feature requests

[karlagh21]

This looks like a good replacement for my purchased version 2.1 of XXXX where an upgrade to v4 will be quite expensive (which will be borne in mind if donating here).

1. Most of us want to utilise an old PC for the instrument panel and therefore are mainly running old Window versions (mine's Vista). Will you be able to offer a 32-bit version to us?

2. I know we can change the parameters in the .json files but is it possible to use an editor where we can simply move the gauges around on the screen and also scale them?

3. Assuming that we can already use graphics applications to create new .png textures, how can we go about creating brand new gauges?

4. What's are the major differences between this and the Remote-Cockpit that Dragonlaird is developing? https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/virtual-cockpit-remote-cockpit/312958

5. Apart from Github, is there a forum where we can give this application more publicity and help it's development? e.g. MSFS Forum/Self-Service/Home Cockpit Builders or FlightSim.com

6. Lastly: let's give this super application a name!

Really appreciate the effort you've put into this.

[scott-vincent]

Hi,

Glad this may be of use to you. I wrote it for myself and still use it everyday for flying, but also open sourced it so that others can benefit from it too.

I just tinker with it these days rather than adding lots of new features as I prefer to spend my time flying rather than coding :-)

1. You can very easily build a 32-bit version. Visual Studio Community Edition is free. Just download it, load the .sln file and build it. Not sure what problems you might face with 32-bit, never tried it myself. Bear in mind that it runs fine on a Raspberry Pi 4 and they cost around £40 so well worth the investment. Also works out a lot cheaper to run than an old PC, I leave mine on all the time.

2. See the "Keys" section in the Instrument Panel readme. This allows you to move and scale the instruments. Also see the settings file where you can define which instruments you want to include in your panel.

3. Creating new instruments would require some coding skills I'm afraid but you have lots of my examples to learn from ;-)

4. I've never seen that other project. Looks very interesting but also looks abandoned to me. There haven't been any updates for 9 months. Maybe it was too ambitious! It does take a long time to develop something like this. I started on mine before FS2020 came out and I still update it regularly, especially when a new FS2020 update comes out and something breaks!

5. I did publicise it in many of those places in the beginning but people like to spend lots of money on AirManager which is more user friendly I guess.

6. Yes, not very imaginative calling it Instrument Panel but there you go.

Thanks

[karlagh21]

Hey Scott,

You're so kind in responding to me. I'll spend some time developing a 32-bit version and customising your layouts to suit; I'd rather spend 2 weeks' worth of evenings on your project than loads of dollars on XXXX. I had a bad feeling that Dragonlaird had abandoned his elaborate project (but he did initially promise that he wouldn't).

I'll make an attempt to code my own gauges using the source code but I think I'll be taking on too much and will eventually have to buy a suitable application. (I'm currently tweaking Nagler's GaugeBook at the moment: it's free and does the basics with MSFS).

Anyway, very best of luck and many thanks,

[scott-vincent]

I've written a test program so you can confirm Allegro works in 32-bit.

https://github.com/scott-vincent/allegro-test

[karlagh21]

Thanks for the help so far Scott - but I'm not making any leeway on this.

I've considered or worked on several options for a separate MSFS instrument panel -

1. Pay out £64 for upgrade to Air manager. Very much against this as I've already paid £25 for this feature which runs on my 32-bit PC-powered and double-Arduino Beech Baron panel.
2. I'd rather fork out £70 for a Raspberry-Pi and run Scott-Vincent remote instrument panel 64-bit software. I'll consider rebuilding my Beech panel, incorporating this, later.
3. Free GaugeBook runs on a 32-bit remote PC and links to MSFS. The graphics are relatively weak and it is rather jerky in operation - but it works. (One evening's effort).
4. Dragonlaird's free remote cockpit looks really good. It only runs in 64-bit and appears to have lost it's author and future.
5. Use Scott-Vincent remote instrument panel in 32-bit mode on my second PC. I haven't been able to build a 32-bit version using Visual Studio 2022 from the instrument-panel.sln file because it cannot open the allegro.lib file. (Three evening's effort).
6. Use Scott-Vincent remote instrument panel running with Wine 5.0 under 64-bit Ubuntu 20.04. Stuck with lack of vcruntime140_1.dll file; installed Winetricks and vcrun2017 which failed to overcome this. (Two evening's effort).
7. Use wife's Windows 64-bit laptop. Shouldn't even think this.
8. Install my old Windows 7 in place of Vista on (1). Just realised it's 32-bit.

