Zoandar

Well said. :) Flying the A5 feels very much like flying a car. I know, and there's the rub. On pretty much every PC I have used since USB became popular, I have at best a 50% chance that all my USB devices will actually get detected. It doesn't seem to matter much what brand of hubs or cables I use. When one of them goes hinky, the only solution is usually to cut the power and USB connection to the device, then restore those connections. I even ran a program for awhile on my older Windows XP system that delayed the detection of USB devices for 45 seconds during the boot cycle. That seemed to help a lot. I think it is simply lousy technology that Windows (in many versions now) doesn't properly initialize all the time. I've seen this clear back thru Win98.In order to reap any performance increase using USB3 hubs, would your cockpit devices not also need to be upgraded to USB3 variants? And the cables too I presume. If there is one constant in the Windows OS, it is that nothing is constant. :) Each PC is unique (unless built precisely the same), and has its own issues. What runs for one may not run for all.

fbass, your cockpit setup sounds wonderful. But based upon all my experiences with USB and how miserable it is, I'm going to guess those 29 USB connections are somehow part of the mix. It seems clear Flight is a very basic and simple program for garnering interest in those new to flying. In short, it probably "can't handle" your highly sophosticated hardware environment. BTW, kudos! You are the very first person I have EVER read has even attempted the approach of the fantasy specification of "127 devices allowed on a USB connection". I have enough issues with EACH of my USB devices, and they are less than a dozen. I don't know how in the world you manage to keep 29 connections up and running in Windows. IMHO USB deserves its own "what a joke" topic. :-)

Regarding the Product Key - I saw that empty field during the installation, but since there was no prior "purchase" of anything, I am not aware of any such Product Key. The Windows Live ID I used to sign in was created back when I used a Windows Mobile PDA in 2002, and had not been used since. At some point they wanted more personal information for my Live ID, and after inputting that the game started. I never saw a Product Key request a second time. Where do I find such a key, if I in fact have one?

I tried converting the X52 profile's throttle to a directional axis, and then programmed in the key presses for increase/decrease. But as soon as I throttled the engine up, Flight over-rode the X52 settings and continued to work with full throttle being forward. I don't see any mention of axis reversal in the X52 profile editor. I'm pretty sure I have the setting to reverse the throttle somewhere within FSX's settings.

I understand what you are saying, as I have my Saitek X52 profile for FSX running when I play MS Flight. When I first set it up, I went into Flight's settings and programmed the controls on the aircraft to use the same buttons and keypresses as I have assigned in FSX. The only thing I have yet to figure out in Flight is how to reverse the throttle (Z axis). You see, I fly helicopters a lot in FSX. And it is unnatural to have the "collective" (throttle) moving away from you when decending. So I have always reversed that axis in FSX, and fly planes the same way, moving the throttle stick toward me to increase the throttle. It took awhile but I got usesd to that. I am so used to doing that, I find myself moving the throttle the wrong way in Flight, because it doesn't allow me to reverse the Z axis. Really screws things up when landing. :)Anyway, I checked with Notepad as you suggest, but the G11 volume control isn't generating any keypresses that I can see. I use a Logitech Bluetooth mouse, and it's dongle is plugged into the RH rear USB port on the G11. I wonder if that has any bearing on this issue?The only software I am running together with the G11 is the Gaming Software version 8.12.030. I do have several G-keys programmed, but I am not using any of them while running MS Flight.Edit -Moving the Bluetooth dongle mentioned above away from the G11 keyboard did not matter. BUT...... I changed the Flight Aircraft Control setting for aircaft On/Off from the default B key to CTRL+E, like FSX uses for engine start. THAT stopped the issue with the volume control killing (or starting!) the engine. So for some reason MS Fight interprets clockwise rotation of the volume knob as being a "B" and "G" key pressed. Really strange. Has to be some kind of bug.

I am using a Logitech G11 gaming keyboard on this Win7x64 PC where I have Flight running. This keyboard has a built in volume knob at the top center of the keyboard. When I decrease the game volume with the knob, I have no problems. But for some reason if I use the knob to increase the game volume, it immediately switches any airplane's engine off, and cycles the landing gear (if I am off the ground).Has anyone else seen this issue?The game seems to run OK now aside from this problem.

