Screen brightness

[jfwharton 50]

I was wondering if there is a way to adjust the brightness of the VC panel.  The GTN 750 brightness in the VC panel is brighter than that of the popup.  So I would like the two to be about the same brightness.  I have tried the configuration panel (shift and right click) as well as the in panel brightness adjustment.  There does not seem to be a way to reduce the screen brightness for the VC panel without lowering the brightness of the popup panel.

[RXP 2,336]

Hi,

I believe the following pinned topic title is matching your question:

 

[jfwharton 50]

Thank you.  That partially answers my questions.

[Bert Pieke 7,584]

37 minutes ago, jfwharton said:

Thank you.  That partially answers my questions.

What part has not been answered?

[jfwharton 50]

I have some aircraft that have Reality XP GTN installers, so the VC panel has a bezel which functions.  On those aircraft the VC panel brightness is much brighter than the popup panel.  So I can't use the fix for NO BEZEL.

[Bert Pieke 7,584]

18 minutes ago, jfwharton said:

I have some aircraft that have Reality XP GTN installers, so the VC panel has a bezel which functions.  On those aircraft the VC panel brightness is much brighter than the popup panel.  So I can't use the fix for NO BEZEL.

In the panel.cfg file, you can give each of the GTN instances unique names, like "VC" and "Popup"

In the ini file, you create separate sections, for VC and Popup..

In these sections, you can make individual adjustments..

[jfwharton 50]

Thanks for the response but none of that makes any sense for me.  I just want something simple.  As it is it took me hours for reconfigure the aircraft that I have that have the Reality XP GTN in them.  So I thank you but guess I'll just have to accept the overly bright screen on some of my aircraft because the brightness wasn't set correctly by Reality XP.  It took me two days to configure my aircraft and right now I'm very tempted to go back to the Flight1 GTN series where I didn't have this issue.

Edited April 18, 2021 by jfwharton

[Bert Pieke 7,584]

26 minutes ago, jfwharton said:

I'll just have to accept the overly bright screen on some of my aircraft

Which aircraft are you having trouble with?

[jfwharton 50]

The xTremeprototypes Lear 25 V5, the flysimware Falcon 50, lear 35A and some others.  All have an option during the install to select the Reality XP GTN 750.

[Bert Pieke 7,584]

15 minutes ago, jfwharton said:

the flysimware Falcon 50, lear 35A

Hmm, I did have those installed, but no longer..

When you have some time, try what I suggested.. create a unique name for the popup, you can leave the VC unit as default.

Then copy the default section in the ini file, and give it the correct name.

Now you have two independent sections where you can adjust brightness.

[RXP 2,336]

@jfwharton It might seem complex at first, and it does, but in practice it isn't.

The issue is not the gauge being too bright, but the VC panel polygon onto which it draws which is too bright. The RXP GTN gauge can take care of this and let you adjusting individually the brightness level of every single instance of the GTN gauge in your panel (VC, popup, extra VC or extra popup - you can use up to 6 instances of the gauge in the panel IIRC). This is meant to explicitly make sure all instances do display with the same 100% brightness reference. Please note this is necessary because of the simulator rendering gauges differently, not because of the gauge itself.

Once you've adjusted individual instances reference brightness so that they all match at 100%, further adjusting the device brightness with the device system page on the touch screen will then adjust all instances together as-one as expected.

I really suggest you review the recommended posts at the top at the aforementioned topic, starting maybe with recommended post #2 and #3 (out of the 4). When doing so, I also suggest you keep the RXP GTN User's Manual open p16 and p17. This explains in more details what about the panel.cfg and the .ini relationship in this case.

Hang in there, it's worth it!

[jfwharton 50]

Thank you for the information but it doesn't make any sense to me.  The documentation is only helpful if one fully understands how the programming for the Reality XP GTN works, but I do not.  So for right now I'm going to leave everything as is.  I made a change to the popup panel from the linked post above that helped with the GTNs that were converted from the F1 GTN but  I still do not understand how to adjust the brightness on the aircraft that have a Reality XP GTN installer.  I really wasn't expecting to have to learn a new programming language just to use the Reality XP GTN.  I'm hoping that F1 updates their software so I can go back to that.  It didn't have this issue.

