Panel/gauge lighting question

[aeromed202]

Most 2D panels you can alter night lighting in the color section of the panel.cfg. However, other 2D panels have certain gauges that don't respond to those edits and stay very bright. Is there another place these can be toned down?

[AndyG43]

Can you give an example Aeromed?

[aeromed202]

I've been working with PADs B1900C and thought I'd darken the night panel a little so on that one the artificial horizon, HSI and VSI didn't darken with everything else. They look to maybe default FS gauges. I don't have a way to open gauge files but in panel.cfg each entry is followed by four numbers. Do any of these designate a color or brightness? I don't play with gauges because one wrong move and plooie goes the sim.

[Tom Clayton]

The four numbers following the gauge name are for position and size on the panel. The only way to edit the brightness is to edit the gauge itself. If they're written in XML, you can extract them from their cab file and possibly locate a line in the code that you can alter. To get the file back into a cab, you would need to extract the entire gauge to a folder, then use the cabdir.exe included with FS to recompile the cab. On the other hand, you could just leave everything in a folder instead and FS would be able to load the panel a little quicker at startup. If the gauge is part of an older style *.gau file, you won't be able to edit the code without some way to decompile the C++ source.

[aeromed202]

I tried a few other AC and am reasonably certain that the gauges I'm referring to are FS stock. Pity they don't dim when flying at night. I don't feel tempted to experiment at this point but if anyone else wants to try more power to you. Thanks Tom.

[AndyG43]

Finally managed to take a look at hat panel, sorry been a bit busy this afternoon.

As far as I can tell, the VSI is an xml gauge, but it's in the B1900 cabfile, so tricky to get to it; the others are the stock Kingair gauges (I think). Bob May looks into these forums sometimes, hopefully he'll be able to shed light (pun very much intended) on your problem.

[Dev One]

Certainly do not change any of the 4 values quoted in the panel.cfg file, they are positional ( horizontal & vertical position by pixels) & size values ( again horiz & vert pixels).
Lighting is usually in the gauge file & one probably has a _L.bmp file for lighting within the .xml file. If its a standard 'Microsoft' read across .dll gauge, then I think there is no hope for changing unless you are an experienced software engineer. One can of course import or create your own guages & they do not need to be 'cabbed', as long as all the others are not cabbed & in a common named file - e.g. an name followed by an exclamation mark in the panel.cfg file - but do not use the exclamation mark in the file name!!!.
HTH
Keith

[aeromed202]

Way out of my league so I'll be content with the rest of the 99.9% terrific visuals FS offers.:jump:

[Isra]

Hi!
The 3 gauges you mentioned were done in ++C. It is basically possible to change the used bmp's in a .gau File, but my Tool can not open the king9.gau File, I get a run-time error. Don't as me why!
But all in all the Gauge-Illimination in this panel looks very good ;)