New panel lighting

[vonmar 122]

M,Thanks for the information.I will not bother with it either.

[vololiberista 205]

Gaugeglow works fine for me! I can use the help file etc., The only thing I have to to do with the unregistered version is to make certain calculations manually and create and save files manually. As for panel studio, get it! You will be able to customise your panels exactly as you want. Pick gauges from other a/c. redraw bmp's etc etc. The list is very long. It "is" worth the money!vololiberista

[martinlest2 58]

Hi. Do you think you could post what you do with GaugeGlow to open up FS9 gauges (or, in my case, the main.bmp - as I just want to alter the night lighting of the PMDG 737NG backpanel, not any of the gauges): I don't see even how to get started, as the programme won't allow me to open anything from its interface in the unregistered version - it even says that the Help file is only available in the unregistered version - maybe you have an earlier or later version of the programme? Maybe a step-by-step (if and when you have time/inclination)??Thanks,Martin

[martinlest2 58]

I still find it really inconvenient that when the panel lights come on in the 737NGs (this is FS9 of course) everything goes black - I can't see anything, apart from what is lit up. Screenshots below. is there no easy way to change this without downloading other tools (I got nowhere before with that, as you can read above)? Thanks, Martin

[martinlest2 58]

If no one is going to answer here, fine, but how do I get a reply from PMDG themselves? Maybe I need to contact them directly for support? M.

[vololiberista 205]

Your best bet is FS Panel Studio. It has these options amongst many:-What you see here are the colours I chose for my VC10 night panel. Luminous refers to the gauges themselves. Whereas the night colour refers to the background panel colour which in your case you need to probably lighten.vololiberista

[ronzie 21]

In panel.cfg for each model instance you'll find: Day=255,255,255Night=117,88,36Luminous=255,255,255which are ordered in R,G,B intensities of these primary colors. Make a safe copy of panel.cfg if you want to edit these directly. Just add a small percentage of each primary color amount to the night entry such as ten percent yielding 129,97,40. You'll have to switch to another aircraft if keeping FS hot and then switching back to it in FGS to see your changes. I prefer also to use FS Panel Studio which lets you edit in a paint like preview mode seeing the effects without loading and reloading the aircraft into a running FS. Great for moving, sizing, inserting, and deleting gauges from your other sources. It saves all of the messing round I just described. It also couples with your image editing application to modify the background of your panel.

[martinlest2 58]

Thanks for the replies. I think I tried Panel Studio before - but seem to recall I had to buy it to save my changes (I don't think I would use it apart from this instance, so decided against it): I may be wrong, I'll check. Changing the color values works a treat - but only for less than a second. As I reload the 737 - excellent!, but the background switches itself back to its former black self almost instantly. Even if I close and restart FS9 the same happens. Any ideas why and how to make the colour change permanent? Thanks, M.

[vololiberista 205]

FS Panel Studio is worth the investment. It does pretty much everything for you. If you ever fancy making modifications to a panel it saves a huge amount of time and effort. What I've done over the last few months for the VC10 would have taken ages manually!vololiberista

[ronzie 21]

First, make sure you change the night values in each of the panel.cfgs used including separate VC and 2D cockpits for each model version. I suspect as happens with some other factors, when you start a created or saved flight for an instant the environment of default flight has a temporary affect. If your FS default flight is daytime, then you'll see a moments of daytime illumination, then whatever you have set up for your current flight. I notice that FS itself tends to compress blacks especially in night scenes. If this is happening in more than one aircraft, some monitor adjustments may be required. FS does take over some of these monitor adjustments applied in software via the DirectX interface. In particular the gamma (contrast curve ratio) appears to be lower. You can try adjusting things in your monitor. Try turning off automatic dynamic contrast. Don't use a game mode as often black is compressed to hide monitor lag. Try a higher brightness level during FS. Set it up on an FS night scene. On some uncorrected FS screen shots they will look dark and that is because of the lower gamma used. If you monitor has a menu for stored user settings set up an FS one. As an experient in the video driver I increased the gamma. As soon as I loaded a flight the appearance changed to a lower gamma even outside the window as I recalled.

[martinlest2 58]

Ron, I did change three panel.cfg files - the two in the 'VC' panel folder (which all my PMDG 737s use), that is to say Panel-PMDG.Cfg and Panel.Cfg, plus the Panel.Cfg in the folder just called 'panel'. It's not a monitor problem though - if I change the RGB values for night in all 3 panel.cfg files (same changes of course) and start FS - the changes are clear so long as I don't unpause the programme. The background is lighter - just as I want it. But as soon as I unpause FS the background goes back to the default black. Odd.. I have a demo version of FS Panel studio... so I gave it a try. It seems to me that for the lighting effects, the programme is just making the same changes as I make manually to the panel.cfg files - changing the colour values. The programme probably would be useful and I may get the full version, but first I need to see why my changes to the values aren't 'holding' when I unpause FS. The new RGB values I entered into the cfg files aren't changed of course, so why does the night background go back to black the second I unpause the sim? M

[ronzie 21]

The FS9 SDK on panels is very confusing in regards to illumination. I can't paste in the information due to copyright issues but here is a link to download it: Panels and Gauges: http://download.microsoft.com/download/a/2/6/a263954a-3649-4654-ab1b-0ee4e30d7261/panels_sdk_setup.exe In the word doc search out illumination and look at the panel/instrument samples in daylight, nighttime, and cabin light scenarios. BTW, on the ms download site Bing will not return anything useful on searching FS9 SDK. I found it by using Yahoo. It seems at least the site version is very selective on what results can be shown perhaps as to active products.

[martinlest2 58]

Thanks for that - I do have all the SDK setup files in my 'archive', but looks like I have never installed the panels one... Will do so immediately! M.

[martinlest2 58]

Searching for the word 'illumination' in the panels SDK.doc brings up zero results; same for 'nighttime'. Searching for 'lighting' or 'RGB' doesn't seem to come up with anything useful for this purpose, so I don't know what to do now. As I say though, changing the RGB values for the night illumination in the panel.cfg file works, but something switches the panel background back to black as soon as I unpause the sim. If I could find out why, I might get somewhere. It is something within PMDG (so I think I should be looking for an answer there rather in the SDK document), because if I try the same experiment with a FS9 Cessna, the night lighting RGB changes work just fine, it doesn't switch back when I unpause FS.. What PMDG file(s) could be overriding the RGB settings in the panel.cfg? Martin

[ronzie 21]

Sorry about the search keys. Start at page 104 section 3 in Appendix B. Then read through a few pages as it comes up in a not contiguous fashion. The search keys are day, night, and luminosity in this document. note there is a table of contents with links in the separate word left hand pane. Note the illustrated examples on page. On that page are to me two opposing declarations: 1. "Day and Night effectively determine the maximum and minimum brightness of the panel."2. "When lights are off, no .cfg-specified color is applied to the panel and its gauges – the brightness of the images are affected, however, by the environmental lighting (such as the height of the sun in the sky, moonlight, etc.). Maybe it refers to being turned on by cabin illumination lights and which point the night parameter comes into play.