Simviation Forums

What would make a .gau file work in one plane but not another?
Just as an experiment I took an ASI .gau file from an F-5A that has a beautiful panel that works great, put it in an F-16 that has a panel that doesn't work and then suddenly got errors about some other 737 gauge or some such thing and then of course it wouldn't work at all. I took an ASI and altimeter from yet another plane and put it in this same F-16 and it worked. I have tried various .xml gauges in this F-16 and they seem to work okay, not great but at least they work. With the original panel in this plane, when I try to select it in the menu I get all kinds of "file is for an older version of MS" errors about gauges and other things that aren't even in the panel .cfg file and then of course nothing works at all. Why would I get errors about gauges that aren't in the .cfg file?    :-?

See my reply to your duplicate question here. --> http://www.simviation.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1224459916/3#3

They were in the main gauges folder. Just like the .dll file for the Accel Pack FA-18.

They were in the main gauges folder. Just like the .dll file for the Accel Pack FA-18.

OK. It's unlikely you would get error messages for gauges not included in the Panel.cfg. Many 3rd party panels use various default gauges. If this panel was originally intended for FS9 you probably need the appropriate FS9 default gauge.

Can you post a link to the F-16 with the panel you're having problems with so I can download it to check it out. If not, copy the full text from the CFG & paste it in your next reply.

Sorry, been outta town for a couple weeks working. The F-16 I have prolems with is mostly the USViper.zip on page 2 of the FS2004 military downloads at simaviation.com. I used the F-16 Viper update on page 1 of the FSX military downloads so it will supposedly work with FSX and also tried the panel by Eric Marciano. I have also tried the PAF plane on the same page and the HAF plane on page 3. I believe these are all pretty much the same plane and use the same panel. None of them work. I get all kinds of errors for gauges that aren't even in the panel.cfg and then of course, there are no working gauges once the plane does finaly load. These planes use .gau files for their panels; the Accel pack FA-18 uses .dll files which are pretty much the same as .gau files. The planes with "glass" panels that work all use .xml type panels. That being said, I do have some planes using .gau files and they work fine.

The fact it's posted on Page 2 of the FS2004 section means the Viper is an early FS9 model. The same applies to aircraft posted on page 1 of the FSX section. They will usually be updated files from FS9 & tested in the original RTM version of FSX.  A lot will depend on which version of FSX you have. Most FS9 models that worked fine with RTM or SP1 are not compatible with SP2/Acceleration.

I get all kinds of errors for gauges that aren't even in the panel.cfg and then of course, there are no working gauges once the plane does finaly load.

I can't see how it's possible to get error messages for gauges not defined in Panel.cfg. I've checked out the recommended Eric Marciano panel for the Viper & it includes several FS2002/4 default gauges. If you don't have these installed to your FSX they obviously cannot display but you shouldn't get error messages for missing gauges. All the FS9 default gauges in GAU format I've tried in the FSX demo work fine so there should be no compatibility problems with them. Any error messages will probably be caused by incompatible 3rd party gauges. This panel was intended for FS2002 & I wouldn't expect the gauges to work in FSX.