Help to be Lazy II: ??Inlude statements??

[dirtydog1006]

Perhaps like you, I have spent many hours dragging my mini panels towards perfection. (Different one for each class of AC, natch.) But it is very tedious and a waste of potential flight time to keep pasting the latest tweaks into each AC in the vast DD fleet.

Since this stuff is compiled at load up, I surmise there is some way to direct the machine to pick up a snip of code, like for a mini panel, from a central location. In FORTRAN or SAS it would look something like:

"%INCLUDE C:\PROGRAMS\blah blah\MINICENTRAL\TAILDRAG.TXT"

Does anyone know the syntax for FS?

[Tom Goodrick]

I don't understand what your problem is. When you change something on a panel for a particular plane, you edite the panel,cfg file for that plane. You don't drag anything. You save the new version of the panel.cfg file. It remains in the folder for that plane and always comes up when you load the plane.

What the heck are you doing?

[Tom Goodrick]

"Perhaps like you, I have spent many hours dragging my mini panels towards perfection."

No, none of us have done that.


To modify an aircraft panel or the .air file or the aircraft.cfg file, you are simply modifying files stored within the folder for the particular aircraft. You are NOT PROGRAMMING anything.

The .air file requires use of a special air file editor. The others are just .cfg or text files that you edit with Notepad.

Everytime a particular aircraft is loaded for flight within FS, the program looks in all the folders for that aircraft for the special files associated with that aircraft. It creates special temporary files just for that flight. These include any changes you may have made in any files. A special flight dynamics file combines the content of the .air and aircraft.cfg files. A panel temp file compiles all the .xml files and sets up all gauge files as executables during that flight.

It is true you can drag and scale many gauges but that is not the way to do it. That change can easily be lost. There are things to change in the panel.cfg file text that will effect a permanent panel.

Go to Microsoft and download the Aircraft Container SDK and the Panel SDK for complete info.

Most performance problems can be solved by loading the aircraft properly or by learning more about the aircraft. If absolutely necessary, performance can be changed by editing the aircraft.cfg file. The only things that can be changed only in the airfile are the drag of extended spoilers and landing gear.

[Tom Goodrick]

I have received an email from you on the same topic. We need a little clarification - both ways. I need to know what you are calling "mini panels." Why are you messing with them. Several people have worked on panel design for the FS. It is a bit complicated. There are two types - "2D panels" and "virtual panels". There are "minipanels" with some aircraft as defined and set up by Microsoft that hang a few gauges iin space as you fly along looking at the sky and the ground. This is a bit unrealistic and I know of no one who uses these for any extended time. (I have used them when taxiing the DC-3 to see where I want to go.)

The virtual panels appear in the virtual cockpit in flat "3D" but don't work very well. They are difficult to make. I prefer to use the "2D" panels because they show clearly. We don't need unreadable gauges on the panel.

I have modified some panels to bring modern "glass panels" into FS where digital/graphic displays present a lot of info in a small space. A Primary Filght Display or PFD shows all the info needed to fly the plane safely. A Multi Function Display or MFD shows other data which in my case is a moving map display. Since I can't change the MFD, I put engine data on a small third display in digital format. The point is, however, that you have all info available for managing the flight, power and navigation in front of you at all times. I find that helpful.

You may have had dificulty getting any of my panels with aircraft you downloaded to display. Nobody told me there was a problem with this until I found out for myself by downloading my own aircraft for use in FS 2002 on another computer. Then I found that all panels were missing files like this:

panel_background_640.bmp

The panel.cfg file calls for both a panel_background_640.bmp and a panel_background_1024.bmp file. I thought that since I was modifying only panel_background_1024.bmp that the 640 file was not needed. To save memory on my download page, I deleted all those 640 files.

My own panels all displayed properly because they had those files. Nobody who downloaded a panel said anything about a problem.

So, the fix is for you to look in a comparable default aircraft's Panel folder, find the panel_background_640.bmp file and simply copy it into the panel folder for aircraft you downloaded from me.

My web page memory is soon to be expanded so I will go through and copy those files in for each aircraft.

[dirtydog1006]

I am sorry not to be clear. And I appreciate all the time Tom has spent replying, on this and other aspects. Our discussions have helped me a lot.

I use the mini panel a lot. I know it is not realistic, but it helps me enjoy the scenery and see where I am going. It is just another window in the PANEL file, and you get to it by hitting the W key. You all know that.

I am not really dragging anything. I used the word whimsically, to mean that I keep making what I think are improvements to my mini panels. For example, I have replaced the steam-gauge tach with a digital one, and have added Tom's trim gauge and AOA.

What I want to do is avoid having to make the same changes over and over for the different aircraft I want to use the updated mini panel. It gets to be a real pain in the behind. If I could have just one snipet of code for the guts of the mini panel, in a central place, then I would make all my improvements to just that one file, and they would automatically be included in any AC I loaded up. For this to work, if it can, I would have to place a line describing the location and name of the bit of code containing the mini-panel guts in the PANEL file of each AC. Just one line, just once.

This is very much like calling a subrouting in regular computer programming. For instance, in the course of my work I have written FORTRAN code to calculate probabilities from a certain type of distribution. A lot of my programs use this code. But, rather than copy and paste this code into every program that needs it, I just have a line describing the location and name of the file containing that code. The compiler knows that I want it to include that bit of code when I run the program.

We do the same thing when we put our gauges in the central gauge folder. We call them up for different AC as desired, using a line in the PANEL file GAUGE03=NAMEOFGAUGE. So, we do not need to have duplicate copies of gauges.

I just want to do the same thing for a window at a time.
Perhaps it cannot be done....

Again I really appreciate people's time and patience. This is a wonderful board, and I hope I can contribute answers someday, instead of just questions.

DD

[Tom Goodrick]

OK. Now I understand you better but you are missing my point about how you can use the panel modifications to get the same thing and save those modifications so they appear every time you use the particular aircraft.

I fly all kinds of aircraft including helicopters and gliders. When I need to, I add a gauge or two. When I fly, I cna easily push the hat switch around and see out the windows on each side, toward the front or toward the back. I can also tap W twice and see an open view straight a head. But most of the time, I have the full 2D panel in view so, as I would in a real plane, I can glance around the panel as well as outside the aircraft to see what is going one. When I fly an approach, I keep the same view and fly down final just as I would in a real plane, making a flare over the runway and a nice touchdown. (I do pop up the landing gauge and check my speeds after landing which I could not do in a real plane.)

I have never tried modifying the "minipanel" because I saw no point to it. I rarely use it.

To make my life easy, I use one panel for all piston singles, one panel for all piston twins, one for all turboprop aircraft and one for all fanjet aircraft. These are subdivided into those with non-turbo engine, those with turbo engines and those with 1, 2, 3 or 4 engines. But between each of these different panels, there are only those differences required. They have in common a PFD, MFD and digital engine data display.

I don't think you can do what you want. Try it this way and see how it goes. Also, don't try to fly every aircraft in your hangar every day. Get some hours in one or two hours before trying others. Get fully comfortable with each one.

BTW there is a program on avsim written by my son, Scott, that shows your time in each aircraft. Search under "Goodrick" I think it is called "Aircraft Usage".

Also, no need to apologize for taking up my time. It's not like I have a whole lot of things to do each day although this week has been extremely busy in comparison. Tuesday I had to buy and install a new aquarium filter. Wednesday I had a call at breakfast from my friendly water company saying I needed to fix a leak. That got fixed by noon. I have not been able to do a recording for Sound Click yet this week or last week. I can't seem to conjure up a new song - composer's block.