FSX Night time Color modifications...

[sagrada737]

Hi Folks,

I have been experimenting with FSX night time lighting, in hopes of making some improvements to the outside visual display. 

The first thing I did was to change the halo.bmp to a version that has less glow.  The result of this was quite dramatic, as it reduced the standart FSX glow to more realistic lighting on the runway, as well as on distant objects like airport approach lights.

However, the standard city lights are too bright and tend to overrule the scenery balance at night.  I made some modifications to the "ObjectSize" in the FSX cfg file for much of the street lighting.  I reduced the Objectsize by about 20% for many of the modules.  This likewise had a dramatic improvement on the overall balance of the lighting effects at night. 

My benchmark flight is over the Los Angeles area using Megascenery (3-monitor TH2G setup) at night.  Since I have flown over this area for years in real aircraft, I have a sense of what to expect to see at night.  Hence my benchmark for adjusting the lighting considerations in FSX.  Anyway, I now have what I think is a very nice lighting balance for night flights (dawn and dusk too) over the city.  The  exception now is the strange "green" color for some sections of the city.

Question:  Does anyone know how to change the green color of these night time lighting effects to some other color, such as amber, etc. ?  I think this would complete the balance for night lighting with FSX.  Perhaps not as nice as Scott's example with XPlane, but having seen both, I think it comes close.

Comments and solutions appreciated.

Mike

[jskibo]

Do you run UTX?

[Maurice]

However, the standard city lights are too bright and tend to overrule the scenery balance at night.  I made some modifications to the "ObjectSize" in the FSX cfg file for much of the street lighting.  I reduced the Objectsize by about 20% for many of the modules.  This likewise had a dramatic improvement on the overall balance of the lighting effects at night. 

Hi Mike,

Can you elaborate a bit more about the changes you made to ObjectSize? I too find the lights too bright at night and this is even worse when using projectors. But I can't find ObjectSize anywhere in FSX.CFG

Thanks,
Maurice

[sagrada737]

Mmmm.... UTX?  I'll check.  Not sure right now, or if that makes a difference in FSX behavior.

Concerning the Objectsize parameter in the FSX config file:  These parameters are set within various modules in the FSX configuration.  What I did, was to search on "lights" within the FSX configuration file.  For those modules that related to Street Lighting, I then changed the Objectsize to a lesser value.   Of course, it is important to save a copy of the original FSX.cfg file so you can restore things if it gets too far out of wack!  The FSX.cfg that I modified is located in the MicroSoft Flight Simulator root directory.

I have to go now, but I can locate the exact location of what I changed and report back.

Mike

[jskibo]

http://www.flight1.com/products.asp?product=utxusa

I find it to have much better night lighting

[Maurice]

http://www.flight1.com/products.asp?product=utxusa

I find it to have much better night lighting

Still way too bright in my opinion when using projectors at least.

Maurice

[Maurice]

I have to go now, but I can locate the exact location of what I changed and report back.

Mike

Please do as I cannot find any reference to ObjectSize in FSX.cfg.

Thanks,
Maurice

[jskibo]

http://www.flight1.com/products.asp?product=utxusa

I find it to have much better night lighting

Still way too bright in my opinion when using projectors at least.

Maurice

There's a halo.bmp mod for that I thought.

http://www.b3ta.cr3ation.co.uk/data/zip/2624.halo.zip

[Maurice]

There's a halo.bmp mod for that I thought.

http://www.b3ta.cr3ation.co.uk/data/zip/2624.halo.zip

I'm pretty sure I replaced the default halo.bmp a long time ago but I'm not 100% sure I did that after my last rebuild. I will need to check that again.

Thanks,
Maurice

[sagrada737]

Hello Maurice,

I'm sorry, but I mis-spoke about where I modified the Objectsize parameter.  It is not in the fsx.cfg location.  Rather, it is in the terrain.cfg location.  I apologize for sending you on a wild-goose-chase.  Here is an extract from this terrain.cfg file for a couple areas that I changed:

// Medium road with light poles and telephone poles
[Autogen.3.1.0]
guid={81F596DE-70CF-DC43-BFCC-6F64A456DB23}
LegacyId=3
AutoObject={47C97CED-C4E6-4E4B-8E9F-B110989EEA62} (ag_lightpole)
ObjectSize=150
Offset=-15
Density=0
MinAutogenDensity=20
PlaceOnWater=No
RandomHeading=No

// Small highway with road signs and generic signs and light poles
[Autogen.4.0.0]
guid={1D64764E-9F03-894D-AA40-847233974C2C}
LegacyId=4
AutoObject={AB068666-D8E8-486B-90D6-164C45557688} (ag_genericsign)
ObjectSize=175
Offset=15
Density=0
MinAutogenDensity=20
PlaceOnWater=No
RandomHeading=No

I can't fully qualify this modification, so proceed at your own risk, and be sure to save a backup copy of your original terrain.cfg file.  However, for my FSX setup, changing the halo.bmp file and reducing some of the lighting ObjectSize parameters definitely seemed to make a nice difference.