Hi n4gix! Nice to see you again. I am still grateful for the help last year in customizing my FSX setup! ;-)fbass, I am using the same Matrox T2G digital edition with triple displays, and a GTX460 card, with 8GB ram on Windows 7x64 home premium. So in that regard we are similar in hardware. I did have some 'issues' getting Flight up and running, but I also had to stop and address their request for some more complete information in my Windows Live profile before the game would start. So I had things running, closed, minimized, restarted several times before I was finally running the game. But it does run OK now.One thing I wanted to say - the game installed for me with "Medium" graphics settings across the board. I have no idea if there is yet a way to view FPS in this game as it is running, but I wanted to see how bad things would be if I maxed out the graphics. So I bumped up the main graphics setting to High. What happened after that I am going to presume 'may' be a bug. But since you have a similar graphics hardware package to me, and you are having problems, this might help you somehow.With the graphic settings switched up to High, I cannot use the mouse to click ANYTHING at all on the screen. Not even to close the Options menu to resume the flight, or even to go back and reduce the graphics setting to Medium again. If I use the mouse, the game minimizes to the desktop. I can click on the task bar icon for it, and it will again display. If I click on anything at all, it minimizes. However, if I click the task bar icon and get it to display, and then ONLY use the keyboard to access the menus and such, it runs flawlessly. ?? I think it's some kind of bug. BUT......After I shut the game down, and then started it back up later, still on High graphics, the problem abated itself, and now I can use High graphics AND the mouse on the menus. Weird.I should mention that I did not install the game files to the C drive. I am using an SSD now for the C drive, and it is only 130GB, so I don't install any games on it. They all go on other hard drives. I also went into the settings and moved ALL the storage settings they have for various download content and such away from all their default C drive-based locations and put them where I wanted them on another hard drive. I know from experience and reading lots of forum posts that FSX runs better when it is NOT installed to C. So perhaps that will also be the case for MS Flight.I hope some of this info proves helpful. :)All that said, I AM disappointed with MS Flight. I'll be nice, and just politely say that, for what it gives me, their pricing scheme is outrageous. It would be VERY easy to spend far more in a couple days on MS Flight than I have spent for all of the FSX Gold + Acceleration software and all the many GB of satellite imagery based photorealistic scenery I have bought for FSX from 3 different vendors online. Not to mention I can fly anywhere in the world in FSX, and am not limited to a single tiny set of islands. MS Flight looks nice. But it isn't photorealistic. Now, if they had licensed Google Earth imagery to use in the game, and THEN added their nice 3D buildings atop that imagery, I might feel it is worth the prices they are asking for the upgrade content. But $10 for a P51 that has no cockpit?? The P51 is a really sweet plane, as evidenced as an addon in FSX and how nice it flies. It seems a shame to not have a cockpit in it in this new game, even if it were one as basic as what they put in the Icon A5 (which as no HSI!, and apparently no working flaps).Overall I am disappointed, for sure.

I am in the same situation. Did you ever find a way to do this?Could I use LINDA to assign a button or control on a Saitek X52 so that it emulates a mouse-click on one of the AFCS Control buttons used in an Aerosoft Seahawk + Jayhawk payware helicopter? Or if not assigned to the Saitek, assigned to a keyboard key combination?

I found out a few things by rote experimentation. All I had wanted to achieve is to smooth out the frame of the windshield in a Blackhawk helicopter I had downloaded. The original imagery had that A post looking like the teeth on Paul Bunyan's saw. :) I did try using some of the higher resolution formats like .dds but I ran into issues with the bitmap then being rendered at the wrong size to match the rest of the fuselage. So in the end I stuck with extended BMP but did increase from DXT3 to DXT5, which seems to smooth out the still unavoidable rough edges on the angled lines. Since I have other aircraft which are finely rendered, I presume it would be possible to do so here, but as you say I would likely have to completely overhaul the bitmaps being used, and I don't want to get into that. The improvement I made will be sufficient. I started to describe the issue in text, and realized I can post the Alpha channel image I had saved which shows the issue along the left end of the windshield, and on the right is where I "fixed" it. Not perfect, but much better than before anyway, thanks to your help in figuring it all out. :)

That's interesting! 8X the resolution of the files I am working with. So would I make the resolution changes to the file I am editing with DXTBmp after I edit it, when I am saving the file back into the texture folder in the FSX aircraft? Or would I want to change the resolution first, and THEN edit the file and save it? The 2nd option seems like it would give me the finer editing capability I was hoping to achieve. Thanks!

DXTBmp is working for me, once I figured out that I have to edit both the opaque AND the Alpha Channel copies of the image file. But I had to import MSPaint from a WinXP PC. Windows 7x64 Home Premium's version of Paint apparently has no tool bar!!?? How useless!The A post of the Blackhawk now looks better than it did to start out. The obvious issue is one of resolution. I am wondering if I could use a higher resolution bitmap to replace the one that was included for that section of the helicopter, or is that not a good idea? It comes down to not being able to draw a "straight" (no jaggies) line on an angle up the screen when having to use pixels the size of clay bricks. :) If I could go higher in resolution, the pixels would be smaller and then I could smooth out the line better. Is that doable? Or would it create problems integrating with the other images being used for the overall helicopter?I took a guess at which format to save the file after editing. I noticed before I made any changes that DXTBmp showed in its header bar of the window that the image is an DXT3 bitmap 512x512 and 16 bit. So I am saving the edited file as Extended Bitmap DXT3 and that seems to be working.

