Night Icons

[Yello1]

The Night Setting is very very cool, but why make it meaningless by having the neon Icons?  Why not make the icons subdued like you had them under the storm clouds?  And why not make Night just a little longer so you can actually fly a whole mission in it?  Night fighter bomber is nice variable, make it more than a novelty by making it vary the play for a mission by making the above adjustments. With that a real night bomber mission or other sneak a thon could actually be attempted without the red tag giving you away or an early dawn doing the same?

[Eagler]

I agree with the above post

Eagler

[Ripsnort]

Its been asked for before..the more that post about it, the better.

[Kratzer]

I either need night to coincide with actual night, or HTC needs to send me some big heavy curtains...

...i agree that the icons take a lot of the thrill out of night though...

[Weave]

Yes, subdue the icons, and extend the night.
Have the moon actually track across the sky instead of teleporting itself the the eastern horizon to the western.

Weave

[MiG Eater]

The neon icons are quite out of place in a night time environment.  Unless you are very close to the airplane, they usually dwarf its actual size.  While it does take away the need to ever use radar (in the way it was used for night fighting in WW2), it also detracts from the reason that night flying was done in the first place - to hide your presence from the enemy.  

The only real positive role (IMO) that a night time icon system has is to identify a friendly from enemy contact.  I'd like to see that solved with an IFF system.  Press a key and all friendly icons briefly appear.  Find a shadowy outline of an airplane without an icon?  Its an enemy.

MiG

[Yello1]

Glad to see some agreement.  Your DAR should be all the radar you need, that actually mimicks night radar of the time well enough.  If you are out of your Dot DAR range well you wouldnt know friend from foe (as a RAF Halifax crew said to me, all fighters were NME till they proved otherwise
If you want some way to spot people in pitch black add what they really add, flickering blue exhaust flames, visible only from the rear and only at fairly short range. This was like a gas burner type of flame that pulsed out of the exhausts of the engines, faint but bright enough in a dark sky to show a target if you got behind one. the Book Night Fighter describes this sort of action rather well.