For me, it's whether or not that #### center windshield post is sitting completely vertical. Call it being a bit too picky, but the total vertical center post thing makes it seem like your sitting in the center of the cockpit and/or the plane is crabbing down the runway. I've seen otherwise beautiful panels that I would love to have but I just can't get past the completely vertical post thing. Everyone understands that, if you're sitting in the left or right hand seat, you would be viewing the center post at an angle and it would angle inward at the bottom....right? Am I off base here? Don't get me wrong, I appreciate all the freeware work that is made available and hate to bash...this just seems like a simple thing that would make a big difference.

Agree 100 percent. I like to have a sense of perspective (the illusion of depth) even though it's only a 2D cockpit. Finding these kinds of panels, though, is not too easy.John

If it's 2D, VC's all the way!!!

Using a good photo editor like Photoshop Elements or GIMP (freeware) you can always go to the correct .bmp in the Panel folder and delete the post, or move it/angle it to your liking. If the panel is otherwise outstanding it would be a shame to disqualify it just because the .bmp mask is bad.

Yes the center post does play strongly on illusion I agree totally. Funny how such a boring thing like a post affects a 2D panel! However like Chuck mentioned - it takes just minutes to fix using a graphics program (the free paint.net, or GIMP for example) to fix it. I just use MS Paint even. :)

Good tip about re-orienting the post in an editing program. I actually tried that on a DC10 panle I have. It worked pretty good except I couldn't change the night lighting textures, which seem to be in a separate file of some sort. So, if I turn the night lighting on on the panel, there's this ghost image of the post in its original position transposed over the (newly-oriented) post.

Right. That's when I turn to my FSPanelStudio, and just move the day textures out of the way of the night textures, and do whatever mods I need to. FSPanelStudio is one of the biggest time savers I've ever invested in! I never fly VCs, and make my own mini-panels, so if you're in to modifying panels like I am, it's a god-send. You can even copy and paste gauges from one panel into another by just right clicking, copying and pasting, and it's WYSIWYG, so no more screwing around for hours with panel.cfg files.You can buy it from Flight1, which has a great return policy so there's no risk.<< http://www.flight1.com/products.asp?product=FSP-ESD-001 >>No, I don't work for them, or Flight1; I just wanted to let you know about a cheap time saver.

Hi,What disqualifies it for me is the lack of realistic zoom and parallax. However, these can be fixed for most panels:http://www.calclassic.com/sci_tutorial/index.htmlHope this helps,--Tom GibsonCal Classic Propliner Page: http://www.calclassic.comFreeflight Design Shop: http://www.freeflightdesign.comDrop by! ___x_x_(")_x_x___

I second FSPanelStudio, brilliant program and essential if you like tweaking or creating panels. I just created my own VC "mutli-panel" which is a small panel that sits on the bottom right that I call while in the VC. It has the default 737 autopilot, essential flight instruments and NAV-display (with GPS feed). Now I can just fly easily from the VC instead of panning around looking for buttons or calling up the main 2D panel.