Over in the General Discussion forum is an interesting post regarding "Shooting Stars" which some of us remember seeing in FS2002 but which seem to have dissapeared in FS2004. (The effect is still in your effects folder)Hopefully a scenery designer will take a look at this and come up with an add on that will allow them to be seen (randomly) once again. Ideally, such an add on could be set to display meteor showers (i.e. considerably more than just the occasional random shot) also.There are many of us who would like to liven up our nighttime flying experience with such an add on - that runs by itself and does not have to be invoked using a hot key.Any takers?

Hi David:Take a look at the following:Autostar:is a utility program for use with FS2002 or FS2004. It can modify the Flight Simulator stars display in several ways:

Thanks Tom - I will check it out!

Tom,This will not help with shooting stars - it will pixelize an image and create a sort of a "pixelboard" display in the sky using extra stars. No movement is possible.I'm also dissapointed with some of the features lacking in FS2004, namely shooting stars...Misho

continued... :)I've been looking at the effect script and it seems valid, plus there is artwork for the shooting star. However, the invoking of the effect is not present :(Some of the other "features" not seem to be active are "sunsize" and "moonsize" parameters in "suneffect.cfg" file. Whatever values is set, it seems to have no apparent effect...Misho

For what it may be worth there is an effects package by a man named Thomas Moger that has a shooting star in it that uses the default effects.He has you adding the following to your aircraft.cfg file -(SMOKESYSTEM) Square brackets don't show up heresmoke.0=-8.50, 0.00, 0.00, fx_shootstar1.fxsmoke.0=-8.50, 0.00, 0.00, fx_shootstar2.fxOnly problem is that you must be in Tower View and zoomed out as far as possible and then invoke it with the "I" key.The result is a single "shooting star" that is not very realistic.I thought this info might be of value though.