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The Flight Simulator "2D" Panel By Klee C. Dobra Many of today's developers seem to be avoiding the traditional 2D panel in favor of increasingly elaborate 3D virtual panels. Technology has made it possible for those of us with the latest high-end hardware to easily look around, to locate knobs, switches and gadgets (GPS), all of which require adjustment in one way or the other. While improvements in simulation technology, for the most part, are a good thing, there are many who (for whatever reason) are unable to benefit from these advancements. As technology races forward, more and more of these simmers are either left behind, forced to adjust, or to upgrade and advance with it. I choose to adjust wherever possible, upgrading only when absolutely necessary. One example of where such an adjustment has become necessary is with the decline of the familiar 2D panel, once the de facto way to view your instruments. More and more aircraft models, both freeware and payware are produced without a 2D panel altogether. Sometimes, if one is included, it defaults to a panel not associated with that particular aircraft. Now I don't know about you, but a Beech Baron 2D panel in a Piper Navajo just doesn't seem right! The solution? Create your own 2D panel for the airplane. This was something I had to do a while back whilst reviewing an aircraft from Carenado. It was a long and tedious process, but a week after purchasing the aircraft, I had a working 2D panel that was easy to read, integrated seamlessly with the virtual cockpit, and looked like it was part of the original package. Shown below is the resulting 2D panel, plus the virtual panel that shipped with the product. 2D Panel Virtual Panel As a pilot, I was a stickler for detail; everything had to be just right, everything in its place, and everything just so. I find that I'm somewhat the same about my flight simulator. I want an airplane to perform as the manufacturer intended, not at an arbitrary point where a software developer felt comfortable enough to release his product. Consequently, I am constantly tweaking various files in my search for the ultimate in realism. Don't get me wrong; I sincerely appreciate the work of developers, especially those who develop freeware, as they are the very backbone and lifeblood of the sim. They do an incredible job for all of us, and receive very little appreciation along the way! I commend them every chance I get, but I also realize that in addition to developing enjoyable freeware, they all have lives beyond creating airplanes for FS2004 and FSX. I have never had a developer upset with me for refining his work for my own enjoyment. In fact, a few have asked me how I did what I did to correct their plane's flight characteristics. To many an airplane modeller, a panel is something that needs to be there to hold dials and gauges so the thing will fly; to others it is as basic to an aircraft as its wing design, or fuselage shape. Some planes, especially payware, come with precise representations of the actual airplane's panel, while many others come with less than stellar examples of the real thing, or even borrow the panel of a default aircraft of the same general type. This is not good enough for me; I have to have an Arrow II panel in an Arrow II, a Baron B55 panel in a B55, a Cessna 404 panel in a C-404, and so on. Sometimes the only way to achieve that is to do it yourself. It's not that difficult once you have done it a couple of times. Here then are the basics of how I do it, along with some examples of various 2D panels that I have previously made. After the first two or three panels, the process becomes almost second nature. The first panel I ever created was for an Ercoupe 415C that I had repainted to closely approximate my own airplane, N99462. The panel that came with that freeware product, while adequate, looked nothing like the one I had flown with for so many years and so I began the process of 'modifying', almost without knowing I was doing so. I searched the web for a better "panel.bmp" file that I could use as a basis for a 'new effort' since I was not artistic enough to create one myself. That original Ercoupe panel went through probably a dozen iterations before I had created one that satisfied my sense of what an Ercoupe panel should look like, given the fact that I couldn't (or at least didn't think I could) create the perfect background... that would come later, much later. Here is what it should look like... Ercoupe Layout This was my first panel BMP file. Crude and not very well done, but notice the nose tank gas gauge. First Panel BMP After several years of "off and on" work, the result is the panel shown below. As you can see, it closely mimics the panel in my Ercoupe N99462. I've used it for many years and love it, but it all started in FS2000! Finished Panel Here is the process, at least, of how I do it. Creating a 2D panel can be achieved quickly, if you are lucky, or it can be a long and tedious process. First on your list are the gauges your project requires. I have a folder on my computer that includes every gauge that has ever found its way onto any of my machines (I collect gauge files)! My gauges go way back, so far that some won't even load up anymore, yet I save them... you never know. An inventory of gauges is a must because manifold pressure gauges are never equal; as we will soon see, they are all different. If you want to recreate a panel, you need to know what the original airplane panel looks like and how its gauges function. That, after all, is what you're trying to duplicate. In the case of the