Widescreen gauges/panels

**spitfire9** · 03-15-2008, 02:39 AM

I've seen some 2d panels on Avsim that are supposed to work good with wide screen resolutions. (Fs9)

I have FsPanel Studio and would like to give this a try for the 24" widescreen LCD that I'll be using for my center instrument panel.
The gauges will easily use up the entire 24"lcd.

For example,, would I have to use a background (black) BMP that will be the same resolution as the monitor (1600X900) ?

Or would I have to stick with a 4:3 backgroung bmp and sqeeze the gauges a bit on FsPanel Studio so they look round when stretched on the in game panel ?

I'm suprised I haven't seen more panels optimized for wide screen,,, given the amount of widescreen users out there!

Here are a couple of pics of my Convair580 center panel. I've made most of the gauges myself with Easygauge software and have been using FsPanel Studio for making the panels and placing the gauges.

As you can see the first picture looks OK but when I stretch the panel to cover the entire LCD ,, the gauges flatten out.
panel1.jpg stretchpanel1.jpg

**Trevor Hale** · 03-15-2008, 08:28 AM

If your moving this panel to a widescreen monitor all on it's own you will want it to be the exact size as the resolution of that monitor. Once you figure out one instrument ratio from long to wide etc... buy making adjustments, loading flightsim, and viewing the result over and over again. apply the same mathematics to every other instrument you place with fspanelstudio.

Best regards.

Trev

**Trevor Hale** · 03-15-2008, 08:29 AM

Oh and by the way, you can't make the Background True black... As I am sure you know, this will become transparent.

Trev

**Michael Carter** · 03-15-2008, 09:20 AM

Not sure I understand that Trevor. My panel background is black and always has been through Panel Studio.

**Kennair** · 03-15-2008, 09:30 AM

Spitfire,

I've made many panels for widescreen monitors and using FSPanel Studio it's all too easy.

First as Trevor says, create a background image using any old photo editor. I use the free program PhotoFiltre as it starts up really fast and can do all I need, but if you have or are familiar with the likes of Paint Shop or Photo Shop use these. All you need to do is create an image and save it as a bitmap. Make the image close to black (not black obviously as FS will see it as clear and show the outside view thru it), and resize it to 1600x900 (or whatever is the resolution of the displayed monitor).

Startup FSPanel and create a new panel for the aircraft in question, when it asks do you want a background image, browse to wherever you saved the bmp and FSPanel will import it into the aircrafts panel directory for you. Once done, add the gauges you require on that screen moving them to the required location to fit behind bezels etc. and title it MainPanel or RadioPanel, whatever's appropriate. Save and run FS, open the new aircraft version which will now appear in the dropdown list and see how it looks. Then create another panel for that aircraft for Engine Instruments using the same background image (that's assuming you have multi-widescreen-monitors) and do it all over again with other gauges.

I tend to run FSPanel and FS together on different screens so you can make changes in FSPanel then reload the aircraft instantly in FS to see the changes. You can also use FSPanel on a network computer and simply map the FS directory over the network, do all the editing and save as normal.

Hope that's kind of what you were after?

Ken.

**Kennair** · 03-15-2008, 09:34 AM

Black panels only matter if you have the outside view docked behind it. Once you undock the outside and move it to another screen, black panels are fine because there's nothing to show behind it. You'll notice any main instrument panel windscreen goes black once you undock and move an outside view.

Ken.