Thanks! I'll check those out.

My personal opinion is that someone who can take a complex concept and explain it in simpler terms makes a very good teacher! I'll bet you had a lot of students who enjoyed your classes. My interests in FSX have taken a slight detour, and I thought maybe you can help me find the answer to my current wonder. In the Textures folder of most of the FSX aircraft I have installed there a lots of bitmap files. But some of them have no thumbnail. And when I try to open one which has no thumbnail I get variations on the following message, depending upon which application I try to use to open it. In a nutshell it tells me the file is too big to be opened, or else is corrupt, or is of a format that is unfamiliar to the application. So what's the skinny on those files? What program was used to open/create them? The reason I wanted to look at one is that I have a really nice rendition of a UH60 Blackhawk. It flies sweet, looks really nice on the outside, and even has impressive sound files. But the VC has one 'flaw' I was wondering if I could somehow fix or at least improve upon. The right side "A" post for the windshield (where it meets the RH cockpit door) is extremely jagged and appears very poorly drawn. It looks more like sharks' teeth than a nice smooth angular part of the fuselage. I thought perhaps if I could open the file named "cockpit.bmp" I could play with a copy of it and perhaps smooth that out. But I don't know anything at all about how these files are used to formulate a virtual cockpit image. So it might be way harder than I imagine (which may be why it didn't turn out as nice as the creator may have wanted). But I was hoping I could leave all that to FSX and simply give it a better image file to use in its wizardry when it creates the aircraft. Those bitmap files which do have thumbnails and allow me to open and view them seem to be a mosaic of elements. So I am guessing the segment of FSX that creates the aircraft uses these images as some sort of map and takes a portion of the 'map' and wraps it around the defined airframe, not unlike how scenery is created in FSX and other games. I've read a little about it over the years, but video games have gotten pretty complex these days so I am sure there is a lot happening I have yet to even encounter, let alone understand. Anyway, if nothing else I'd like to know why the files can't be opened like a 'normal' bitmap with a typical image editing app.

Thanks for that clarification. :) I understand the position of having a large workload, as I have been there myself many times. Thankfully I am retired now so my life is more "mine" than "theirs". I appreciate the answers, and will forget about that single heli that wasn't cooperating. Being a lifelong "experiential" learner, I usually prefer to "cut to the chase" of the solution I seek, rather than go the traditional route of learning large volumes of surrounding fringe material over a long period of time before I can uncover the solution to the single problem in front of me. That said, your "stuffit" explanation is much preferred over the "technical twaddle". You accomplished the goal of explaining to me what that statement does. ;-) Thanks!Zoandar

Thanks for this information. That does help make sense out of what seemed like cryptic statements in the code. I have encountered the term RPN before, but I have always tried to stay away from it as much as possible. Yet, I do remember way back when early calculators worked that way. Very confusing to get used to. I am really surprised that XML was set up this way. Everything I have read online about XML so far has made mention of the underlying concept that it is supposed to be "easily understood" just by looking at it (to put it in my own words). So why they did RPN is a mystery to me, when so many other languages do the operations as IF/THEN/ELSE. I did read one person's opinion that the "greater than" symbol "should always be replaced" by, was it "gt;" or something like that? Even still, the statement 1 (>L:Init,bool) does leave me scratching my head. L:init.bool == 1 would make more sense to me. :) But as I said I don't know much about XML yet. So does (L:Init,bool) 0 == mean that variable "L" is being initialized to Boolean 0? Maybe if I pretend I am talking with Yoda it might help. :-) "Equal to Boolean zero, it is". I have run into one helicopter download with which I can not make this auto-open script work. I have successfully applied it to 22 other models I use, and am preparing to start adding it to the fixed wing planes in my collection. But I did everything exactly the same way on this one and the windows do not open. I can open them with the SHIFT+ keys, so I know I have the panel.cfg windows set up correctly. I can only guess that something within the code of the model itself is working against this XML script and not letting it work. Since I have the other 22 helos to fly I am not going to worry about it, and have deleted the model from my setup. But if you are curious, I can send you the files ( I have the original ZIP download) for it to see if you can find the problem. It is an S-70B-6 Aegean Hawk. It flies OK and I don't have any problems manually adding or operating windows listed in the panel.cfg file. So I have no idea what the issue is.

