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Since the early days of FS5 I have always been trying to re-adjust the
panels to some extent. However, the repositioning of instruments is
nowhere near as easy as it was in FS2000 and as it is in FS2002. Even
those of us who are no expert panel designers can do a lot of changes to
suit the panels to our liking. The variety of adjustments ranges from
dislocating and repositioning particular instruments, replacing an
instrument by inserting another one, placing whole pop-up windows at any
desired position of the panel, or even manipulating the panel bitmap
itself. Thanks to the open code of how to do that, as published in the MS
SDK, and also due to an increasing number of codes for the entries in the
panel.cfg file, it should be possible for the average user to
perform some very useful alterations without using any additional program
at all. So the following tutorial is certainly not meant for those
well-experienced simmers who have been fiddling with panel configurations
for long, but if you do go on here, please backup the files you are going
to change in case you should want to restore them again. I'll give some
hints along the way, too, while parked at the ramp at TIST.
Let's begin with an easy task. For sure some of us will have noticed that
with the default Cessna Skyhawk panel the DME indicator is a bit displaced
to the right, thus covering the right utmost rim of the square frame which
surrounds the DME, IOAT, OMI indicators and the NAV/GPS toggle switch. To
reposition the DME indicator (outlined in green) a little bit to the left
you must change a particular entry in the panel.cfg file for this
aircraft. So open the file panel.cfg in the folder AIRCRAFT\C172\PANEL by
the Windows text editor or similar and replace the entry for
"gauge06=Cessna!DME, 544, 49" by "gauge06=Cessna!DME, 540,
49" (without inverted commas, of course; the bold face here is just to
make it easier to see what has been changed). In this case, with the first
number after the name of the gauge, we have changed the x-value or
horizontal left-right position of the DME on the screen: increasing the
value shifts the gauge more to the right and vice versa. With the second
number, the y-value, we could change the vertical up-down position:
increasing the value helps us position the gauge further down on the
screen. Be sure to save the file and start FS to see whether you like the
new position of the DME gauge on the panel.
Deactivate the command line window_size_ratio=1.0 by putting a semicolon before it and insert the command line windowsize_ratio=0.95. Note that for some unknown reason the default line has an old FS98 / FS2000 carryover flaw in its spelling: we must obviously write the word windowsize in one word to make the command take any effect at all (at least in the German version of FS; in the SDK for FS2000 MS is confused about the correct spelling themselves!). The value =1.0 is always default and a command line like that could all the same be left out entirely without causing any harm. Check it out. By the way, in the above screen shot you can see that the GPS panel [window02] has been magnified a tiny bit.
Please be aware that if you have FS running while you change entries in aircraft or panel cfg files, you must first load another plane into FS and then reload the former one again to see the effect of the changes you have just made. This is a tedious job if you want to check out quite a number of different changes in the cfg files, but to my knowledge there is no work around for that. On the other hand it is a good idea to be able to do such changes by hand because once you have bought a panel designer to do the job, you surely know far better what is going on behind the scenes, technically speaking, but we won't enter into that here.
Next we take a closer look at the Learjet panel: by default both the
throttle quadrant and the annunciator are placed upwards outside the main
panel itself (position=0), and I thought they should be repositioned as
shown in the following screen shot to enable maximum view through the
cockpit window. If you must perform trim procedures, just press shift+5
and the annunciator instrument is toggled off again. The same goes for the
throttle quadrant window if you want to see the nav radio again (press
shift+4).
A comparison between the default Lear panel entries ( panel.cfg in the
FS2002 folder AIRCRAFT\LEAR45\PANEL) and the changed values clearly
reveals how to achieve the desired effect:
So what have we done in particular? Well, by both changing the original
value for windowsize_ratio and adding the extra command line
window_pos= we have managed to place the two panels [window03]
and [window04] at exactly the positions that I found most appropriate.
With these command lines MS have given us a fine and useful way of
readjusting panels to our own liking, haven't they? I myself am glad we
finally have that after the frustrating efforts to achieve such effects at
the times of FS5 or FSFW95. To be precise I must say that with regard to
panel configuration it was FS98 that had already made the major
break-through, whereas its successors FS2000 and FS2002 offer more
possibilities by an increasing number of available command lines.
And that's what it looks like after the changes we have made so far: hitting shift+4 opens and harmoniously integrates the throttle quadrant into the main panel while leaving enough open space for the gear indicator to be seen. By pressing shift+5 the annunciator is displayed on the right top end of the main panel.
