Panels in FSX Not showing up? shift+2 for radios Per say not showing up

Title explains most of it But I had fsx fine when i was in the default 737 with my friends rather then then the pmdg by myself I press Shift +3 for the gps and Nothing shows up it flashes a black screen where it would be If i know where its auto is Like in the corner for the gps I can drag it around and the white bar is around it Buttt in the inside Its clear i can see the cockpit the panel is inadvisable and it was fine 3 days ago!:mad:

The pmdg 737 and 777 have no gps. I don't know if shift + 3 is supposed to do something else.

Can someone translate this into something understandable? :confused:

Two possibilities here........

 

1. You assume that because you used Shjift +3 to open the GPS on the default B737 that it is the same for other Aircraft. Wrong, because any gauge or item can be assigned to this pop-up key sequence and there is no 'default assignment policy' that authors use/follow.

 

2. If the PMDG product does have something assigned to this key sequence, as it appears to have, then the reason why it is not displaying could be due to a missing .CAB file, a corrupted gauge located within the .CAB file or a missing gauge or texture file.

 

The first thing to do is to establish what is trying to be displayed when you press Shift

+3 when using the PMDG product So first go to the panel folder for the model and locate the panel.cfg file. Open the file in notepad. At the very top will normally be a list of pop-up assignments - under a section called [Window Titles] - the entries will look something like this example:

 

[Window Titles]

Window00=Main Panel

Window01=Autopilot

Window02=GPS

Window03=MfdR

 

In the case of the example pressing Shift + 3 would bring up the GPS as the numbers are out of sequence - 00 equals Shift + 1, 01 equals Shift +2 and so on.

 

Once you have established what Shift + 3 is trying to open you need to scroll down to the relevant window' information statements. These are listed as [WindowXX] entries whereby the XX represents the corresponding number listed in the section highlighted above - in the case of the example above that would be [Window02] - an example entry should look like this:

 

[Window02]

Background_color=0,0,0

size_mm=456,378

window_size_ratio=1.000

position=8

visible=0

ident=GPS_PANEL

window_size= 0.500, 0.500

window_pos= 0.000, 0.000

 

gauge00=fs9gps!gps_500, 0,0,456,378

 

Note the very important bit is the gauge00= entry - this indicates the filename of the .CAB file that contains the gauge (this is the portion of the entry which appears immediately after the = sign and before the ! mark) and the individual gauge file within the .CAB to be displayed (this is the portion of the entry which appears immediately after the ! mark) - in the example it is fs9gps.CAB file and GPS 500 gauge. Note that larger panels will have multiple gauges listed.

 

Once you have established the name of the .CAB file you need to see if the file is installed and, more importantly, in the right location. For a default FSX gauge it will be in the Gauges folder located in the root directory of FSX. For many 3rd party addons that have their own specific modeled gauges it will usually be within the panel folder located within the main model folder OR sometimes in a dedicated folder located within the default FSX Gauges folder.

 

If the .CAB file is missing check the Recycle bin to see if it is still there and restore it back.

 

If the .CAB is there then it may be corrupted so the only solution is probably to re-install the product. You could also try copying the .CAB from the install media to a temp location and then copying it the required location. Note that it is usual for .CAB files to be 'compacted/zipped' to reduce their size so copying from the install media may mean extracting/expanding it using winzip/7-zip - ensure that you extract the .CAB file itself and not the contents of the file - you should end up with a file ending with a .CAB extension and not a load of files ending in extensions such as .bmp, .gau and .xml...........