Hi Matt,Seems that everyone is so concerned in getting a superbright type of panel, when in actuality, when the cockpit is in a state of semi-darkness, you really don't need that bright of a panel. Comparing a real lightpanel, and the use of #6832 incandescent bulbs, which put out about .150 MSCP each, I don't believe that they are as bright as your 3700 MCD LED's although there is no comparison between MCD's and MSCP's.Perhaps if we could place a panel with LED's next to a panel lit by an EL lamp we could check the output with a light meter. I would be concerned with panels that were emitting too much light as being a bit distracting. I guess it all comes down to personal preference too.My own feeling is that I wouldn't want to diminish the view out the window by panels that are too overpowering just as long as they were readable.Ken

Ken has a point here: when flying at night you dont want everything be bright, rather you need to let your eyes adjust to the darkness and then have the panels just bright enough to be readable, but nothing more or you risk spoiling your night vision.It takes about 30 minutes to really adjust, so dont just switch off the lights and see how it looks. That is a wrong approach and you end up making them too bright.When flying at night one needs to dim the lights so they dont distract you from seeing outside, where it's *really* dark.Tuomas

I agree, what you should be looking for is more of a glow than a strong brilliant text shining out at you, just have a look at a car dashboard, in the day time you can only just see the glow of the instrument panel, & at night it should be soft to look at so as when re-focussing from your panel to the outside view your eyes do not have to re-adjust too much, White is not a good colour for this effect as your eyeris is very sensitive to white light, that is why we see on many dash colours like orange/yellow or green & blue, even street lights & car fog lamps are commonly orange/yellow for this exact reason.I think a dimmer is essential as different people will feel comfortable at different intensity levels.I recently experimented with some translucent plexi glass & a negative with some text written on it, backlit with a reddy/orange 12V Cold Cathode Flouro, the result was a lovely glow, the cost of a CCF lamp is about $20.00 here in australia, these are the lamps used in lighting up computer cases, also available in green,red, blue & white.My Plan is to have CCF lamp in behind the panel of coarse, then the white plexi which diffusses the light evenly, then a properly produced negative (not a laser print it's not black enough)& then the clear plexi at the front, this will protect the negative from damage, the switches will hold it all together or a few nuts & bolts.This also makes it easy to change the backlight colour at any time if you so wish.However you have done a great job on your panel & I don't want to take that away from you, it looks awesome, keep up the great work!Cheers Glenn.

I agree, high intensity light is not crucial. For me it just gave me more control. If I get too much light... all I have to do is turn it down, better then not having enough. I'm sure there are better and cheaper ways of doing this, thats what makes this FORUM so wonderfull, to share our experiences and to learn from each other. I thank everyone for their input.

Hi Matt & all,Don't get me wrong about your use of the LED's...it's a unique choice and I did look at that solution, but for now I'm considering the EL lamps which by the way are also dimmable by using a pot.I too commend you on your panel results.... I am pressing ahead though on using white and yellow LED's for my Korry switch dupes, which work quite nicely.Regards,Ken

Lovely work MattRegarding "hotspots", have you tried putting a small piece of aluminium (or aluminum for our American friends!) foil into your drilled hole before you place your LED into it. It stops bright spots, and diffuses the light the LED emits even more....Works well for me.Cheers

Hey Mondriver,Can you please drop me an email at [email protected]? I would like to discuss this with you further.Thanks - Mitch

Hey Mitch!Been following your stuff with interest since I have sorta king air - piper archer - some light twin -setup in my mind and under construction and such. It's been a C172 sim for a while now and I am upgrading the panel to a TFT screen finally. It used to be a CRT display but the curvature was annoying plus it was slightly small (15 inch).Anyway, I also built a base and I decided to put it on wheels. I can recommend that if you have that possibility - makes it easier to move the sim around if needed etc. Get those wheels that have a "parking brake" pedal which locks the wheels so the thing wont be rolling around your room :) You of course need to plan the construction so that it can stand the weight etc, so it needs to be given some additional thought. But my setup is worth it. I can now use the normal main computer for flying - I just move my desk chair away and push the sim on front of the 21" screen on my desk, and hop on. I'll add a fresnel at some point, but currently there's so much to do still so it doesnt make sense yet.This is the idea:http://tigert.gimp.org/vatsim/cockpit-stuf...i-tyopoyta.jpegHere's a photo of the base, mine is 70 cm wide and 1.4 meters long. Fits just in my room..http://tigert.gimp.org/vatsim/cockpit-stuf...king-shape.jpegThe panel is the old Cessna thingy that I have had for a while now. Luckily the LCD fits on the "hole", I just need to cut it about 5mm wider. I'm happy that I didnt have to redo the panel part since I am pretty happy with it, it turned out very nice. But that will later house twin throttles and some additional gizmos .. you know what I mean. These never get "finished" :)Tuomas

Tuomas,I agree 100%... my previous panel base was on wheels and it's really nice to do that if you can. Unfortunately my present incarnation is pretty big (and HEAVY) so I'm not sure what my options are. Check out my latest updates on the build at www.mmorrell.com/base.html .Are you using the IFR instruments from Project Magenta on your panel? If not, spend the $49.00... they are awesome!-Mitch

>Tuomas,>>I agree 100%... my previous panel base was on wheels and it's>really nice to do that if you can. Unfortunately my present>incarnation is pretty big (and HEAVY) so I'm not sure what my>options are. Check out my latest updates on the build at>www.mmorrell.com/base.html .Yea. I agree. You'd need a dozen wheels under it, plus the whole base would be needed a lot more strength. For a "single pilot" setup the wheels are a good idea though.>Are you using the IFR instruments from Project Magenta on your>panel? If not, spend the $49.00... they are awesome!I currently use a custom panel. I might do the Magenta stuff but there are two issues with them:

  * OpenGL = Again, no fun with one computer & two video cards. Needs	two computers where one shows the scenery and the other runs Magenta	IFR panel.  * Only a fixed layout of gauges. Although yea, most planes have the 	basic instruments in the same layout - but it's hard to add extra	stuff without adding yet another screen. Also at least in the demo	I couldnt move the gauges individually. That would help a bit.

The gauges move incredibly nice I must say. It's mostly an issue with the attitude indicator though - most other gauges are pretty OK enough. I have been thinking of doing some XML gauge experiments myself and seeing if it could be possible to workaround the attitude indicator jumpiness (it's not about update FPS, it's more about the bitmap size and moving the elements by one *texture* pixel at a time - so if you have a very low resolution gauge, it moves very rough if you scale it big. Maybe a super high resolution gauge would move more smooth if it was just scaled very small, say, 25% of the bitmap size. Then the *bitmap* pixels would be 1/4 of the screen pixels. I havent tried it yet, so I dont know. But I know you can adjust gauge update frequency in the XML code.

Hmmm... I'm surprised to hear that, as I saw them at the AVSIM show and they were all smooth as silk. I know that the guages can all be moved and positioned independantly. I don't think they can be sized individually however. I will probably end up using these guages for the copilots panel on the King Air... you can select which guages to display and not have the "panel" display at all - just the guages. I'm going to use just 7 instruments - ADI, HSI, VOR1, Compass, VS, ALT, ADF.-mm

>Hmmm... I'm surprised to hear that, as I saw them at the>AVSIM show and they were all smooth as silk. I know that the>guages can all be moved and positioned independantly. I don't>think they can be sized individually however. I will probably>end up using these guages for the copilots panel on the King>Air... you can select which guages to display and not have the>"panel" display at all - just the guages. I'm going to use>just 7 instruments - ADI, HSI, VOR1, Compass, VS, ALT, ADF.>>-mmOH crap, reading my own reply now and I noticed I make zero sense there :) I was talking of two things at once. So, FS conventional gauges are jumpy, we all know that. So what I meant is that the problem is mostly wiht the attitude indicator though - most other gauges are pretty OK.Definitely the Magenta IFR panel is very smooth all over. But the problem with that is that you need a second computer, or a dualhead DirectX9 videocard I think to use it on the same one. Since it is hardware accelerated, one cannot run it on a second screen attached to an old PCI videocard like I can with normal FS gauges.Interesting to know that you can customize the panel though - the demo doesnt seem to allow that atleast.Tuomas

>Definitely the Magenta IFR panel is very smooth all over. I downloaded the PM GA demo a while ago, and my first objection was that it didn't seem that smooth at all - in fact, it kept changing size on me for no apparent reason. I gave up on trying to figure out why.>the problem with that is that you need a second computer, or a>dualhead DirectX9 videocard I think to use it on the same one.>Since it is hardware accelerated, one cannot run it on a>second screen attached to an old PCI videocard like I can with>normal FS gauges. That was my second objection - Why on earth did a flat instrument panel get written in a way that needs a 3D driver to run it??? I - and I'm sure many other people - have a couple of older Pentium laptops sitting around that would make perfect GA instrument panels in a Project Majenta type network setup if it wasn't written in such a way as to need pretty modern hardware just to display a panel. I have a GA full screen panel now that was written for me by Doug Dawson from over on the panel design forum here, and it displays just fine on a 16MB PCI card on the same computer that MSFS runs on.

Just my Two Cents worth..... I'm using the GAIFR gauges from Project Magenta on my C172 Desktop. I'm extremly pleased with the performance and the look. Mitch if you remember, we were at the AVSIM show and saw the display, we both thought at first glance they were real instruments. I'm impressed.

>Just my Two Cents worth..... I'm using the GAIFR gauges from>Project Magenta on my C172 Desktop. I'm extremly pleased with>the performance and the look. Mitch if you remember, we were>at the AVSIM show and saw the display, we both thought at>first glance they were real instruments. I'm impressed.Just for the record: what hardware? Single computer, dual monitors? One for Magenta, one for "outside view"?What videocards drive which? Is the card a dualhead AGP card that does both? This might be a key question with all these performance things.Conventional FS gauges work great on cheap pci videocards and extra monitors, but the artificial horizon in FS200X is just too jumpy.. it really distracts.Tuomas