I'm not 100% sure but aren't there motorcycle manufacturers who have a headlight that stays level in a lean/turn situation? This keeps your beam oriented correctly in a turn instead of being turned up and away from your turn. This is an expensive addition so I'm pretty sure it was a BMW that I saw this on, or one of the Italian manufacturers.
I adjusted the aim of my low beam up a few degrees from stock, this helped with my distance or "throw" but I still lose visibility in corners at night. Usually it is not too much of a problem because there are street lights and other vehicles/cages around to help out with lighting. For those times when there is no additional lights I have resorted to just slowing down before I hit the turn.
I thought about going HID for a little bit, but after doing research I found this to be more of a band aid than a real solution. The problem is that, on my bike anyway, the projection beam optics in my headlight housing are in no way designed to properly focus and or project light from an HID bulb. With an improperly installed HID bulb in a housing designed for a regular incandesent (sp?) bulb you may be doing more damage to your visibility. If your light is aimed wrong, you can blind oncoming traffic, maybe not so bad at first thought, but it could potentially cause a collision. That is what we are trying to avoid. Also there are concerns about side spill and glare reducing our own ability to see. They may look cool, but if not done correctly that's all they are.
If you go over to hidplanet.com you can see some beam shots of car conversions. Basically they are taking a sealed automotive housing, heating it up and taking off the front window from the rear housing. Then they install a scavenged or new set of optics/holders designed for HID and then glue the window back on. There are some very impressive beam shots, especially when you compare them to a shot of someone who justs installs one of these replacement HID kits that basically just goes in where your old incandesent bulb was with no modifications to reflectors/optics.
The best way to go HID imo is to remove your housing and seperate the front window from the rear housing and replace the stock incandesent optics/reflector like they do with the auto's. I don't know if this would help with cornering visibility/light distribution but it may. From the HID beam shots I've seen they have more side"spill" ( I don't like to say spill in this case as it is intentional and to me spill implies something that was an afterthought).
I would have gone this route myself but there were several attempts by people to take apart the housing on the same model/year bike as mine and they all either failed and ruined the headlight housing or were just unsuccessful. I have read good reports on almost all Japanese manufacturers with people having success on taking apart their housings.
Good luck in your search for better visibility!
PS: one surefire solition I've found is to have one of the guys with a cruiser that is decked out with lights/cupholders/radio lead the way at night. We just have to make sure he maintains speed to keep his battery charged!
