Everything looks way too dark?

[Kalnon]

Hi, I'm new to P3D and just started using it though I'm a long time user of FSX. First thing I noticed when booting up the sim is everything looks way too dark. I loaded a flight at noon with the AC11 Commander and I can barely see the buttons switches and knobs at default settings. The outside of the plane also looks too dark. Even the world outside looks way too dark and yet some parts also look too bright or over exposed like trees and clouds in the distance. I"m looking for some advice on how to make P3Dv5 look better visually. I did some searching and did find a couple of forum posts on the topic. Like this here: https://www.a2asimulations.com/forum/vi ... hp?t=73211 where advice was given to adjust exposure settings in the .cfg file and I did try tinkering with this and found it does help a little bit but the lighting still doesn't look right to me. I also found this thread here: https://www.prepar3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=138111 and it seems promising however I am unable to find this ADAPTATION_RATE_SCALAR setting in the config file anywhere. I would also love to know if anyone has other suggestions I could try. I would greatly appreciate any help, thanks.

[shermank]

If you have an Nvidia card, you can adjust brightness and color settings in Nvidia Control Panel. That May help

Sherm

[Kalnon]

I tried that but it didn't help, I also tried adjusting the brightness, bloom, saturation and all that stuff and it didn't really help. I mean, I could turn the brightness up really high and then I can see the cockpit but everything on the screen would then look bleached out and terrible.

[Kalnon]

So after doing some more tinkering I found something a little weird with the lighting. This is with the weather setting set to Fair Weather https://imgur.com/Ar6aUv7 And this is with the weather set to Clear https://imgur.com/1OYlikE When the weather is set to clear, the lighting looks good but it seems if there are any clouds in the sky at all, it looks really dark. This doesn't seem right to me. I chose Fair Weather because it's not very many clouds in the sky. I know of course that when there are clouds in the sky, possibly blocking some of the sun, it won't be as bright out but it just looks way darker than would be even close to realistic on a partly cloudy day. If you notice, you can't see the sun reflecting off of the aircraft at all even though there's relatively few clouds in the sky. I think there's something not quite right about the lighting in P3Dv5. Maybe they need to tweak it a little more.

[Martyson]

Hello Kalnon ,

You previously mentioned:
“Hi, I'm new to P3D and just started using it “

Just so you know there is a refund policy :

P3D Refund Policy:
https://www.prepar3d.com/support/refundpolicy/

[ToniH]

I purchased few years ago EnvShade, that changes lot of how p3d looks like. I suggest you purchase that addon, it makes lot of good changes for P3D by default and you can also change lot of things to make P3D the way you like it.

[Kalnon]

Hello Kalnon ,

You previously mentioned:
“Hi, I'm new to P3D and just started using it “

Just so you know there is a refund policy :

P3D Refund Policy:
https://www.prepar3d.com/support/refundpolicy/

Thanks but I haven't decided if I want to do that yet or not. I think if I spend enough time tinkering around, I'll be able to get it to look the way I want. I've seen videos and screenshots of P3Dv5 that look really nice so I'm sure there's ways to make it look better. Besides, I'm sure in future updates it will only P3Dv5 will only get better. Other than the lighting issues, I'm really liking the sim so far.

I purchased few years ago EnvShade, that changes lot of how p3d looks like. I suggest you purchase that addon, it makes lot of good changes for P3D by default and you can also change lot of things to make P3D the way you like it.

Thanks, I'm going to go check that out right now.

[Kalnon]

Wow, what an amazing little program Envshade is. Now I can make P3D look exactly the way I want. Thanks again for sharing ToniH!