Also, can anyone point me to the area within FSX that would allow me to change the color of the city lights sectors that show up in green?  Thanks.

Mike

[sagrada737]

Hi Maurice,

Attached is a copy of the halo.bmp file that I used (saved as a zip file, as it may have embedded data with it that is necessary for correct function within FSX).  You will notice that the glow on this image and its color contrast is quite a bit different from the original FSX version of this file.  The halo.bmp file is located in the /Texture sub-directory of FSX.

I can't guarantee this halo.bmp file to function on anyone else's FSX setup, so be sure to backup your original halo.bmp file.  Also, if anyone has improvements on night time lighting beyond what I have described, please let me know.

Mike

[XOrionFE]

I believe it can be overwritten by UTX like John pointed out or by ORBX.  ORBX allows you to set various preferences concerning halo.bmp.  Just keep that in mind if you like this one but potentially overwrite with the other ones.

Scott

[sagrada737]

Hi Scott,

Good info and caution as well. 

By the way - Have you used or heard of a FSX utility called FXAA?  Here is YouTube link showing some of its effects.  The nighttime views are nice.

FSX ENB Series Successor - PPIT

Here is a link to his Development tools:
https://www.assembla.com/spaces/fxaa-pp-inject/documents

Mike

[Maurice]

" Have you used or heard of a FSX utility called FXAA? "

I just watched the video and it does look very interesting & promising. In fact, it very much looked like XP visuals to me for a while (no joke) especially when seeing time of day advance so smoothly, until I realized this was just time lapse photography since you can't change the time in FSX like you can in XP.

Anyway, definitely worth a try.

Thanks for posting,
Maurice

[HarryZ]

I can't guarantee this halo.bmp file to function on anyone else's FSX setup, so be sure to backup your original halo.bmp file.  Also, if anyone has improvements on night time lighting beyond what I have described, please let me know.

Mike

Mike,

I used the halo.bmp file because my night lights were too large and bright and it certainly made the lights smaller and more tolerable.  They were a bit too dim but I went into UTX and increased the brightness from 25% to 50% and that appears to have done the trick.  Thanks for the file.

Harry

[blueskydriver]

Hey Guys,

Here is where you find the settings to adjust for the runway lighting, as well as some of other lights that use these types of lights elsewhere.

Look in your FSX.cfg file under [Display] for these:

RUNWAY_LIGHTS_SURFACE_SCALAR=0.30
RUNWAY_LIGHTS_VASI_SCALAR=0.30
RUNWAY_LIGHTS_APPROACH_SCALAR=0.40
RUNWAY_LIGHTS_STROBE_SCALAR=0.30

The smaller the values, the smaller the lights.

John

[blueskydriver]

I looked through the terrain.cfg and here is the list for all the ones with lights:

// Medium road with light poles and telephone poles
[Autogen.3.0.0]
guid={81F596DE-70CF-DC43-BFCC-6F64A456DB23}
LegacyId=3
AutoObject={46F3D6CB-4270-4373-AEE9-89FB38462EA9} (ag_telephonepole)
ObjectSize=219
Offset=15
Density=0
MinAutogenDensity=20
PlaceOnWater=No
RandomHeading=No

// Medium road with light poles and telephone poles
[Autogen.3.1.0]
guid={81F596DE-70CF-DC43-BFCC-6F64A456DB23}
LegacyId=3
AutoObject={47C97CED-C4E6-4E4B-8E9F-B110989EEA62} (ag_lightpole)
ObjectSize=173
Offset=-15
Density=0
MinAutogenDensity=20
PlaceOnWater=No
RandomHeading=No

// Small highway with road signs and generic signs and light poles
[Autogen.4.0.0]
guid={1D64764E-9F03-894D-AA40-847233974C2C}
LegacyId=4
AutoObject={AB068666-D8E8-486B-90D6-164C45557688} (ag_genericsign)
ObjectSize=208
Offset=15
Density=0
MinAutogenDensity=20
PlaceOnWater=No
RandomHeading=No

