Can I make FSX darker at night?

[eurowing]

hello,
i have been searching for a solution in this forum but came up with nothing. i am not even sure where to post as this could be software related (windows or FSX settings - more likely) or hardware (video card, monitor...).

when i fly at night FSX is not as dark as i'd like and as it has been from what i remember. now i haven't flown at night in a while (was still on a different machine with win xp and a 7800GT) but i do remember how when the panel lights where off at night i could not find the switch to turn on the flood light in the cockpit, it was that dark! i had to press "L" to turn on the lights and find my way around.

i must say that i almost only fly PMDG or LD aircraft, not the default ones. when i get in the cockpit at night now i could even fly without any lights because i can read everything just like that. it is dark, but i can still see without problems.

to my knowledge i have tried everything i can - starting of course with the monitor (brightness is down and contrast is good, too), trying the nvidia control panel where i reduced color brightness (seemed to help but problem is the city lights become too dark, L.A. looked like a little town after that).

is there anything else i can do? does everybody have the same picture? can you guys read for example the dials on the PMDG MD-11 control panel with all the lights turned off?

i am curious if that's normal or not. btw when climbing out i could even make out green ground textures (fields) on my last flight.

are there settings in the fsx.cfg that i could change? or ist win7 with the new drivers just still not where it should be?

thanks!

[eurowing]

i thought maybe i should add a screenshot. if it is a software setting then you should see pretty much what i see? the picture shows the panel at night with all the lights turned off.

[Excalibur372]

i thought maybe i should add a screenshot. if it is a software setting then you should see pretty much what i see? the picture shows the panel at night with all the lights turned off.

That's usually what I see, except with the lights turned on. If it's the light in the cabin you want brighter, you would have to change the cockpit bitmap. Sorry I couldn't help more.

[BAW0343]

I think that's fairly normal for the 2d panel.  The above post suggested a good solution (except they didn't understand what you're asking for) of editing the Panel BMP file. Just open it up in whatever .BMP editor you have and turn the brightness down. I cant give you detailed instructions as I don't know what editing programs you may have.

I doubt this is a software or hardware issue, it may just be your monitor is brighter then the one you remember.

[EJW]

I think that's pretty normal. My night darkness is similar to tha tof yours.

[Barbr]

What about the panel that allows you to dial down the brightness of each of the 6 cockpit displays? Sometimes I dial those down at night, too. Hope that helps.

[Excalibur372]

[quote]I think that's fairly normal for the 2d panel.

[eurowing]

thank you all for the input. can you guys also recognize green fields on the ground when flying at night?

[EJW]

I've just tested it out and sadly, no, the ground does not appear to be green at 01:00. It looks charcoal grey, but the areas around illuminated areas such as buildings appears green. That's all sadly.

[UU]

Aye,

maybe this could help:

http://blogs.msdn.com/ptaylor/archive/2007/05/15/new-tweaks-in-sp1.aspx


[b]"......
For the dusk/dawn textures some people feel, subjectively, the result is too dark or too light. There are 2 items that allow the transition time to be changed:

[GRAPHICS]

DAY_THRESHOLD

NIGHT_THRESHOLD



acceptible values are 0 to 65535.

[eurowing]

that seemd like a good hint and i tried it right away. unfortunately it did not work for the panel.

it seems that this tweak is for dusk and dawn settings rather than night or day. i am pretty sure that there must be a way to fix that with an entry in the fsx.cfg.

thanks anyways!