FSX gets dark too quickly?

[cobblecat435 0]

Hi everyone,

 

I have a small issue with my sim. The day ends way too quickly. Its 7:42 here in socal and its still light outside, but on FSX its like pitch black! Is there any way to change this?

 

Thanks

 

Jason

[LeeL 272]

I'm not exactly sure and someone else should chime in here but maybe there is a setting in the cfg? I don't know though. I'd be interested in this too.

 

Lee

 

 

Sent using Tapatalk

[Kaly 22]

This is an inherent bug in FSX.

 

You could try this, and it may help:

 

http://www.3dsoftworks.net/products/fsrealtime/

[Luiz Machado 1]

This is an inherent bug in FSX.

 

You could try this, and it may help:

 

http://www.3dsoftwor...cts/fsrealtime/

i assure you that´s the one of the best for you query, Jason

 

king regards

[Drumcode 1,892]

This is an inherent bug in FSX.

 

You could try this, and it may help:

 

http://www.3dsoftwor...cts/fsrealtime/

 

Is it a freeware with an option to donate? I see there's an option to buy, I don't get it.

[Swofford 155]

You basically pick your price.

[Drumcode 1,892]

You basically pick your price.

 

Ok, I get that but does the primary function work without paying after the install?

[Swofford 155]

I don't think it does. Download the readme. I paid for it before using it so not sure if it has a trial time or not.

[bud7h7 1]

Strangely I only noticed the rapid sunset just in the last couple of weeks. Never noticed this before.

[scott967 62]

I don't believe that info is correct for FSX. Please try the following:

 

Select an airport in your area of interest. For example, KNTD.

Get the lat/lon 34 07/-119 08

Punch it into a sunrise sunset calculator such as:

http://aa.usno.navy..../RS_OneYear.php (set time zone to 0/UTC)

For 7/27/12 I get sunrise 1305 sunset 0302 (UTC)

Start Sim and go to airport (KNTD Rwy3)

Set time a little before sunset (or sunrise) eg 0253 28 Jul 12 (UTC)

Here is what I see:

 

 

 

By eyeball the azimuth of the sun appears to be about 279M.

Let time run for a bit. Here's what I see at 0300UTC (I don't have a true horizon but it's pretty close here)

 

 

 

To me it looks pretty dead-on accurate. Now there are two other possible issues

 

a. Is local time correct? (in lots of testing I find some problems with getting timezone corrections to be used correctly in FSX, but once they are used there is no problem. You do have to understand how time is set when you first start up the sim, however.

 

b. Is the ambient sky too light/dark? Here I think there may be some valid issues. There are some settings in fsx.cfg that determine how the diffuse (day) and ambient (night) textures are blended during dusk/dawn but I have not experimented with these and don't recall reading experiments by others on adjusting the settings (if someone has done this would like to see their results).

 

scott s.

.

[cobblecat435 0]

I don't believe that info is correct for FSX. Please try the following:

 

Select an airport in your area of interest. For example, KNTD.

Get the lat/lon 34 07/-119 08

Punch it into a sunrise sunset calculator such as:

http://aa.usno.navy..../RS_OneYear.php (set time zone to 0/UTC)

For 7/27/12 I get sunrise 1305 sunset 0302 (UTC)

Start Sim and go to airport (KNTD Rwy3)

Set time a little before sunset (or sunrise) eg 0253 28 Jul 12 (UTC)

Here is what I see:

 

 

 

By eyeball the azimuth of the sun appears to be about 279M.

Let time run for a bit. Here's what I see at 0300UTC (I don't have a true horizon but it's pretty close here)

 

 

 

To me it looks pretty dead-on accurate. Now there are two other possible issues

 

a. Is local time correct? (in lots of testing I find some problems with getting timezone corrections to be used correctly in FSX, but once they are used there is no problem. You do have to understand how time is set when you first start up the sim, however.

 

b. Is the ambient sky too light/dark? Here I think there may be some valid issues. There are some settings in fsx.cfg that determine how the diffuse (day) and ambient (night) textures are blended during dusk/dawn but I have not experimented with these and don't recall reading experiments by others on adjusting the settings (if someone has done this would like to see their results).

 

scott s.

.

 

Thanks Scott.

 

I think the problem was that I took off from a different time zone so I was one hour ahead when I got to socal. I think the best option for me would be to install the fsrealtime software then.

[Malabar 0]

You should be able to get it here in the Avsim Library. Oops never mind the one on his site looks newer.

[Kaly 22]

There is also a tweak if you want tor try it, suggested by Phil Taylor (ex Aces developer) that may help:

 

To quote Phil:

 

 

"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.

 

Defaults:

 

DAY: 32768

 

NIGHT: 4096

 

 

 

These represent the amount of 'ambient' light at the ends of the day/night blend threshold. Zero is perfect dark, 65535 is full day sun at noon in the summer."

[sweetmusic 9]

Hi Jason,

Try this forum thread:

 

http://forum.avsim.net/topic/364791-time-utility/page__hl__time+utility

 

Hope it helps!

[scott967 62]

Thanks Scott.

 

I think the problem was that I took off from a different time zone so I was one hour ahead when I got to socal. I think the best option for me would be to install the fsrealtime software then.

 

What was your flight? AFAIK, the sun is keyed off of UTC and UTC is kept properly when you change timezones in flight. FSRealtime does two things: It resets your UTC constantly to avoid any slipage and it adds some timezone files, which for the US I don't think are correct any more (however, at least for DST it includes a utility and you can edit the ini fle to change the start/end day-of-year for DST. What it does is swap timezones files since the timezone files are based on pre-FS9 code, not FSX which allows setting DST in the timezone file.)

 

I rewrote the North America timezone files for FSX and did a lot of testing flight to/from Utah, Arizona, and Nevada checking time changes and it seemed to work correctly. I was working on Europe but kind of stalled due to a problem where FSX wasn't handling the Channel Islands correctly (they follow UK time not western Europe). I kind of put it on the back burner for a bit becaue I was going to have to start all over on it to try and figure out why FSX didn't seem to be using my files correctly. I think I will try to jump back into it in time for end of Europe DST.

 

I admit my testing mainly was automated flights at rate 16x logging local and UTC times and verifying those, without closely watching the lighting levels. There's just too much to test to try to actually do the flights in real-time.

 

scott s.

.