My experiences with (5) and (6) are limited and I don't think I can make any more progress here - but we'll have to see.

[karlagh21]

I've just got (6) to work! Scott's application runs smoothly under Linux on a second PC. I haven't time just now, so, I'll detail my setups in a separate Issue thread and also publish it in the MSFS Forum in a couple of days.

[scott-vincent]

Why would you run instrument-panel under Wine when it was written to be cross-platform. It builds perfectly fine under Linux. I run it on 32-bit Linux (Rasperry Pi OS) on my Raspberry Pi 4.

[karlagh21]

Sorry Scott. I was fixated on running Instrument-Panel on 64-bit Windows and missed the fact that it and Allegro could run on Linux. I'll install Ubuntu 20.04 on my Beech Baron PC and run your great program there. I will make a small donation and many thanks.

[fweinrebe]

Please let us know how running it on Ubuntu worked out? Have a old PC lying around and would like to give it a go. I already have it running in 64bit Windows 10, but like to see if it works fine on Linux.

[scott-vincent]

@karlagh21 No problem, glad you find it useful. @fweinrebe To try it out on a different platform you can use this small standalone tester first:

https://github.com/scott-vincent/allegro-test

Once you get the Allegro5 library installed, if this builds and runs ok then you know instrument-panel will too. Allegro5 install should be as simple as 'sudo apt install liballegro5-dev' or whetever the equivalent is on your platform of choice. I believe Allegro5 is quite widely available which is why I chose it.

[fweinrebe]

... To try it out on a different platform you can use this small standalone tester first:

https://github.com/scott-vincent/allegro-test

Once you get the Allegro5 library installed, if this builds and runs ok then you know instrument-panel will too. Allegro5 install should be as simple as 'sudo apt install liballegro5-dev' or whetever the equivalent is on your platform of choice. I believe Allegro5 is quite widely available which is why I chose it.

Many thanks Scott. Excellent tester app. Will give it a bash.

[karlagh21]

Will someone create a Windows 32-bit version of Scott's-Instrument-Panel, or, write a step-by-step method of doing so? It would also be nice if the same was carried out for a Linux version. Some of us are not capable of starting to learn VS2022 or terminal commands just for this one application.

Anyway, I currently have Instrument-Panel running on a client Asrock Q6600 board mounted on the rear of an 18" monitor in Wine 6.0 under Ubuntu 20.04. My method was:

1. install Ubuntu [use 'advanced/no ACPI' if there is a hang during startup]
2. install Wine by following https://wine.htmlvalidator.com/install-wine-on-ubuntu-20.04.html [avoid just using 'sudo apt-get install wine']
3. configure Wine - 'winecfg' [set default applications to Windows 10]
4. install Winetricks by following https://askubuntu.com/questions/755059/how-do-i-get-the-latest-version-of-winetricks-on-ubuntu
5. install visual C with winetricks using terminal: 'winetricks'/install a Windows DLL/vcruntime2019 [check that you have vcruntime140_1.dll in .Wine/C/Windows/System32 directory; if not, grab a copy and paste it in]
6. copy 'instrument-panel-v1.6.0-Windows-x64' into your home directory [may as well copy the other two folders]
7. using terminal, change directory to the one containing the .exe file
8. using terminal: 'export MESA_GL_VERSION_OVERRIDE=4.6' [to avoid a graphics error; this is a temporary fix and no long-term solution is at hand]
9. using terminal: 'wine instrument-panel.exe'
10. of course, run MSFS2020 and 'instrument-data-link.exe' on your host PC.
11. if someone could get (9) to run automatically on startup, it would be useful.

[karlagh21]

Just had a couple of hours attempting to create the application in Ubuntu. I worked on the 'instrument-panel-1.6.0.tar.gz' file in the 'instrument-panel-master' folder. Managed to unpack it to a folder named 'instrument-panel-1.6.0' which didn't respond to ./configure, make and sudo make install commands. I think the 'instrument-panel-1.6.0.tar.gz' is a different structure from the 'instrument-panel-v1.6.0.tar.gz-raspi4.tar.gz' file and therefore can't be compiled into linux.

