Panel Caching

[Guest tenfore]

I am a relative newbie to flight sim so I hope I am not repeating something that has been posted a million times - but it seems that every time you think you have mastered one element of FS something new pops up.I made a change to a panel bmp a few weeks ago and I have noticed that sometimes when I load the aircraft the new panel is displayed and other times the old panel is displayed even though I have created a new flight rather than flying an old one. This led me to believe that panels are cached somewhere, but the .FLT files don't seem to be large enough - so where? How can I delete this cache so the new panel is always displayed? Thanks!

[Wolfko 0]

Have you done, your new panel with FS Panel Studio?This is a great programme IMHO, but soemtimes strange things happen when using it. I had a similar problem like yourself, but with gauges.If you did the panel with FSPS then open the panel.cfg manually with word-pad or a similar programm and look, if there is not still an entry for your old pael. If yes, delete it.And in addition within FSPS allways ampty the gauge cache.Wolfgang

[Guest tenfore]

No - actually i just used Paint to make a small change to the bitmap to see if it would work. The active .bmp is in the FS9aircraftspecific_aircraftpanel folder. The old .bmp is in a different subdirectory altogether. I checked aircraft.cfg and panel.cfg and there is no reference to the old panel. I have to believe that the old panel is cached somewhere. If the aircraft is your default aircraft, then depending what you did last time you flew (suppose you flew an old .PLN that references the old panel in cache) perhaps it is used next time you start FS. I don't understand enough about FS to know the answer and I assume that some of the panel experts do! Thanks for your reply.

[John_Cillis 2,406]

It may be possible that you have two aircraft.cfgs which point to an older and newer version of the aircraft, but aren't giving distinct names to the aircraft. You would see one aircraft in the aircraft folder, but you could end up with the older vs. newer aircraft.Another alternative is your panel.cfg could have dupe entries and could be pointing to both panels at the same time.I've seen the former problem after making backup copies of aircraft in different stages of development. The problem goes away after giving the aircraft distinct names.-John

[ddawson 35]

The answer to your question is 'No', FS does not cache panels in the way you suggest. The symptoms you describe would indicate that you have a separate copy of the panel which uses the old bitmap. At least one aircraft in your fleet is using this copy of the panel with the old bitmap.You might try searching your FS folder for all instances of the bitmap.Doug Dawson

[Guest tenfore]

Thanks for all the responses - at least I now know that the panel is not cached. I checked the panel.cfg and it is calling the right panel and there are no references to another mainpanel. I searched the panel name in the FS subdirectories and only came up with one match. Thanks for all your help at least I know what it isn't!

[Guest tenfore]

Just to close off the thread - I did have a few other renamed .cfg files in the panel directory (1panel.cfg, oldpanel.cfg, etc.) and while I thought that as long as there was only one panel.cfg that everything would be OK. I guess not! I moved the files and the right panel came up. I still find it difficult to believe this was the problem, but it just shows what I don't yet know.Thanks again for all the replies!!! :-)