// Small highway with road signs and generic signs and light poles
[Autogen.4.1.0]
guid={1D64764E-9F03-894D-AA40-847233974C2C}
LegacyId=4
AutoObject={84744A27-000A-447B-AF09-DFACA7D0F2B2} (ag_roadsign)
ObjectSize=511
Offset=-15
Density=0
MinAutogenDensity=20
PlaceOnWater=No
RandomHeading=No

// Small highway with road signs and generic signs and light poles
[Autogen.4.2.0]
guid={1D64764E-9F03-894D-AA40-847233974C2C}
LegacyId=4
AutoObject={47C97CED-C4E6-4E4B-8E9F-B110989EEA62} (ag_lightpole)
ObjectSize=796
Offset=-16
Density=0
MinAutogenDensity=20
PlaceOnWater=No
RandomHeading=No

// Large divided highway with road signs and generic signs and large billboards and median barrrier and middle lights
[Autogen.6.0.0]
guid={24A157E8-59BA-7748-AB32-7A688036A873}
LegacyId=6
AutoObject={AB068666-D8E8-486B-90D6-164C45557688} (ag_genericsign)
ObjectSize=511
Offset=20
Density=0
MinAutogenDensity=20
PlaceOnWater=No
RandomHeading=No

// Large divided highway with road signs and generic signs and large billboards and median barrrier and middle lights
[Autogen.6.1.0]
guid={24A157E8-59BA-7748-AB32-7A688036A873}
LegacyId=6
AutoObject={84744A27-000A-447B-AF09-DFACA7D0F2B2} (ag_roadsign)
ObjectSize=623
Offset=-20
Density=0
MinAutogenDensity=20
PlaceOnWater=No
RandomHeading=No

// Large divided highway with road signs and generic signs and large billboards and median barrrier and middle lights
[Autogen.6.2.0]
guid={24A157E8-59BA-7748-AB32-7A688036A873}
LegacyId=6
AutoObject={F64A1A40-27FF-42AE-B547-50E20D481F33} (ag_largebillboard)
ObjectSize=809
Offset=22
Density=0
MinAutogenDensity=20
PlaceOnWater=No
RandomHeading=No

// Large divided highway with road signs and generic signs and large billboards and median barrrier and middle lights
[Autogen.6.3.0]
guid={24A157E8-59BA-7748-AB32-7A688036A873}
LegacyId=6
AutoObject={DB86ABDE-51FD-4AB5-8470-A3C2D334A7F8} (ag_doublelight)
ObjectSize=297
Offset=0
Density=0
MinAutogenDensity=100
PlaceOnWater=No
RandomHeading=No

These are the code definitions:

autogen format
// [Autogen.id.type.variant]
id = id of the object specified in the "autogen" tag for the vector data

type = an extra identifier that allows mulitple autogenned types to be associated with a single tag.  For example an autogen with id=0 could use type=0 for medians and type=1 for billboards.  Both will be applied to any vector data that specifies autogen=0.

variant = this is a variant that may be applied to the autogen of vector data.  For each id/type pair multiple variants may exist.  On any given segment that applies an id/type autogen specification a single variant will be chosen.

AutoObject - guid of the primary object to use

AutoObjectEnd - guid of any endpoint object to use

ObjectSize - length to apply between objects (in meters)

ObjectEndSize - length of the end segments (in meters)

Offset  - This is an offset to apply from the vector line can be used to place object beside a road like billboards.

Density - This is the percentage of objects to place.  If the number is 50, 50% of all objects will be placed. This is a repeatably random 50%.  This number is further modified by the autogen density setting.
NOTE: if 100 is set here, then all objects will be placed and the number will not be modified by the autogen density setting

MinAutogenDensity - The object will appear when the setting of the autogen density slider is equal to or greater than this value.

Scale - Scale factor to apply to the model.

ScaleRange - Randomly modulate scale factor up to +/- ScaleRange.

PlacementRange- Randomly jitter the model placement up to +/- this many meters.

RandomHeading - Randomly rotate the heading of each model instance.

[blueskydriver]

I checked everywhere for the items like:

AutoObject={47C97CED-C4E6-4E4B-8E9F-B110989EEA62} (ag_lightpole)

I could not find this anywhere; although, I have UT and that might have changed it's location or name (or appended it to something else).

If you find that, you should be able to change the color, but that might just be the pole, as lights come from the FX files, and there is the issue that they could be sprites.

John

John