[scott-vincent]

Please try typing the following commands on Ubuntu:

sudo apt install liballegro5-dev
sudo apt install git
git clone https://github.com/scott-vincent/allegro-test
cd allegro-test
chmod +x *.sh
./make.sh
./run.sh
(Press ESC to quit)

if that works, use the following commands to install and run instrument-panel:

git clone https://github.com/scott-vincent/instrument-panel
cd instrument-panel
chmod +x *.sh
./make-ubuntu.sh
./run.sh
(Press ESC to quit)

If that works you will need to edit the settings file to point it at your PC running instrument-data-link.

[fweinrebe]

Thanks Scott.

I used Ubuntu 20.04 LTS and followed the steps above. Works in 64-bit Ubuntu like a charm. Compiled 1.6.2. :-)

[karlagh21]

I haven't been able to get it to work over the past two days. Tried two clean installations of 64-bit Ububtu 20.04 LTS and one of 18.04 LTS. At each stage I've done updates and routinely installed Nvidia 340 drivers for my 1280 x 1024 monitor with GeForce GT 240 . I've copied and pasted the commands above each time into the terminal. (I'll work on comparing the Nvidia and the optional xserver-xorg-video-nouveau driver effects tomorrow). The Allegro test looks like its working at first sight, with nicely defined dial graphics and rotating needles, but closer examination shows uneven, transparent rectangular shapes overlaying the well-defined needles. The Instrument Panel layout is there but only the Trim Flaps and RPM Savage Cub gauges look OK. The other gauges are like badly pasted cut out areas or are distorted or obscured. There is also no data link. As mentioned, the Windows version of Instrument Panel runs OK under the 20.04 operating system; yet to be tested under 18.04. Are there any troubleshooting actions I could take?

[scott-vincent]

I didn't mention data-link in my instructions above because I assumed you knew how to install that. It must be installed on the same PC that is running Flight Simulator, not on Ubuntu. Just go to the following page:

https://github.com/scott-vincent/instrument-data-link/releases

and download this file:

instrument-data-link-v1.6.1-windows-x64.zip

Unzip the file on your PC to any folder you like and double-click instrument-data-link.exe

[karlagh21]

Thank you for the support Scott - it's really appreciated. I know about your tailored data link and how to set and use it; I can run MSFS2020 on my host PC and use your Panel on a secondary Wi-Fi PC running in Wine under 64-bit Ubuntu. However, the link nor the graphics didn't work when the Panel was compiled to run in Linux. Fweinrebe gets his to run in Linux though (suitable emoticon here). I've tried this in Ubuntu 20.04, 18.04 and, just now with 16.04, which needs extra libraries to build the apps. No links were established and also the graphics were badly distorted. I'm running out of ideas to try.

[karlagh21]

One more shot at clean install of Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, which was updated and video driver left as is. Scott's Linux commands were copied and pasted one by one. Allegro test gave corrupted texture needles over good dials and the Instrument Panel was broken and distorted. Hey ho.

[karlagh21]

Managed to make it work in Ububtu 20.04 by removing the Nvidia GT240 graphics card and ensuring that just the motherboard graphics were enabled in BIOS. That's it. Now I'm getting Instrument-Panel to autostart on the dedicated secondary PC. If I come across any working settings for my GT240 or GF8400 cards I'll pass them on.

[karlagh21]

Just to finish this thread - I have SV-Instrument-Panel running behind a replica Beech Baron fascia on a separate PC under Windows 10 taken from wife's 64-bit HP laptop. Her laptop currently runs under Ubuntu 20.04 - it ran really badly under Windows 10 for two years - and I noted the product key from 'sudo strings/sys/firmware/acpi/tables/msdm'. Windows 10 was finally installed on my secondary PC after trying XP, Vista, W7, Ubuntu 14, 16, 18, 20 with Wine and without. The GT240 graphics card seemed to be the main culprit, interfering with many installs and graphics settings - so it's now in the bin. Thanks again Scott, please keep up your generous effort.