Simviation Forums

A long time ago I saw a mod on these forums that enabled bloom as well as some neat lighting effects for FS2004, called embseries.  I have been experimenting a bit with this mod, and for the most part, I totally love it.  I have been experiencing some issues, however, especially when flying through heavy clouds and when using the 2d panel.  Whenever its foggy or is very cloudy, the view is overly and unrealistically bright, so bright that I cannot see anything outside.  Its usually not too bad if I fly using the VC, but being one of those old school simmers who are sworn to the 2d panel for flying, it becomes a bit of an annoyance . 

So I was wondering if there is a fix to this; some settings I can use in my ini file.  I know I can always just turn it off inflight if it gets overly obnoxious, but I still would like to see if there is a better alternative.

Anyone with this mod have any suggestions?

Hi Rocket_bird.

I use this mod 100% of my flying time since I discovered it. Here are some explanations and advises based on my personnal experience:

1- 2D panels are EVIL. Don't use them, use the virtual cockpit.

2- The reason why you get such a bright view when using the 2D panel is the following: the 2D panel is rather dark, and it covers most of your screen space. As a consequence, most of the screen area is dark. The mod analyzes this, and goes to "night" mode. So the bright parts of the screen become more shiny than in "day" mode. It's exactely the same when you are holding a video camera inside a dark room, and look at the window: you cannot see the outside, it's too bright, you have to get closer to the window (or zoom on it) so that the general picture gets brighter, then the video camera adjusts the contrast and suddently the outside details appear. The ENB series mod works exactely in the same way.

3- based on the explanations above, you can see that the virtual cockpit usually takes less screen area than the 2D panel, so the overall screen is brighter, thus the bright parts of the screen will shine less.

4- in real world, I have done (as a temporary passenger) some flights in planes (PC-6 Turbo Porter) and copters (Ecureuil B3) through big clouds. I can tell you that they are BRIGHT ! It really hurts the eyes to look at them, and even if the sun is not visible, a good pair of sunglasses are a must-have in those conditions. Just like a good mask when you are skiing, for example. Some FS planes have usable sun-glass panels (I don't know the exact name, you know, this transparent movable dark glass to mask the sun), like Piglet's Meyers 200D for example. When the outside view becomes too bright with the mod, you can still see all the details when looking through this sun-mask. It's another visibility constraint that is very similar to the real world. I really enjoy this feature.

5- if you still want to fly those 2D panels, you might want to try this: edit the enbseries.ini file, and set the parameter "bloom_power_night" (or something like that) to a smaller value. It might work, but it also might reduce the bloom effect beauty in some circumstances. Just make some tries, find the balance that suits you best

1- 2D panels are EVIL. Don't use them, use the virtual cockpit. Tongue

Hehe, been simming since FS5.1, so the bad habbit of using a 2d panel has kind of stuck.

1- 2D panels are EVIL. Don't use them, use the virtual cockpit. Tongue

Hehe, been simming since FS5.1, so the bad habbit of using a 2d panel has kind of stuck.