For FSX modeling, make sure that you have attached lights ONLY in the exterior model. They should NOT be included in the interior model (they would be ignored anyway!).

Misplacement of attached .fx lighting in the interior model is usually the result of the x,y,z positions not being precisely the same. I discovered this while working on the CJ1+ v2.0's lighting system. Even though the interior model was essentially a stripped-down clone of the exterior model, the positions of the exterior model's attached .fx lights did NOT line up properly. I had to shift the entire interior model's parts to the rear about 2m and then adjust the aircraft.cfg file's eyepoint to the rear the same amount to get everything to line up correctly...  :Silly: 

general_light is a catch all that really is equivalent to landing lights, which is honestly totally useless!  :wacko: 

The original modeldef.xml that was included with SDK1a has only that one entry for "lighting." SDK2 and Acceleration SDK has entries for all lights...

...however even then they are somewhat incomplete, since they will not extinguish even when the master battery switch is OFF!  :blush: 

Here are entries for ALL lights that you can add to your modeldef.xml file. Note that each entry checks both for the light's switch state as well as whether the master battery switch is ON: