One of the things that irritated me most in the latest version of FS2002 is a minor glitch, I must admit, although it is an issue many flightsimmers had and perhaps still have when using the default GPS in FS2002. The quirk I mean is that the default GPS frame (gps.gau) does not adapt to the night coloring of the cockpit panel window. This is obviously an old FS2000 carryover flaw as we had exactly the same trouble there in that previous version of MSFS, as stated in an earlier review. I guess even a year after the release of FS2002 not all flightsimmers know that there is a solution to this problem, probably because most of us can hardly deal with flightsimming all day and all of the night. And, what is more, I was told lately that there are newcomers from time to time, too, right? Until a few weeks ago I myself haven't had the slightest idea that there is an easy trick or work-around to this display bug.

And that's what the default GPS looks like without bugfix, both at day and at night:

However, having been bothered by this nagging visual bug for almost one year, I decided to do something about it to stop this annoying aspect of the GPS. Heck, it's not a thing I myself found out. All the credit goes to someone else, a guy that most of us know from the Internet, and who has given us lots of pleasure in the past. You'll see. Wandering through the Search File List of FlightSim.Com, I came across an old file by which we could add a pink color to FS98 gauges that did not adapt to the night coloring of the main panel in FS2000 at all. Needless to say that it would no longer be possible to modify FS2002 gauges by this wonderful but outdated tool (to be honest I tried to use it anyway, you never know). So I wrote a first email to, guess who, Chuck Dome of course, and he was so kind to answer it in next to no time. And here is his solution. Nice one, Chuck. So, follow him and all you have to do is:

The default GPS gauge can be modified for night lighting if you are familiar with hex editing. In the original GPS.GAU file, the byte at address 76F0 is 04. Changing it to 00 will prevent the background BMP from lighting at night.

Note: It shouldn't hurt your computer but, if you imagine it has, we accept no liability. This goes for all modifications of the hex code that have been made with the default gps.gau file.

And here's a screen shot of the hex editor at the address that must be changed:

If this works fine, more modifications should be possible. So if you also want to add night coloring to the buttons, you will have to change the byte 04 to 00 at the following addresses too:

07430 (for the MODE button); 07490 (for the -D- button), 074F0 (for the MENU button), 075B0 (for the ENTER button), and 07610 (for the CANCEL button).

I did not make any changes for the ARROW buttons as I found they should be somehow highlighted at night time. But this is my personal opinion only, and whether you agree to this or not largely depends on your mind-set.

For those of you who even want to night light the ARROW buttons, this is where to make the change: the byte at address 07550 is 05. Changing it to 01 will yield the desired result:

That's all there is to it! If I can do it, so can you. But if for any bizarre reason you might choose to "go back", you should back up the original gps.gau file safely first. Then I started FS and toggled on the default GPS.

Wow, wow, and triple wow! It really cut the mustard and I was gob-smacked by the instant effect of the above change. With lots of things which can be downloaded in the internet but don't always work in the end, there is someone who really knows how to kick the odd one out and solve the problem. It was one of the shortest emails I ever got, but with the best possible result you could expect (no wonder though if you know Chuck).

Admittedly there is still one thing that does not fully please me. For example, clicking on the MODE button opens other information displays: the waypoint info display or the route info display. The bright, white background for the font should adapt to night time in some way or other. I don't see that this should be so difficult to do for insiders, right?

Now look, this is what the default GPS looks like at dusk or at night now, with its daylight color no longer standing out like a sore thumb within a night-colored cockpit:
 

It wouldn't do justice to the whole thing if I did not mention another friendly guy who, a little bit later though, gave me the same advice to fix the bug but also gave Chuck all the credit for it: Ike H. Slack whose wonderful Honeywell GPS gauge (downloadable here) I strongly recommend for use in the Learjet first of all, but it also fits perfectly in the B737-400 main cockpit panel as revealed in the following screen shots of the Learjet and B737 main cockpit panel windows. Thanks to the enhanced possibilities of adjusting FS2002 panels and their cfg files it was relatively easy to place the GPS windows at exactly the desired positions:

There! I feel a bit better now using the default GPS at dusk or at night, or in the early morning. But my gosh, morning has broken, really and outside, not virtually in FS. I guess nights are an excellent time for writing. At least that doesn't make any beeps or sounds of engines spooling up because there's nothing worse than waking up my wife with a booming outer marker on an early morning approach at a time when she no longer sleeps like the dead!

Work-arounds for several bugs or problems can be found in the FS2002 Forum FAQ kindly compiled by Andrew Herd. Perhaps I may suggest, Andrew, you take this one up in your list, too, will you?

I really wonder whether we will have this bug in FS2004 again. In that case it would have survived three versions of FS, a record in itself I should say. Well, we'll see. It's but a year to go, but the wait will be painful.

Happy Flying
Ulrich Klein
huki.klein@t-online.de