Simviation Forum - Panel/gauge editing

Apr 27^th, 2008 at 5:52pm

brettt777 Offline
Colonel
Gadsden, AL

Gender:
Posts: 313

Is there some kind of program that you can use to edit or add/remove gauges and other items on a panel in Microsoft sims?

Back to top

IP Logged

Reply #1 - Apr 27^th, 2008 at 6:04pm

Sterk Offline
Colonel

Posts: 316

Add/Remove gauges:
Notepad,all done by editing panel.cfg,wich is simple text file.

Edit gauges:

Xml gauges-Notepad or any xml editor(millions of available freeware on web-I personally use "firstobject XML editor"-free,simple and powerfull)

.gau gauges-impossible to edit. Cool

&&&&

Back to top

IP Logged

Reply #2 - Apr 27^th, 2008 at 10:09pm

brettt777 Offline
Colonel
Gadsden, AL

Gender:
Posts: 313

Would a gunsight be part of the panel or would it be considered a gauge? All I want to do is remove the gunsight. It's in the way and I don't know how to use it anyway.

Back to top

IP Logged

Reply #3 - Apr 28^th, 2008 at 12:09am

brettt777 Offline
Colonel
Gadsden, AL

Gender:
Posts: 313

Okay I see where the panel.cfg file refers to the main panel and the radio panel. I assume these are .bmp files somewhere like other aircraft panel.cfg files refer to. But I cannot find "main panel" or "radio panel" anywhere in the entire CFS2 directory. Where would they be?

Back to top

IP Logged

Reply #4 - Apr 28^th, 2008 at 9:59am

gypsymoth Offline
Colonel
Oh no...!!
EGHH

Gender:
Posts: 737

I add gauges all the time to panels. Post details of the panel you want the gunsight removed from so I can look at it. It may be part of the panel bmp picture which is not able to be edited or removed.

Terry.

When the c**p hits the fan, get a tent.
It's never too late for a happy childhood....

1) Intel I7 980X Extreme CPU Professionally overclocked to 4.2Ghz
Gigabyte X58 UD7 Motherboard (USB 2 & 3)
12GB Corsair Vengeance (3 x 4Gb) Tri Channel DDR 3 1600Mhz
OCZ Bigfoot 2E 120 Gb SSD HDD (OS and applications)
2 x 1.5TB HDD’s Samsung Spin point F1 (RAID 1) Drives (Data inc maps, photos music etc.)
LG Blu-Ray RW Drive
Samsung DVDRW Drive
Asus GTX 590 Graphics Card, Dual GPU
Antec 1200 Twelve Hundred Tower Case
Corsair 1000w Modular True Power, Power Supply
Corsair H70 Water-cooled sealed CPU Cooler
Windows 7 Professional 64 Bit & I use a 24" Dell U2412M monitor.
2) AWD-IT GPC36 E8600 Overclocked Intel E8600 Core 2 Duo @ 4.0Ghz 6MB Cache 1333FSB CPU / Asus P5Q Pro Intel P45 Crossfire DDR2 Motherboard / ATI 4870 512Mb / OCZ 4GB DDR2 PC8500 1066Mhz Memory / 500Gb SATA Hard Drive / 22x DVD-RW/Vista 64bi & 20" Dell widescreen.

Back to top

IP Logged

Reply #5 - Apr 28^th, 2008 at 10:09am

dave3cu Offline
Colonel
Procrastinate now, don't
put it off.
3CU, Northern Wisconsin, USA

Gender:
Posts: 3077

As an example-for the CFS2 default Wildcat:

2D cockpit-The iron ring is drawn in the panel .bmp(s) in the panel folder. Erase the sight from the .bmp(s) by painting it out with black (rgb 0,0,0).

The crosshairs are drawn from ...\CFS2\Texture\gunsight64.bmp.

3D cockpit-modeled, textures from within the ..\F4F4_Wildcat\Texture\ folder... gunsight_wildcat.bmp for the crosshairs...

