3.28 How do I install new gauges on a panel?

From FlightSim

Q:

HOW DO I INSTALL NEW GAUGES ON A PANEL?

A:

Gauges are pictures, called bitmaps, that have been programmed to move or react in certain way in FS98. A gauge is in a file with a .gau extension, and these are ALWAYS kept in the FS98\gauges folder. The gauge is a completely seperate article, complete in itself, and you can put these gauges anywhere you want on top of your picture.

So first put you file for this gauge into FS98\gauges, that is, the folder in your FS98 programme called gauges. If you have the right folder, you will see lots of other gauges there that end with .gau.

You control your gauge in a file called the panel.cfg. Inside this file you will find in the first bit, the name of the picture (your panel). And underneath this a list of all the gauges used with your panel, something like:

gauge00=lear_Attitude, 100, 200, 150
gauge01=lear_fuel, 300, 350, 160
and so on.

The first bit is important, for all the gauges you use must be sequentially numbered from 00...onwards. If you break the sequence, all the gauges beyond that point will not work.

So the first gauge is gauge00, and the name of the gauge file is lear_attitude.gau. You do not write the .gau on the end, or tell it where the file is. It assumes that it has a .gau extension and that it is located in the FS98\gauges folder. The comma at the end seperates this bit of information from the next, like the \ in a file name.

Then there are three numbers.

The first number, the 100 in our first example, tells us how far to the right the guage is to be placed on our picture. The second number, 200, tells us how far DOWN from the top to put it. The third number, 150, tells us HOW BIG to make it in our panel.

So, you can make a panel by drawing a picture of it, and then putting gauges on top of that picture in a certain place and of a certain size using the panel.cfg.

If you want to see how this all works just copy a panel. First play with the panel.cfg file and move that gauges around and play with the sizes. Next get Paintshop Pro. Load the .bmp file from the panel file into it, and paint some changes on it, and save it. When you go into FS98 you will see those changes as soon as the .bmp is re-loaded.

Play around with your copy. You can't do any harm this way and you will soon pick it all up and be making your own panels. It really is best to alter an existing one first and play around with it. Leave altering the .gau files till much later.

Hope this helps. If you have any questions just post them here and I, along with many others, will be only too pleased to help.

Bruce Upperton