Edited April 24, 2021 by RXP

[fppilot 4,350]

1 hour ago, jfwharton said:

I really wasn't expecting to have to learn a new programming language just to use the Reality XP GTN. 

As another user please let me point out that the issue you are juggling is due to the fact that the various simulator aircraft designers do not write to the same standard.  So due to the ways the respective aircraft are coded you are seeing differences in brightness.  It is not a Reaity XP issue.  However with the variables that RXP has provided in the gauge settings, and provided in configuraton options/variables, you can with some work acheive a balannce,  In one aircraft I fly in FSX SE I have two GTN's in the panel and they each even need differences in settings to balance with each other in the virtual cockpit.  They can be balanced, but it takes some effort.  There are some helpful hints shared in archived topics here.  I am on the run this weekend.  If you allow me some time after the weekend I will try to point out the ones that helped me out.

[RXP 2,336]

@jfwharton I understand the struggle but hand in there, it is very simple. Hopefully, this is just configuration in a file, not a programming task!

Let me try to explain the basics:

- Imagine you have 2 TV sets from different brands and you're viewing the same computer image.

- Because of the differences in the screen technology and/or manufacturer calibration (the aircraft model), both are displaying a different brightness for the same picture.

- You therefore need to individually adjust each first and foremost so that the same brightness appears on both. This is a per-TV calibration you do once only.

- Thereafter, if you're displaying another too dark or too bright picture from your computer, you'd change the output brightness on the computer once, and both TVs would display the picture with the same relative brightness because they are now calibrated to always display the same,

 

With this analogy:

- The TV set is the aircraft polygon where the gauge displays onto. Each aircraft vendor is configuring the polygon to react to light differently.

- The per-TV brightness calibration is the extra information you set in the RXP GTN ini file.

- The picture brightness adjusted on the computer is the GTN On-Device Brightness adjustment using the touch screen.

 

How do you set the calibration then?

- use the 5th param in the panel.cfg file (gauge## = rxpGTN!xxxxx, x, y, w, h, param ) in order to give a name for this gauge calibration.

- add an section in the RealityXP.GTN.ini with the same matching name ( for example [GTN_750_1.param] ) in order to link the gauge instance in the panel and the settings in the .ini file.

- adjust the brightness calibration values for this gauge in setting the values in this section in the .ini file (trial and error depending on the aircraft).

- because the values are in this section, and because this section has the same name as the 5th param, these settings will be applying only to the gauges using the same 5th param

 

NB:

- param is just for illustration. What matters is that both names in the panel.cfg file and the .ini file are the same. You can use MY_CUSTOM_BRIGHTNESS or even RXP_IS_GREAT

- a single section in the RealityXP.GTN.in (for example [GTN_750_1.param] can be linked to multiple instances of the gauge in the panel.cfg file.

- the brightness bias applies only to gauge(s) instance individually, the in-device brightness (system page > brightness) applies to all instances of the same GTN at once (say GTN750 #1 in the VC and the same GTN750 #1 in a popup).

- the final screen brightness is a combination of: calibration bias (+/- middle value in the .ini file), in-device brightness (system page > brightness) and external rheostat adjustment (either fixed in the RXP GUI Settings Panel, or via a custom rheostat simvar which can be used by 3rd party aircraft to provide a knob for this in their models).

 

This is one of the recommended post in the dedicated discussion which is explaining all this with an example:

https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/533064-balancing-vc-and-2d-gtn-screen-brightness/?do=findComment&comment=3974870

 

Edited April 24, 2021 by RXP

[jfwharton 50]

Thank you for the encouragement and the information.  It still doesn't make any sense to me.  I was looking for a tutorial on the internet that would show me a before and after  to go by.  I will keep trying but as I said, even though I have read your information it just doesn't click.