That's about as much as I know about it.. Wink

Dave

« Last Edit: Apr 29^th, 2008 at 7:22am by dave3cu »

At that time [1909] the chief engineer was almost always the chief test pilot as well. That had the fortunate result of eliminating poor engineering early in aviation. Igor Sikorsky

I intend to live forever....so far, so good. Steven Wright

You know....you can just rip up a to-do list.

Back to top

IP Logged

Reply #6 - Apr 28^th, 2008 at 10:17pm

brettt777 Offline
Colonel
Gadsden, AL

Gender:
Posts: 313

gypsymoth wrote on Apr 28^th, 2008 at 9:59am:

I add gauges all the time to panels. Post details of the panel you want the gunsight removed from so I can look at it. It may be part of the panel bmp picture which is not able to be edited or removed.

Terry.

I figured out that this particular plane (L-39 in Combat Jet Trainer) has the cockpit bmp's embedded in the gauge (.gau) files. I found a program that can export them and import them called gau2bmp. Only problem is the .gau file that has the bmp I want to edit gives me an error when I try to look at it in this program. "runtime error 9: subscript out of range". Any of the other .gau files open up just fine. Dunno what to do now...

Back to top

IP Logged

Reply #7 - Apr 29^th, 2008 at 2:45am

Hagar Offline
Colonel
My Spitfire Girl
Costa Geriatrica

Posts: 33159

brettt777 wrote on Apr 28^th, 2008 at 12:09am:

Okay I see where the panel.cfg file refers to the main panel and the radio panel. I assume these are .bmp files somewhere like other aircraft panel.cfg files refer to. But I cannot find "main panel" or "radio panel" anywhere in the entire CFS2 directory. Where would they be?

Make sure you're looking for the correct BMP. The background BMP for the main panel is usually defined under [Window00] like this:

[Window00]
file=panel_background_640.bmp
file_1024=panel_background_1024.bmp
size_mm=640
position=7
visible=1
ident=MAIN_PANEL

Note that the above is copied from the FS9 default C182. The BMP files are in the Panel folder alongside their corresponding Panel.cfg. Most 3rd party panels will only have one BMP for the main panel. The Radio_Stack pop-up window will not usually have a background BMP as it doesn't need one. I wouldn't have thought the gunsight you're looking for would have anything to do with this.

Quote:

I figured out that this particular plane (L-39 in Combat Jet Trainer) has the cockpit bmp's embedded in the gauge (.gau) files.

That's a new one on me. Can you post a screenshot of this panel showing the gunsight you wish to remove?

Founder & Sole Member - Grumpy's Over the Hill Club for Veteran Virtual Aviators
Member of the Fox Four Group

Need help? Try Grumpy's Lair

My photo gallery

Back to top

IP Logged

Reply #8 - Apr 29^th, 2008 at 8:19am

brettt777 Offline
Colonel
Gadsden, AL

Gender:
Posts: 313

I can still post a screenshot if you like, but last night I found a program that will open dll files and such, which apparently a .gau file is a renamed dll file. Anyway, I was able to extract the appropriate bmp's and edit them. Can't remember what the program was now (I'm at work) I will post it on here tonight. As for the embedded file thing, apparently most of them don't do it that way; I saw the panel bmp's you mentioned in the panel directory of most planes. But some do it this way for whatever reason.

Back to top

IP Logged

Reply #9 - Jul 26^th, 2008 at 8:32am

thetractor Offline
Lieutenant Colonel
gday
queensland australia

Gender:
Posts: 8

okay i've been looking at the cfg file for the a10 warthog hosted here, the first 6 lines are from standard aircraft and those guages all work. the panel was built using http://www.fspanelstudio.com which is a drop and drag type builder. see below where the code changes...

gauge06=mooney_bravo!Clock, 650,615,57,24
gauge07=104asam1!attitude, 298,443,77,77

so my theory is that if i change the 104asam1! to another standard aircraft type that is the same type and size of guage it might(stress might) fix this bug aslong as the guage is from a standard type

any thoughts?

Back to top

IP Logged

	Search the archive: