Tuomas:"it wouldnt be THAT hard to do an openGL system..."The primary advantage of OpenGL is the way it handles 3D effects. For an instrument panel, you just don't need it. Instrument panels can be programmed far more easily using regular 2D graphics, and then run on a very down-market client computer. My FSPanel and FSEicas applications run perfectly happily on a 486 laptop since they're just 2D.This is the FSPanel application running....http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/101635.gifAnd this is the FSEicas one.....http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/101636.jpgRichard

It can not run on a remote computer no.That's not a concern to me.I intend to use wideview in the future and have 2x FS running. 1 for the outside views (parhelia) and 1 for the gauges + interfaces etc.Only downside I see at the moment is that if I run the gauge panel from Espens EFIS into fullscreen mode the gauge goos strange. Fonts get way to big and cover other lines etc etc.

>The primary advantage of OpenGL is the way it handles 3D>effects. For an instrument panel, you just don't need it.>Instrument panels can be programmed far more easily using>regular 2D graphics, and then run on a very down-market client>computer. Yes, I know. But openGL does 2D too - but you are right, it is not strictly needed.What I had in mind was something like SDL (http://www.libsdl.org) that can do antialiased stuff - your displays look very nice but they would look even nicer when antialiased. Plus, the problem also FS has: one-pixel units of movement is not really enough for smooth gauges, especially on the artificial horizon, this can be seen very clearly on the default planes on FS. RealityXP, Magenta and many add-on planes solve this by their own GDI+ gauges (GDI+ is the new programming API for graphics on windows as far as I know) - basically you can move stuff by a fraction of a pixel and the graphics uses antialiasing to smoothen it so you can actually see a very small motion. This is important in making small corrections in IFR procedures.Now, I am not sure if SDL can do this either, but it would be good to see. SDL has the advantage that it is portable, so one wouldnt need a windows license for each computer.. :) That's why I also wondered if IOCARDS has their own interfacing API over network that can work without WIDEFS - not that I have something against Pete Dowson's work, but AFAIK it only works on windows.. And I have zero desire to have any more windows machines in house than is absolutely necessary to get FS working :) The ideal thing would be a bootable "live CD" of Linux that just boots into an instrument panel so you could stick it to any PC and would just have a menu with an ip address of the FS main machine.. So you could use any PC you have around without installing anything on it - just when you want to fly, stick in the CD, reboot it and it serves as your gauges.. :)//Tuomas