Well, I could swear I had tried this somewhere in all my various attempts, but it definitely does work! :-) Come to think of it, I'll bet I repeated some other part of the code in the overall "IF" statement when I shouldn't have. I know a little about programming in other languages like C (from playing with an Arduino board), but I have never used XML before. I did do a bit of searching online and found some XML tutorials that look interesting, so I may look a little deeper into it. When I first started using FS Panel Studio for FSX, I was immediately disappointed in how much I could 'not' do because of the number of aircraft panels using XML. I went on to find a statement somewhere online that said "Microsoft has provided very little information about the use of XML in gauge panels" before they shut down the whole flight sim division, so I thought I was pretty much out in the cold. But If XML can be used to do neat tricks like you just showed me, it is worth looking into. Some of the free aftermarket aircraft panels leave much to be desired. My solution to make them usable has been to provide my own popup windows with gauges I like and/or can read well enough to fly (one example is the tiny gauges on the EH101 provided by FSX Acceleration - Those need to be a lot bigger). Thanks again for all the help! Zoandar

Is there no "edit" button for these posts?? ( I finally see one in THIS post ONLY, but not in any of my posts above??)I have tried many variations on trying to include reference to 2 different windows within the same XML code. I have tried using 2 different XML code files in the same panel subfolder. I have tried using separate panel subfolders for opening the two different windows. I have tried placing the "gaugenn=...." lines in 2 of the several different [Vcockpitxx] windows within the panel.cfg file for the aircraft I am using during testing. It always comes out the same way. Either it doesn't work at all, or else when it does work I get ONE window to auto-open. Usually the first one, numbered 10040. If I remark out the "gauge=nn......" listing for the first window, being ident=10040, then the second window, being ident=90 WILL open! So I can open "either", but never "both". I don't know what to do so I will stop the attempt to do multiple windows until someone can show me exactly how to do it. Clearly there is some piece of information I need that I don't have. BTW, in all the testing I did it doesn't seem to matter one way or the other whether I put the gaugenn=..... listing in [Window00] or not. But it does need to be in [Vcockpit01].

I did try several variations just for fun. But I cannot make more than one window auto-open. I can get one, or the other (a second window) but never both together. So can you show me how it is done?

It works!! :( Thank you so much!!One more question. Is it possible to concurrently open more than one window with this script, perhaps by adding another line such as :10020 (>K:PANEL_ID_TOGGLE)Below the one above, or would I need to do something else? Just curious. I really appreciate this! There is so much one can do to customize FSX it staggers the mind. But without good folks like yourself to guide the way, those of us wanting to modify it would not have nearly as much success. THANKS!!Zoandar

What does it offer to go beyond the intrinsic GPS units in FSX?

So it is an on-screen add-on device, rather than something out in the real world, like some gauge display kits I have seen which sit on your desk separate from your displays?

This looks like something I can do, but I have never made a gauge before. Can I simply put this code you wrote INTO the panel.cfg file in those 2 places? I have edited a lot of panel.cfg files, but never seen such code before, so I want to make sure I know what to do. You said substitute the ident=, but I don't see "ident=" in your code, so where would I put the substituted number from the panel.cfg's ident= statement in the gauge window? Do I just add that into your code?

That looks interesting, but I was not able to find an actual product photo online. Is it an external device? Your image with the 2D cockpit in the background doesn't make that readily apparent. I use a triple-head display so that's one reason I am playing with gauge windows. I have plenty of room on the screen to display them.

Both good ideas. Thanks!

All true, I agree. However I might point out that no one else flies my planes but me. :) For ultimate realism, you have a very valid point. But I forgo several aspects of that realism with FSX. The major reason is that, due to medical conditions from an old auto accident, I can only sit here at my desk for no more than 20 minutes, and then I have to get up and go do something else. I actually have an electronic timer circuit I built into this chair which boots me out with a loud alarm when 20 minutes have elapsed. It can only be reset by getting out of the chair. Because of that, I prefer to "get down to the business of flying" during the extremely short span of apparent time it takes for 20 minutes to elapse while engrossed in FSX. The alarm ALWAYS goes off in the middle of a landing approach. ;) So I have to pause and come back later to land. There is nothing which can be done for the medical condition. I will do this for the rest of my life. I have the same issue driving or riding. It's a life-changer, for sure. I don't know anyone else who has this same issue, but if you can imagine getting interrupted every 20 minutes no matter what you were doing on your PC, you can see the frustration in it all. So I try to maximize the short periods of time I do have here. One thing I can do is program a button on my stick/throttle for the switch. That way I could change it while flying, especially helicopters. But I was just wondering if there were a way to have the switch default the opposite way. I rarely use the other navigational instruments now that we have GPS. I like its graphical interface. Anyway, thanks for the reply! :)Zoandar