Re: panels?

[stanv]

Hi all,

Just got CFS today at an EB in New Jersey and it works fine on a 233mhz with a
12 meg VooDoo2. I have a question about the panels if someone could help...
I tried putting the CFS P-47 panel in FS98. The .bmp shows up, but there are
no gauges, even though I copied the p47d.gau file to FS98. Also, is there no
way to change seasons, or to fly at night? I only see dawn day and dusk. It
would be nice to have some snow covered alps in Switzerland. Anyway CFS is
definitely worth the 39.99 I spent on it. Good luck to those of you who got a
bad cd.

Joe

Joe,

Haven't tried this yet but am interested in the process. You mentioned copying
the (single) P47d GAU file into your FS98 gauges directory - what did you do
about the corresponding "gaugexx=..." records in the FS98 panel.cfg file? I
noticed that in CFS there is still an individual gauge record in the panel.cfg
file for each gauge in the panel even though the one CFS GAU file obviously
includes all of the gauge logic and bitmaps.

Stan V.

[joestevens]

Hi all,

Just got CFS today at an EB in New Jersey and it works fine on a 233mhz with a
12 meg VooDoo2. I have a question about the panels if someone could help...
I tried putting the CFS P-47 panel in FS98. The .bmp shows up, but there are
no gauges, even though I copied the p47d.gau file to FS98. Also, is there no
way to change seasons, or to fly at night? I only see dawn day and dusk. It
would be nice to have some snow covered alps in Switzerland. Anyway CFS is
definitely worth the 39.99 I spent on it. Good luck to those of you who got a
bad cd.

Joe

Joe,

Haven't tried this yet but am interested in the process. You mentioned copying


the (single) P47d GAU file into your FS98 gauges directory - what did you do
about the corresponding "gaugexx=..." records in the FS98 panel.cfg file? I


noticed that in CFS there is still an individual gauge record in the panel.cfg
file for each gauge in the panel even though the one CFS GAU file obviously
includes all of the gauge logic and bitmaps.

Stan V.

Stan,

The P47d.gau file is definitely compressed, I have no idea why, or if there is
anything that can be done about that. Also the line in the fs98 panel.cfg
reads gauge00=cors.gear, 154, 479, 36 (from F4U panel)but in CFS it has an
exclamation point instead of a period such as gauge00=p47d!Airspeed,211,331
I'm no panel designer, maybe somone else knows a way to deal with this. I'm
going to try to make a panel.cfg file for the p47d bmp (could take a while) by
assigning fs98 gauges to the blank spots in the picture.

Joe

[stanv]

Hi all,

Just got CFS today at an EB in New Jersey and it works fine on a 233mhz with a
12 meg VooDoo2. I have a question about the panels if someone could help...
I tried putting the CFS P-47 panel in FS98. The .bmp shows up, but there are
no gauges, even though I copied the p47d.gau file to FS98. Also, is there no
way to change seasons, or to fly at night? I only see dawn day and dusk. It
would be nice to have some snow covered alps in Switzerland. Anyway CFS is
definitely worth the 39.99 I spent on it. Good luck to those of you who got a
bad cd.

Joe

Joe,

Haven't tried this yet but am interested in the process. You mentioned copying




the (single) P47d GAU file into your FS98 gauges directory - what did you do
about the corresponding "gaugexx=..." records in the FS98 panel.cfg file? I




noticed that in CFS there is still an individual gauge record in the panel.cfg
file for each gauge in the panel even though the one CFS GAU file obviously
includes all of the gauge logic and bitmaps.

Stan V.

Stan,

The P47d.gau file is definitely compressed, I have no idea why, or if there is
anything that can be done about that. Also the line in the fs98 panel.cfg
reads gauge00=cors.gear, 154, 479, 36 (from F4U panel)but in CFS it has an
exclamation point instead of a period such as gauge00=p47d!Airspeed,211,331
I'm no panel designer, maybe somone else knows a way to deal with this. I'm
going to try to make a panel.cfg file for the p47d bmp (could take a while) by
assigning fs98 gauges to the blank spots in the picture.

Joe

Joe,

Did you try using the exact same "gaugexx=" statements in FS98 as was in CFS,
e.g., "gauge00=p47d!Airspeed, 211, 331"? In other words, did you try simply
copying the panel directory directly from the CFS P47 airplane directory into
an FS98 P47 directory (in addition to copying the p47d.gau file to the FS98
gauges directory)? I wouldn't have expected "gauge00=cors.gear, etc" to work
with a p47d.gau gauge filename - the names need to match in some way. It looks
like the part of the gauge name preceding the "!" refers to the name of the
gauge file whereas the second part refers to a specific gauge subfile inside
it. Maybe the "!" symbol signifies a compressed or a combined gauge file.
(I'm really just guessing but it sounds logical to me.)

Stan V.

[stanv]

Stan,

The P47d.gau file is definitely compressed, I have no idea why, or if there is
anything that can be done about that. Also the line in the fs98 panel.cfg
reads gauge00=cors.gear, 154, 479, 36 (from F4U panel)but in CFS it has an
exclamation point instead of a period such as gauge00=p47d!Airspeed,211,331
I'm no panel designer, maybe somone else knows a way to deal with this. I'm
going to try to make a panel.cfg file for the p47d bmp (could take a while) by
assigning fs98 gauges to the blank spots in the picture.

Joe

Joe,

You are definitely correct - sorry it took me so long for me to realize that <sheepish grin>.
I followed your path last night and got stuck exactly where you did. I have
diddled some with panels and their components in the past but that experience
was of no use here. I am willing to acknowledge that the CFS gauge files are
NOT backward compatible (although FS98 gauges can apparently be used in CFS).
BTW, as you suggested, one can use FS98 gauges to fill in the blanks. For me,
however, I haven't seen any FS98 gauges with the same authentic WW2 appearance
as those in CFS.

So... Where does that leave us. We can, of course use FS98 gauges in FS98.
That's obvious but the opposite of what you and I were trying to do. We do
have the CFS bitmap panel background and that's a plus. Also, I tried to
extract a gauge bitmap out of the P47d.gau file using a program designed for
FS98 thinking that perhaps I could at least get the appearance of CFS but like
FS98 itself, it was a no-go (another clue that the two gauge files are not
equivalent in structure).

There are a couple of other possibilities and I will dabble with them as I can
get time. First, we could try to figure out the new gau structure but that
might be a long, long process. I had another thought. Why not do a screen
capture of CFS, paste the results into a Windows Paint program, and generate
the bitmap files that way. One would have to be able to extract and manipulate
portions of BMP files but that should be straightforward. It's risky with
possible roadblocks but probably is doable. Then, one could use an FS98-era
gauge maniulation utility to insert the individual bitmaps into comparably
functioned FS98 gauge files. It might at least give something close.

I'll let you know if anything comes of it - it may be the weekend or early next
week before I get a chance to try.

Happy flying....

Stan V.