Curiously enough, that section is not in all of my flights. (In particular it was not in my default flight.) Also, I have no idea why this is happening, but it's not quite working right for select a flight. I've got FS setup to go straight into the UI rather then jump right into a flight. (it's easier to set where/when/what I want to fly then changing things one at a time) The first time you load a flight from the select a flight page it will ignore the message window section. If you end the flight and re-start the same flight it will work. And, as you mentioned, it does not use the message window info from the default flight if you go through Create a Flight. (Which is where I start almost all of my flights from.)"Let me help you out. You're cleared to taxi any way you can to any runway you see."

You both have valid points and I have access to the source code. Cease fire! ;)

Since it was already there in FS2004 the answer would be 'yes' and 'one'.

>Curiously enough, that section is not in all of my flights.>(In particular it was not in my default flight.) It's not saved out unless you open the ATIS window (and perhaps resize it). That's why you should be able to persist your settings most of the time. Just set it up in your default flight and as long as no other flight overwrites it you should be okay.>Also, I have>no idea why this is happening, but it's not quite working>right for select a flight. I've got FS setup to go straight>into the UI rather then jump right into a flight. (it's easier>to set where/when/what I want to fly then changing things one>at a time) The first time you load a flight from the select a>flight page it will ignore the message window section. If you>end the flight and re-start the same flight it will work. And,>as you mentioned, it does not use the message window info from>the default flight if you go through Create a Flight. (Which>is where I start almost all of my flights from.)Okay, so it affects that as well. So you must re-load the flight to have it take effect. That's a bug, although perhaps not one that will get fixed. We'll see.

You know, just once, wouldn't it be nice to have something be "easy"?I feel for you Mike :)Thomas[a href=http://www.flyingscool.com/FC_StartJava.html] http://www.flyingscool.com/images/Signature.jpg [/a]I like using VC's :-)

Would be nice. I spent a few minutes looking at the initialization code for this to see if there was an obvious reason why the initial load didn't set the values. Seems like it *should* work as expected but obviously it doesn't. Oh, well...

>Bill,>>Evidently you are unfamiliar with something that is called>"structured" programming or object oriented programming. In a>well written software moving (x,y) of a simple display box>should have no cascading effect of any kind, it could only>possibly happen on a crappy software - I trust that FS doesn't>belong to this category.Michael,As a professional programmer, I'm certainly aware of OOP. I'm also very much aware of the complications of maintaining "legacy code." I think you would be astonished at how much of the absolute "core" of the engine hasn't changed all that much since the "Bruce Artwick days," most particularly in the panel "system..." which, to be kind, is more of an "ad hoc collection of kludges" than it is a system. ;)As a case in point, ADF_NEEDLEvar.var_value.n which returns "pseudo-degrees" instead of "degrees."Because of this, it requires quite a bit of faffing around to convert what should be a simple variable's value into something usable, such as:lookup_var(&mvadfndl);adfndl = mvadfndl.var_value.n;adfdir = (360 + adfndl + heading) ;if (adfdir > 359) { adfdir = adfdir - 360 ; }if (adfdir ;)

Man I would certainly like to see functionality like exists with AdvDisp utility that lets you put the dang thing anywhere you want, have the background be transparent, resize it, with the color of choice, etc. FSX would benefit from this simple but nice feature. Then you can effectively drop the ATIS text bar into an existing gauge as an overlay which is what I do now using AdvDisp.My two cents!