Nighttime is way too bright in game.
I know that at summer time at hi latitudes its doesnt get really dark, but in game latitude doesnt matter, its always too bright.
Im an airline pilot IRL and I can tell you that when you look out the window at night, you dont see the ground at all, only the light from cities and streets etc... well we dont have these lights in the game so it really should be ALOT darker. Is this a limitation of the game or is there a mod somewhere or being made that will fix this?
Would make night mission alot more fun!
yes i think this would be great, but on the other hand i think they put the lightend night time in just because of the old computer monitors, because if you hink about it, if you were flying a night mission in Flight sim 2002 and up, and you were flying at night, and perhaps the sun was shinning through your window and it always put a glare on your screen, and you couldnt see a thing in FS.
If it is a mod map... then open the map folder and open the load.ini file.....
there you will find the following...
[WORLDPOS]
CAMOUFLAGE = SUMMER
MONTH=7
DECLIN = 44
PRESSURE = 760
TEMPERATURE = 24
change the month to 12 or 1 and it will be winter so the 'nights are drawin' in a wee bit me old laddie'
A simpler advice - create profiles in your graphics driver. Here's a quick tutorial for ATI CCC - set your graphic settings ("3D Settings" panel and "Color" panel), click "Apply", go to "Profiles" -> set profile name and save. Repeat for next profile.
I suggest you set either two profiles (Day and Night) or three (Sunset/Sunrise). After that you can easily select one from the system tray icon.
I set a Night profile with the exact 3D settings as days, but in the color I lowered the brightness, and added slight contrast and gamma corrections. It looks better now and doesn't require changing in-game settings at all.
I know it sounds rather slow and complicated, but once you set your desired profiles you can switch withing 10 seconds between them and always use your desired one.
There should be similar options for nVidia cards.
You can do this already. There is a thread from over a year ago where I posted a download to a version of the Berlin map with much darker nights. Can't find it now, but you can do it to any map you please. Just open the map's Load.ini and change "DECLIN = 50" or whatever the number happens to be, down to 5 or 10. The nights will be much darker, but the days will stay the same.
It's scary, disorientating and highly immersive. :twisted:
BTW: You'll be able to see the wisdom of having a night fighter in a pale colour scheme. You can just make out your wings in the darkness, so that when you are trying to see landmarks you are not starring blindy at your wing or nacelle for some clue as to where you are. :wink:
I just ran a quick test mission on The Slot 10-43 map, it has a DECLIN = -4. It was much darker. At least there was no sun glow on the edge of the horizon. There was a 3/4 moon and it looked very cool. It was still too easy to see the ground and my aircraft was too bright, but it's a big improvement. Thanks.
This sounds all very intresting!! Where do I find this Load.ini files for each map?
I did this. Changed the value from 50 to 5 and the glow of the sun at the horizon is gone but the night itself is as bright as before. I can still see fields as clearly from 7000m as if it was daytime, just more darker greyish colour, well as they always looked at night... Tried various maps with same result...
Anything else I forgot maybe?
I've always felt night flight was one of the few things the IL2 did poorly. There was always that greenish/yellow glow in half the sky, and in many other ways the colors were unrealistic as well. The sky gets dark, but contrails and gun smoke trails were as light as usual, making them look like fuzzy lasers. It looks s bad, really bad. I never set scenarios for night - which is a shame because the searchlights are cool.
Could the feel of night be simulated by altering colors as well as darkness? The old Janes WW2 Fighters simulated night very nicely by giving everything a bluish cast at night. It really gave a nice "bright full moon" sense, and explosion flashes were also quite striking. It wasn't that dark either, but it did look a lot more like night.
