That's why no two P3D installations are the same, everyone likes to add their favorite add-ons and tweak P3D to their own liking.  The plain vanilla version of P3D is a good base to start with but there's so many great 3rd party add-ons, both payware and freeware, that really can improve the P3D experience.  This is one of the main reasons I like P3D, it is extremely customizable.  With P3D, I can really make it my own.

I do have RDShade but I have yet to learn how to adjust all the different settings, I am slowly learning them though.  What I like about RDSahde vs the TOGA product is that you can download presets that other users have made and uploaded to the website for anyone to use and there are some beautiful ones.  This is why I haven't learned all the reshade settings yet because I have been using presets instead of doing my own tweaking.  Instead of spending hours messing with reshade options I can just hop in the sim and fly.  Once I do learn all the options though I plan to create my own preset.