Environmental lighting question

[ThinkingManNeil]

Evening everybody. I have a question about environmental lighting. I just finished an enjoyable, low-level flight in the Ercoupe over Prince Edward County on a simulated "perfect" June evening before sunset. You know the kind; clean, clear golden light from a lowering sun washing over the landscape, lighting the landscape brightly and casting long, sharp shadows. It's long been my favourite time of day to fly in the real world, but to my disappointment the lighting in FS2004 is far more subdued. With the sun's disk still a good 20 - 25 degrees above the horizon the land below was hardly lit at all, as though the sun were well below the horizon and the daylight was quickly fading. Is there a way to adjust FS2004 to more realistically reproduce natural light and lighting effects?

Thanks.

N.

 

[Tom Clayton]

I think you'll find that if your pupils didn't adjust for the lowering light levels, the real world would look much the same. I've often wished that the Sim would take that fact into account and leave the actual light levels the same for longer, but change the contrast to better simulate the effect of wider pupils adjusting for the lower actual light levels.

 

[Sunny9850]

There is no parameter to tweak as far as I know. The only option and it is IMHO fraud with trouble is to go look at different environment packages.....both free an pay ware as some of them adjust the actual texture sets that FS uses to paint the skies we fly in.

The word of caution is that at least in one instance I ended up with a sim that was almost unusably dark with one of the freeware enviro packs installed and silly me had forgotten to make a copy of the textures that were overwritten..

Cheers
Stefan

 

[rdaniell]

Whose Ercoupe are you flying? I'm using John Woodward's to which I have made several changes. It is now pretty close to an actual one I owned back in the 1980s.

RD

 

[ThinkingManNeil]

Whose Ercoupe are you flying? I'm using John Woodward's to which I have made several changes. It is now pretty close to an actual one I owned back in the 1980s.

RD

Hey RD;

I'm flying Kazunori Ito's Ercoupe 415 which I believe is still available at FlightSim.com. Mike Zola very kindly did a very smart paint scheme for it at my request (available here in the SOH FS2004 skins stacks) and also updated the aircraft CFG and air files on her as well.

N.

 

[aeromed202]

Maybe this is saying the same thing in a different way but I have always thought that the sim lighting would maintain a day brightness too long then quickly hurry up into darkness. The ENB series might help with lighting a bit. Since adding it in I've been making endless adjustments and think I'm getting close to a better rendition. The package Perfect Sky seems to help soften the darkness onset a little too but it might also just be my preference.