CFS PANEL CLINIC

 
FIXING COMMON PROBLEMS WITH IMPORTED PANELS

One of the features I like most about CFS is the 3d panels. They're a major improvement on the flat 2d panels in FS98.

Many people experience problems during their first attempts to install FS98 aircraft & panels to CFS mainly due to this feature. Most FS98 panels can be easily reconfigured to work in CFS but some are totally unsuitable.

Similar questions crop up time after time on the subject so I thought I’d write this in an attempt to answer the most common ones. If you recognise one of these problems & would like to rectify it, why not print this out & give it a try. It’s surprisingly simple.


BLACK (OR GREY) WINDOW SYNDROME
Ever installed a panel to find the windscreen is black & you can’t see out?

BEFORE
AFTER

Note: If you have this problem with panels of all imported aircraft please try this first. Find COMBATFS.CFG in the CFS main folder. Open COMBATFS.CFG in Notepad & scroll down until you see the PANEL_MASKING_OFF= entry under [PREFS]
It should look like this: PANEL_MASKING_OFF=0
If the entry is any different change it to PANEL_MASKING_OFF=0 Exit Notepad saving changes.
Check it out in Free Flight to see if that fixed it. This simple tweak could well solve the problem. If not, please read on.


This is easily fixed if you can use a paint program. (My favourite is Paint Shop Pro, but MS Paint will do it.)
Here’s what you do. It’s very simple.

Please make backup copies of any files you intend modifying in case anything goes wrong.

Start your favourite paint program & find the main panel bitmap in the panel which has the problem.
Open it up & zoom in as much as you can on the very top left corner of the bitmap. You need to be able to see the individual pixels if possible.

CFS uses the pixel in the 0,0 position, that’s the extreme top left pixel, to determine the colour transparency of the panel.
Whatever colour the rest of the panel is, even if this part will not display as transparent in CFS, that top left pixel needs to be True Black. Even if it looks black, check it with the Dropper tool..

True Black is identified as: red=0, green=0, blue=0.
Select this on the colour palette, use the tiniest paintbrush you can, (one pixel if possible) & paint that pixel in the top corner True Black.
(Some 1024x768 or higher resolution bitmaps might need the adjascent pixels painted True Black as well to work in low-resolution settings.)

That's it. Exit the paint program, saving changes to the bitmap, fire up CFS and try it.


BLACK BAND SYNDROME - PANEL LOCK-UP

This is where you see black bands at the bottom of the screen in side views. The forward view might also look wrong. Some examples can cause noticeable lock-up problems. It happens mainly with imported aircraft aliased to the CFS Converter panels & imported FS98 panels.

The CFS default panels are configured in 3d mode. The CFS Converter panels & the majority of FS98 panels are configured in 2d. Most FS98 panels can be easily reconfigured in 3d mode, which will get rid of the black bands, but you may find that the mouseable functions no longer work.
(It depends on how they're configured. This problem can also be fixed but it's more complex & not part of this tutorial.)

If you can type an E-mail you can do this. I can do it in one minute flat. Here’s how:

Go into the CFS Aircraft folder & open up the panel folder of the aircraft you’re having problems with.
There are two possibilities.


1. CFS CONVERTER PANELS

If there’s only one file in the Panel folder it should be named panel.cfg. This tells you the aircraft does not have its own panel but shares an existing one with another aircraft. To find out which one, open panel.cfg in Notepad. (Let Notepad become the default program for .cfg files, saves time.)

You should see something like this:
[fltsim]
alias=FSFSConv\panel.Recip.rg.2

The panel is aliased to one of the CFS Converter panels in the CFS\Aircraft\fsfsconv folder.
These are special generic panels for aliasing imported aircraft to. While this idea overcomes problems with installing FS98 aircraft to CFS, the Converter panels are configured in 2d & not really suitable.
Why not re-alias the panel.cfg to one of the CFS default panels instead, like this:
Change the second line to read:
alias=P51d\panel

Exit Notepad, saving changes. Your aircraft will now use the default P51d panel.
You can re-alias the panel to any aircraft in your CFS\Aircraft directory providing it has its own panel.
It's not case sensitive but you must use the exact folder name of the slave aircraft in place of P51d.
(Note: The I in Spitfire_MkI is an uppercase letter I, not number 1)

Be careful, as it won’t work if you make a mistake. Your plane may not even show up in CFS.


2. IMPORTED PANELS

The panel folder of an imported panel should contain a panel.cfg file & one or more bitmaps.
Open the panel.cfg in Notepad. At the top you will see something like this:
(I’ve used a simple example for clarity. Panel configurations vary considerably.)

(There may be more Window Titles but ignore them for now.)
// Panel Configuration file
// Myplane
[Window Titles]
window00=Myplane
[Window00]
file=Myplane.bmp
size_mm=1024
window_size_ratio=1.0
position=7
visible=1
ident=0

To convert the panel to CFS 3d mode & get rid of the black bands, modify it like this:
(You only need to add the line in red.)
// Panel Configuration file
// Myplane
[Window Titles]
window00=Myplane
[Window00]
file=Myplane.bmp
size_mm=1024
window_size_ratio=1.0
render_3d_window=1
position=7
visible=1
ident=0

That’s that. Now scroll down to the very bottom of the page.

You should see something like this:
[Default View]
X=0
Y=0
SIZE_X=8191
SIZE_Y=5000

This is most important. If it’s not there, type it in. The first four lines need to be exactly as shown.
If they’re not, change them.

The fifth, SIZE_Y, controls how far the outside view window extends down the screen.
It also controls the position of the gunsight. You might wish to experiment by changing it later. Lower numbers will raise it, higher ones will lower it.

Under no circumstances go higher than SIZE_Y=6150
SIZE_Y=5000 is OK for now.

Right, if you’ve done that, exit Notepad saving the changes.

Fire up CFS & try it, I hope you’ll notice the difference.

© Grumpy's Lair 2002