Is there a setting to turn off this  overly done eye adaption or HDR setting that makes the instrument panel too dark and impossible to read? If I mouse look downward the eye adaption kicks in and the cockpit totally brightens up.

No. Also depends on what plane you fly. But trying to get something that pleases everyone be akin to getting hit by lightning 10 times at the same place  on ten consecutive days in a row. To make it right that have to make it wrong.  Theyre almost there last discussion.

There is one solution but it costs 15€ or USD, ShadeX!

5 hours ago, VeryBumpy said:

Is there a setting to turn off this  overly done eye adaption or HDR setting that makes the instrument panel too dark and impossible to read? If I mouse look downward the eye adaption kicks in and the cockpit totally brightens up.

They're working on it:

Quote

Dark Cockpits: Art team is evaluating Maya’s exposure fusion work. Generally things look better than the shipping product, but we discovered yesterday that the indirect lighting environment is pretty weird on cloudy days. We’ve been fixing bugs, removing old hacks we no longer need, and I’m optimistic that the update should be both better looking and closer to reality.

 

Perhaps this:

 

https://x-plane.to/file/769/rxp-xp12-enhancer

???

https://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/forums/topic/306626-some-x-plane-12-visual-tweaks/

FlyWithLua required.