How to add a new window to a panel?

[Batman93210]

Hi yaw

I put a panel to gether for a Cessna 170. uesing

[garymbuska]

There are at least two programs that will do this for you
Though one is really a upgrade of the other.
1). CFGEDIT is freeware and will do this as long as you have no XML gauges in the panel. It will not support that
2).FSPANEL STUDIO is a upgrade of cfgedit but is pay ware. It will edit and make XML gauges it sells for around $20.00. I use it all the time to check panels with as it will spot a lot of problems in the panel.cfg file that might be missed.
DO not expect it to make a virtual cockpit with as that has to be done at the time of the planes design.

[Batman93210]

I have cfgedit, and I have notice that on some panels that some of the gauges will be highlighted in purple.
So if I wanted to add the yoke as a sepret window, so that when I push say ie.. shift+ 2 the yoke will show up,
I would need to pugrade to FSpanel Studio ?

The aircraft that I have bee working on is a 1948 Cessna 170A  by  Paul Clawson. It's a good looking airplane, but the panel, and vc needs work. So I'v been able to do something about the panel, and even some on th vc's panel. The VC has know color I wish that I could get in to the vc, and edit it.

[WebbPA]

You should not need to upgrade to FSPanel Studio to add a new window.  You can do it with notepad if you have enough patience.

The way I learned to do it was to reverse engineer some panels.  Examine the code with CfgEdit.

John Consterdine's Baron panel http://www.simviation.com/fs2002panels22.htm has a nice little popup yoke.  If you examine how he did it you should be able to figure it out - maybe even add his nifty little yoke icon.

[Batman93210]

Thanks Webb for that I'll take a look at it, and see how it's don.
One more thing if I may. When editing my panels, it seems that some things in the panel that are black the simulator reads as seeing thought it,and other like the dash on the panel is ok meening I cant see thought it. So if I want to color something in black how do I do that with out the simulator reading it as see though it?

[WebbPA]

Yes, the sim interprets black as transparent.   I'm not big into bitmap  editors but  I suspect the black layer is something like 0,0,0.

To make it non-transparent you have to make the non-black background as close to black as you can  - depending on the  capabilities of your .bmp editor.  I use MS Paint - probably not the best one out there - to change the desired backgrounds to the darkest gray I can get.

[Batman93210]

Ya that make sence I'm startting to figer it out. I did look at that Baron panel, and I was able to add the Cessna yoke as a window "success at last". Have you tryed uesing Pixia? It's freeware you can download it here http://www.webattack.com/get/pixia.html

Thanks agen

[WebbPA]

For extra credit figure out the yoke icon.

I tried Pixia but it was overkill.  Gimp is probably overkill, too.  MSPaint and Irfanview work fine for my very limited editing work.

[Batman93210]

Ya I'v been thanking about the yoke icon. Would that be like a gauge?

[WebbPA]

In the panel you downloaded and reverse engineered the icon is in JCYoke and the panel.cfg entry looks something like this:

gauge45=JCYoke!yoke,  932,97,26,26

and the yoke window is here:

[Window03]
file=58Yoke.bmp
file_1024=Yoke.bmp
size_mm=480
window_size_ratio=1.000  
position=0
visible=1
ident=31
window_size= 0.375, 0.375
window_pos= 0.160, 0.734

gauge00=YokeATC!Switch,  66,14,30,16
gauge01=Beech_Baron!Clock,  206,145,70,40
gauge02=YokeAP!Switch,  386,14,30,16
gauge03=APlight!light,  368,14,7,8

CfgEdit should be able to find a few more icons in simicons.cab and simicons1024.cab.  You can download a lot more icons in a package called cpt.icons.cab either here or from AVSim.

The tricky part is that the each icon is tied to an ident=x value.  I think there are some old discussions in the panel forum about that but it can be difficult to get these entries to match.

[Batman93210]

The icon my be a bit over my head.

[wji]

Some F1 ATR72-500 captains (AMEs, actually) have added the default GPS500 to the 2D panel as this plane comes with the HT1000 (no map display) . . . just edit the panel.cfg in notepad.

bill
GPS500added

[Batman93210]

I didn't get the yoke icon done, but I am going to work on figuring out how to make a yoke icon for the next panel project.

[Hagar]

[quote]CfgEdit should be able to find a few more icons in simicons.cab and simicons1024.cab.

[WebbPA]

If you want to zip up your package and email it to me I'll be glad to add the yoke icon and connect it to the window.  Since I can't find another yoke icon I would just use JCYoke, which was probably custom made by John Consterdine.

Just make sure you give the late Mr. Consterdine credit.

Is the panel for FS02 or FS04?