Inserting gauges in the VC panel

[palafox 0]

HiI'd like to use some commercial third party gauges in my aircrafts.Putting them into the 2d panel is straightforward, as far as they use to include some tool for this. Anyway, by using FS Panel Studio it's piece of cake to get this done.But inserting the gauges into the Virtual Cockpit panel seems to be a rather different subject. I've seen that the panel.cfg files include some section related to VCs and the gauges in it, but I'm not rather sure how to get this done.Can anybody please give me some hint/advice about this?Thanks in advance,JAMM

[Guest Patrick_Waugh]

Messing with the VC is harder as the relationship between panel and bmp space is not always clear as different sections of the bmp can be "mapped" to anywhere on any VC panel in the cockpit (and even out of the cockpit - forgive me Father if I have sinned :) ).So, the best method of doing this is to carefully observe where the original gauges were placed, and then either replace them with the same size anc coordinates, or basically use trial and error to see where a spot on the bmp is mapped in the cockpit.FS Panel Studio does allow you to edit existing VC's, but you must have the sections in the panel.cfg already (even if you have to manually add an empty section).You might consider reading the related parts of the SDK.Patrick

[palafox 0]

Hi, Patrick, thank you for the quick answer.>Messing with the VC is harder ...>I see the actual implementation is in the best of cases awkward, but I am rather sure that there is a good reason to be this way. So it seems that acceptable results can only obtained by replacing a gauge with another of similar shape and or size.>FS Panel Studio does allow you to edit existing VC's, but you>must have the sections in the panel.cfg already (even if you>have to manually add an empty section).>Didn't know that it can do that, but anyway it's of little help to overcome the limitations of the implementation>You might consider reading the related parts of the SDK.>I'll do, sure. Again thanks for the hints and advice.JAMM

[n4gix 4,947]

To expand a bit on what Patrick said, understand that every gauge in the VC needs to have a "physical polygon" upon which the gauge may be "projected."Some modelers use a large polygons that might take up 1/2 of a the full panel width, and on which gauges are placed in exact relationship to where they will display in the sim. These type are more flexible in the way you can replace or rearrange the gauges.The best practice though, is to use "gauge shaped and sized polygons" for each individual gauge, then arrange them tightly on the texture sheet according to how they best fit the available space. These are the type that must be replaced like-for-like: same size, same shape, etc.