New to Panel Creation & Questions

[CAFedm]

Have taken a brief look through this forum but haven't found anything definitive that answers my questions, so thought to check with those in-the-know, as to how to get started.

I have Abacus' Custom Panel Designer v3.0 and would like to know whether this is an appropriate program to employ with a project for use in FS9/FSX. Am pretty certain that at least some of the gauges included, as well as the bonus CPD gauges, will not be optimal to use, due to the program date (1999-2003). It also seems that the new way to do gauges is to use XML code, something with which I need a good tutorial on. The point of all of this is, to ask whether I ought to go ahead with the above-noted resources, and if not, what direction to take. It just wouldn't be cool to learn another program, get everything going and then find out I have to start over.

Thank ye

[Hagar]

Hi. I've never tried it so I'm not sure that CPD is fully compatible with FS9. The older gauges included with it shouldn't be a problem providing it can read the later XML gauges. You could always find replacement gauges. Otherwise you would be better off with CfgEdit which I believe is very similar but was Freeware until recently. I still use it for tweaking panels in both CFS2 & FS. Its big brother is FS Panel Studio which should be fully compatible with FS9 & apparently includes FSX support. I don't think you would have many problems converting to it.

Before making any decisions you might like to contact Abacus support.

[CAFedm]

Thanks for the info!  Appreciated.

[Hagar]

You're welcome. I noticed after posting my reply that you can download a free trial of FS Panel Studio. The Save function is disabled but this will allow you to see if it will suit you. I tried it & it looks just the job.