Let's first readjust the throttle and the radio stack panel windows. If you have followed me with acute eyes so far, it should be but a little challenge for you to change the appropriate values in the panel.cfg file. Have a try first on your own, but if you are in a hurry (which shouldn't occur with a real flightsim enthusiast) or if for some unexpected reason it really takes too long, you will find the screen shot with the correct entries a little bit further down. So here is what it should be like after the alteration of the panel configuration:
The following screen shot reveals new positions both for the compass and for the radio stack (panel.cfg.alt; if you choose this, rename it panel.cfg again) as some users may want to have the radio stack integrated as shown in the next shot. To achieve the best possible results and not to cover parts of the autopilot, however, I have excluded the Comm2 instrument here.
It goes without saying that it is not enough only to delete or deactivate the default entry for the Comm2 gauge (gauge01=737-400!Comm 2, 0, 54). The numeric succession of gauge numbers needn't be continuous like in FS2000, but their respective positions have to be adapted and rearranged as it is shown in the screen shot (B737 panel change alternative).
By default, the throttle quadrant panel [window03] is placed somewhere in mid-right position within the main panel, thereby limiting my view at the VOR2 and ADF. If you like to have it that way, leave it there. If you are like me, you may decide to remove it to a better place on the screen, blending it over the main cockpit panel on the far right (position=8). At the same time the throttle panel should not cover and hide significant instruments of the main cockpit panel [window00]. That is why it is not enough just to deactivate the default window_pos= command and to insert the position=8 command line, but we have to alter the value for windowsize_ratio, too (windowsize_ratio=0.625). This minimizes the throttle panel so that it does not overlap the right side of the ADF indicator. Additionally you might find it necessary to fine-tune only the height of the throttle panel window without altering the x-value of the windowsize_ratio. This can be done by inserting a different y-value 242 for the size_mm= command PLUS adding new values for the gauge00= and gauge01= command lines, all this shown in the screen shots below. Note that the double commas are important and must not be left out! If no value is specified in between them, the default value for width is valid.
There is still another reason for me not to keep the original panel config file as it is: the gauge36=Cessna208!DME is displayed at a size which reduces readability (left part of the screen shot). So I fill in a third value for its size (Cessna208!DME,514,150,94), which fully solves the problem (right half of the screen shot). I have left all the default entries in the panel cfg file of the Cessna Caravan Amphibian, but only deactivated them by semicolons, so that you can easily see which changes I have made for this plane.
That's all there is to it. If I can do it, so can you. Now some of you may ask why they should take great pains in changing all the necessary values. Isn't it easier to load a panel in FS and then position the above pop-up windows via drag&drop? Of course you can do that, and you can even save the new positions with the flight situation. But be aware that this is not enough to make them stay permanent for long. Whenever you load another aircraft into this selected flight situation and then want to go back to the B737, for instance, all the positions of the B737 panel windows are default again. The only easy way to fix this is by following the strategies described above and carrying out the jobs #1-5 in order to achieve the desired effects (or to buy a panel designer program instead). We will also have to wait for Microsoft's SDKs (Software Development Kits) for FS2002 which will certainly give further useful insight into the programming code, which is so urgently needed for third-party developers.
Oh, sorry, I almost forgot to mention that indeed there is a more comfortable way to have all the changes at once by downloading the fs2k2cfg.zip package at FlightSim.Com. It contains all the panel.cfg and aircraft.cfg files which I have changed. They are packed in the same hierarchical structure of the FS2002 AIRCRAFT folder. For all panel.cfg files I have also added the original version. The aircraft.cfg files now all contain the so-called damage line, that means I have inserted the entry "visual_damage=1" (again without inverted commas, of course) to show off all the cool damage effects that FS2002 keeps in stock for us and which are partly evaluated in my pictorial review of FS2002 on January 23rd.
By the way...
now if I was going to really nit-pick, I would have to say that there are at least two spelling mistakes in all the aircraft.cfg files: incremenet, availiable instead of increment and available. However, they won't do any harm as they are in the descriptive and non-active parts of the text file, but nevertheless they are corrected in the package as well.
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Current Update: Since the latest release of the MS Panel SDK there is a new, mighty command line to define any x- and y-value for the size of a panel window: e.g. "window_size=0.5, 0.3" (without quotes, of course). This new command overrides the position= and windowsize_ratio= commands automatically. Check it out! |
Enjoy your flights!
Ulrich Klein
huki.klein@t-online.de