previously mentioned Seneca II panel, it took many hours of trial and error. This involved searching and testing each gauge so as to find the ones that worked properly in the Carenado Seneca. Finding them was tough, but not impossible. I had to try several M.P. gauges before I found one that responded in the same fashion as the gauge Carenado had used. Prior to this, the gauges I had tried had red lined in the same place, but their performance was different to the original! A duplicate for each gauge in the Carenado virtual panel had to be found, tested, and inserted, which is itself, a time consuming process. I started by trying to use the actual Carenado gauges by assigning them to the appropriate location on the 2D BMP file, but the Carenado gauges were too dark and too hard to read. For the Seneca panel.bmp file, I took a screen shot of the Seneca's panel and zoomed to where I wanted it. I opened the screen shot in an old freeware program that used to come bundled with early Windows machines called Adobe PhotoDeluxe (v4.0). I have used this program without issues, even though it has not been supported for over twenty years. Allegedly it's not supposed to work on modern machines! In PhotoDeluxe, I brightened the colors (something I could not do with the Carenado gauges) and altered the basic plan so gauges could be properly placed and still be large enough to be seen and read. A 2D panel has to place all elements on the screen at once, there is no up, down, or side-to-side. So obviously a degree of artistic license must be exercised in design. Once satisfied, I created a folder on the desktop and named it "Seneca 2D". I then exported the new "Seneca.panel.BMP" to the folder. We'll use this as our example going forward, but the steps involved are the same no matter what the aircraft. Now you need a "panel" file to go with it. Any panel file will do, just copy one from a similar plane and drop it into the new folder. Now, inside the "Seneca 2D" folder you should have the "panel.bmp" file and a "panel" file. Excited? Good! You are on your way. Next step? Open the panel in a panel editor. Remember the claim that PhotoDeluxe was extinct and would no longer perform on modern machines? The same can be said for the panel editor program I use to place gauges into the bmp file. You could spend money and buy a program for this purpose, and if your chosen vocation was that of a panel maker, that would be a wise thing to do. However, there is a very good WISIWYG program that was created for FS98 called "CFGEDIT' which contrary to common belief, works quite well in everything up to and including FSX and Windows XP, service pack III. It really is a wonderful program and highly recommended. It is alleged not to work with newer versions of MSFS, but I've used it successfully through FS2K, FS2002, FS2004, and even FSX. It works, but you have to exercise patience with it, learn its quirks, and even coddle it along on occasion. Still, it is a valuable tool and the price warrants its exploration. It's freeware and can still be found on various flight sim sites including FlightSim.Com (Download CFGEDIT.EXE). CFGEDIT Layout Open your new file in CFGEDIT. Don't worry, the mess of gauges you see is quite normal. Use CFGEDIT to discard all the gauges that you know you will not use. Once that is done, move those retained to the approximate position where they will live in the new panel. After that is completed, make a list of those gauges that are missing and use CFGEDIT to find and place them. So, now you have the basics. You need a BMP file editor as a starting point, a program like Photoshop or GIMP (freeware), and CFGEDIT (or its payware equivalent), and a willingness to explore! Remember, you won't run into any issues as long as you create backup files of everything you intend to change. If you want a new panel for your Cessna, step one is to copy and back-up the existing panel file. Name it something like panel.ORIG (use caps for the extension, they are easier to see). Now dig in! Here are some panels I have made for my own, personal enjoyment. I typically do not zip them up and post them because many have gauges from (now) unknown sources; I do not want to find myself in a copyright issue, but created for personal use, it's perfectly legitimate and completely legal. The panels below belong to the Cessna 402C and C404 Titan. They are quite similar because in reality they are... believe it or not...quite similar. Cessna 402C Cessna 404 Titan One last example... I'd always wanted a Baron B55 for my hangar, but unfortunately there wasn't one for FS2004. The solution was to find a good AI version of the B55 and convert it to flyable status. In order to complete the conversion, a panel was required. I went to the internet and searched for Baron B55 panels, copied a couple and printed them to use as templates for the one which was to be created. A quick note on this: be sure to choose examples that are large enough so the gauges can be distinguished and their positioning can be determined. If you are lucky, there will be one large enough so that you can take it right into PhotoDeluxe (or similar) and convert it into the BMP file that you need. Here is my "down and dirty" B55 panel required to make the B55 fly in FS2004, which is now a favorite! Baron B55 Panel Simulated flight becomes ever so much more enjoyable when you are flying an airplane with a panel you have made or a fuselage you have painted yourself. You have a deeper knowledge of the panel, and hence the airplane. There's no last minute searching for this switch, or that knob. You know exactly where things are. It's more like the real thing.