cockpit contrast working poorly

[HellFire]

Hi every1    lately I've been unable to read the guages on my instrument panel as my plane inside & out is a dark color, upon adjusting
gamma to lighten the cockpit, the views turn a hazy light color making the world a foggy place, although the cockpit is lighter    with the contrast almost nonexistent.

Definitely unable to read my "G" meter plus others including the gunsight.
Your assistance is most kindly invited in helping me to rectify this unplea-
sant dilemma.   How did you set the contrast?   What did you do to lighten
the interior of cockpit so that the instruments are clearly legible?  TY

[FLS]

You have to be very careful setting gamma. You set brightness and contrast in your video card settings, typically by right clicking your desktop.

[bustr]

Gamma is a very loaded issue in terms of where the problem is really coming from. The last time my cockpit gamma was like yours the source was a toss up between my LCD monitor and my desktop gamma via my video card.

If raising the in game gamma does not help but makes it worse in an opposite manner, what have you done to your monitor or video card recently?

Have you ever calibrated your monitor or recently changed it's contrast, brightness, or gamma?

Have you installed a new video card or updated the drivers recently?

Have you recently changed your desktop color, contrast, brightness or gamma?

I had to research monitor calibration, contrast, brightness, color, and gamma to eventualy understand how to balance my monitor and video card at the desktop before I could then increase my gamma in the game and not have your problem. I finally traded my LG monitor for my wife's Samsung becasue the Samsung had a better contrast and gamma response for gaming. No matter what I did the LG was better for working on spread sheets than playing games. But, that was after going through much of what you will find in the link below.

http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/

Even monitors get old and change over time. Both your monitor menu and video card menu should have buttons to reset back to default if you over tweek anything. This is usualy tooth grindingly time consuming more than you can really damage anything. I usualy write down all of my settings before I abuse my monitor and video card. Some of the tests in that link can help you determin if your monitor is just getting old. But, even in that case you can still get a bit more response out of it. You will just have a better idea if that's all you can get.

I apologise if you already know all of this.

[ImADot]

Does this happen all the time, or when you're at a really high altitude? Some cockpits get real funky and dark at high alts...unless that was a bug and HTC squished it recently.

[HellFire]

My heartfelt gratitude to all who helped me with their advice & suggestions, especially so to bustr, who had given me myriads of ideas.

I double checked my ATI Radeon HD4600 as to settings, contrast, etc, but the solution wasn't found, likewise checked all the settings on Aces High, all were properly set, my instrument panel remained dark, thereby I lightened my gamma which cleared my panel, but contrast wasn't sharp.

Upon taking flight the graphics were poor as I could hardly see my gunsight nor the AI, the terrain was foggy, I turned on the computer green cross to mark where to shoot, but saw it only dimly     I reloaded AH2276 the end result being the same ,,, instrument panel too dark, changed settings from 800x600 to 1024x768 to no avail.

I tried other games "Warbirds III", no problems with graphics or contrast
instrument panel clearly legible, same for "IL-2 Forgotten Wars", searched for answers on "Google" without satisfaction.  Tweaked my settings with Black Vipers Configurations, everything but AH2 cockpit
panelling was fine.  Rechecked everything again from scratch found no problems but the existent one with Aces High !

Could the latest patches have anything to do with this problem?

Thx for your time to my long winded response   

[bustr]

Have you tried downloading from Microsoft the full DX9c install and running it. I'm on Win7 64bit and it improved my game graphics detail a bit.

You can try this MS download.

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=35

Supported operating systems: Windows 7, Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1, Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2, Windows Server 2008, Windows Vista, Windows XP Service Pack 2, Windows XP Service Pack 3

[FLS]

Hellfire set the Aces high graphics and video card settings to default then take and post a screenshot of your cockpit.

[HellFire]

buster & FLS, molto grazie for your assistance    Everything turned out fine .   bustr ur recommendation of d/l DirectX_9 is appreciated, however, my directX was updated 06/2010 to DirectX_11 Technology Update.

FLS, ur advice of setting AH graphics & video cd settings to default was
helpful as I kept noticing that my video cd texture was set to 1024 Hi-Res. Texture, however in my research of AH data, I found that in order to lighten my instrument panel I'd be better of increasing the rate to 2048 as it effects the COCKPIT ONLY whilst everything else stays at 1024.

I followed suit, made the necessary adjustment thereby rectifying the problem.   Everything is presently just the way I want it    Thanks 

[FLS]

Glad we could help.

DX11 is backwards compatible with DX9 which is what Aces High uses but it does not work as well as loading DX9 on your system. DX9 does not replace or interfere with DX11. There is no downside to installing it and it's likely to improve performance.