aeroSOFT Panel Designer
By Allen Lavigne (12 October 1999)
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With shortcuts to two applications, FS98 and your installed paint software, you need not leave Panel Designer in order to look at your panel under FS98 conditions, or modify the structure or colors of your background bitmap which is loaded automatically into your paint software. There is an evaluation version of Paint Shop Pro v5.0 included on the CD-ROM, This is an excellent paint application and is the one used by many professional panel designers who visit the Panel Forum on FlightSim.Com. This temporary installation lasts for 30 days, plenty of time to evaluate it. You can change this path to your paint software of choice under options/properties on the toolbar, so you are not obliged to use or keep Paint Shop Pro as your preferrence, and you can even use MS-Paint if that is all you have.
Naturally, there is a toolbar, and a full picture of the application is found here with one of my own panel projects for visualization.
The picture can have transparent gauges displayed in order to see through to the background bitmap which helps to know where the drawn borders are. This picture displays the actual gauge bitmaps with rectangular borders added (also optional).
The lower bar
displays information regarding the size of the original bitmap and the
name of the gauge selected, showing its x, y, position and
width values. The screen resolution can be at 800x600
even though the panel's bitmap is drawn for 1024x768 resolution without
the need to re-size your screen. No need to switch screen resolutions every
time you want to view a different sized panel, and every bit of the panel
is visible, no bottom cutoffs, etc.. as suffered by some other applications
of this sort. These and other details are well explained in an accompanying
help executable.
You can display the other windows
and insert new ones (up to 10 if needed to compose a full panel). When
beginning a new window, you can give it its assignments right away on this
display (shown at the left),
where you enter its name as it will appear in FS98's "view instrument panel"
option, window size, visibility, panel ID number and its position. What
I like about this last one is that the available positions are spatially
diagrammed for you, details I always tended to forget.
You can create a new panel in an already existing aircraft, by selecting
which aircraft you want to work with from your FS98 directory list
(see example to the right)
and the Panel Designer will create a new panel subfolder in the same aircraft
folder and edit the aircraft.cfg, naming the new version as you chose to
(see example to the left).
This adds a new aircraft to your list, essentially. Once you have your background
bitmap selected (you could create your own using the paint software you
are using), you can begin editing gauge entries.
The position in the gauge list
when selecting a new gauge is saved such that upon returning to the gauge list,
the green stripe-select is at the same place, and you do not have to scroll
all the way back again looking for the next entry (great when adding eng-1,
eng-2, eng-3 etc... sequentially). Note the extra box with a "Display
gauge bitmaps" slide bar. This allows you to view every available bitmap
in the gauge file, such as needles and background. This is very useful
when deciding which gauge you actually want to select for insertion into
the panel. In this example, the brake picture shown is not seen on the
primary bitmap using some other applications. This makes decision making
simpler as I do not have to go back and forth to FS98 and reload the panel
again and again just to view the full gauge. You can display a ruler to
guide your precise "drag and drop" movements, aided further by the use
of arrow keys for minute accurate adjustments of positions. Removing gauges
is made simple and
quick using the toolbar. The kit comes
with 9 quality gauges that you can add to you FS98 Gauges subfolder, one
of which is shown here:
When you are satisfied with your panel,
you can adjust the color palette to suit the selected background bitmap.
An onboard application
shown to the left with a progress bar just at its beginning, searches for the
best color assignments and adjusts your panel.cfg accordingly.
You can adjust the default settings
which positions the outside view window
shown to the right with a new view sized totally out of shape just to show you
how you can manipulate its position to your needs.
Note that most boxes have a handy help button, instantly directing you to the precise help page most suited for the function you are working on. Possible copyright issues are pointed out for each modification to existing panels in these help files.
Overall, I like this application for its speed, ease of use, and its full coverage of all aspects of panel modification/design. I now use it all the time.