How do I change the size of the panel onscreen?

[martinlest2 58]

Many of my aircraft panels seem to fall very slightly short of the left and right-hand edges of my screen, by a millimetre or less. The problem with this is that the outside scenery shows through very slightly, much brighter than the background to the panel. This wouldn't matter too much, but that little slivver of light at each side of the panel flashes rapidly - it is very distracting. I have tried increasing the panel size to fill the tiny gaps (by altering the "window_size_ratio" and "window_size" values in the panel.cfg very slightly), but no matter how much I change these values from the default 1.000 nothing happens at all to the window size. I assume I must be altering the wrong figures.Can anyone tell me how to make the panels very slightly wider to cover up these minute, but very annoying, gaps?Many thanks,Martin

[Guest av84fun]

If I understand you correctly, what you may need to do is to resize your FS9 screen on your MONITOR controls and not in FS9.You probably know how to adjust vertical/horizontal size and position with the buttons on your monitor but if not, check out your Monitor's documentation or ask over on the hardware forum.Hope this helps.Jim

[Bert Pieke 7,584]

You have to edit the panel.cfg file with Notepad to make the scenery slightly less wide.Try this for starters:At the end of the cfg file, you'll see something like://_________________________________________________________________________________ 2D PANEL OUTSIDE VIEW SIZE//_________________________________________________________________________________Default View ..... IN SQUARE BRACKETSX=4 //was 0Y=0SIZE_X=8182 // was 8191SIZE_Y=5250 Increase X by 4Decrease Size_X by 9 as in the above exampleThat should adjust the width by exactly one pixel.BTW, I bet the problem also disappears if you turn off anti-aliasing.

[Guest lemonadedrinker]

Hi there. I found the same thing happening sometimes and all I did(do) was to take the cursor to the edge of the screen where it transforms into the double-ended arrow thingy then shrink the cockpit a bit then expand it again and that generally seems to do the trick.

[martinlest2 58]

Three good suggestions - thanks. Unfortunately:1. Changing the monitor position doesn't work, because my digital (DVI) input adjusts this automatically and won't let me change the settings manually. I might try an analogue input at some stage.2. Tried adjusting these figures, but no matter how many increments of 4 and 9 I changed, nothing happened. I restarted the flight each time of course. My panel.cfg files don't say "2D PANEL OUTSIDE VIEW SIZE" at the bottom, just the "default view" in square brackets then the figures. I could try adding the heading and see if that makes a difference I suppose??3. I have tried this before but have the panel as far to the edge as I can pull it.Martin

[Bert Pieke 7,584]

OK, lets try again...The heading is just a comment, it is only the numbers that matter.If you change X=20 just as a test, do you still have the left edge issue? You should notice the left edge of the scenery moving slightly in behind the panel, fixing your issue.Depending on screen resolution and panel configuration, the actual number may vary. Since the panel is usually defined as a roughly 8200 pixels wide address space and we tend to display it at about 1280 pixels on the monitor, simple division tells me that you need about X=4 to round up to 1 displayed pixel. X=6 should do the exact same.Once you have the left edge fixed, you need to subtract twice the X amount from the Size_X parameter to fix the right edge.It works for me! Except for the Minipanel which is defined differently.

[ahinterl 1]

That's a problem I have with many panels.I found the root cause of this is the anti aliasing setting of my graphics adapter (Radeon 9800 Pro). So far, I used different drivers (old and new, even Omega and Detonator, and the RadLinker), but the problem doesn't go away using any other driver. So, i stick with the latest Catalyst from ATI.As soon as I enable anti aliasing in the graphics driver control panel, the problem occurs.Here I need to say that the problem only occurs if I have no panel_as_texture=0 line in my fs9.cfg. The problem seems to be tied somehow to the way textures are calculated and displayed, and it has a slight reference to the "render-to-texture" settings in the FS9 graphics options dialog as well.I encountered a big FPS loss when turning off texture rendering by either using panel_as_texture=0 or removing the checkmark for the render-to-texture option (as far as I know this option offloads the process of rending to the graphics hardware and thus results in higher framerates), so I decided to accept the gaps at the panel edges but gain FPS on the other hand.Currently I have no common solution available due to the way some panels are designed.The best would be to introduce an always visible section where the view directions (view_forward_dir etc.) are defined, and to move all panel graphics and gauges to other, subsequent sections (cannot use square brackets here, so I use < and >).This way, the outside view of could be oversized for those who have the display problems, whereas the panels would stay the same, eliminating the problem.As I said, some panels can be adapted this way (I'm currently at work and have no reference to a panel.cfg at the moment, but the last section in panel.cfg with the windows_size_x and y (amongst other) parameters determines size and position of ; don't know currently whether the windows numbering is important or the ident number is what counts here), and I'm currently trying to find out whether panels where gauges refer to a certain windows ident can be relocated so that is always newly introduced to be "before" the others come (difficult panels are DF727, RFP747, maybe the F1ATR and others, but let's see what I can do).Maybe one day I can post a success story here after some lengthy experimenting...After all, it's a nasty effect, and I want it to go away!Andreas

[Bert Pieke 7,584]

Try my fix above...

[martinlest2 58]

Bert, thanks for this; I'll get time to try this out later today or tomorrow and then post back the results.M.

[martinlest2 58]

By the way, switching off anti-aliasing in FS9 didn't help...M.

[Bert Pieke 7,584]

No, you have to switch it off in the video card properties as well...:-)

[martinlest2 58]

Then my planes look like saw blades - not a good trade-off! Not tried the changed settings yet - probably later today.M. :-)

[martinlest2 58]

Changing the figures makes absolutely no difference at all Bert. Sigh. If you come up with a genius solution Andreas, do let us know! As you say, it is a really annoying problem - and I don't recall anyone ever mentioning it before,Martin

[martinlest2 58]

I have managed to grab the edge of the scenery (not the panel) with the mouse pointer and pull it in a fraction so that it is level with the panel edge - I had tried this before, but obviously not persevered enough! This works, but you have to save each flight, then go to 'Select a Flight' for it to be reproduced next time you start up; I can't see how to save it globally for each aircraft panel. Far better than nothing, and it does stop that infernal flashing...M. :-)

[Bert Pieke 7,584]

Well, I am happy that you found a cure!I am still surprised that changing the panel.cfg file has no effect on your system.Here is what I get in the default Cessna if I change the cfg file as follows (this is a bit extreme... just as a test). This is the equivalent of grabbing the scenery at the edges and pulling it in.Default ViewX=40 // was 0Y=0SIZE_X=8112 // was 8192SIZE_Y=2500http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/108576.jpg