Microsoft Flight Simulator X (FSX)

Fix by Bo3b

Fixed:

Removed the screen depth lights on runways, towers, beacons.

BEFORE: 

AFTER:

Description:

FSX is one of the top flight simulators, and works fairly well in 3D.   Convergence and depth work well.

The lighting effects have always been a problem, and dramatically detract from the experience in 3D, because all lights are at screen depth.

This fix is marginal, because it only deletes the light effects and aircraft labels.  That means that day flying is now pretty good, but night flying loses all the runway lights.  Maybe pretend that it's an airport power failure.

How to install (this is not a Helix mod):

0) This only works for the SP2 version of FSX.

1) Use the standard FSX profile.  Other profiles were tested, but don't solve the problem.

2) Rename "..\Texture\halo.bmp" to "original halo.bmp" to disable runway lights.

3) Rename "..\Effects\texture\fx_2.bmp" to "original fx_2.bmp" to disable beacons.

4) Go to Settings->Customize->Traffic and uncheck "Show aircraft labels" to disable red text over other airplanes.

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I'm still looking into a fix, instead of just deleting the effect, but it's not promising.

Microsoft coded all graphic effects in a 2D library 'g2d.dll'.  The effects appear to be hard coded and are done after the 3D pipeline has completed.  There are no vertex shaders associated with the effects, and the items in the 3D models that are used for placement are not visible.

The effects for sun, moon, fireworks, and smoke also have the same problem.  I did not delete them, because of their rarity.  It should be possible to delete other graphic files if that seems worthwhile.