RKG_fuelstat.gau August 01, 2002 version 2.0 by Robert K. Guy What's New __________ V2.0 now runs under Windows 98/ME/2000/XP and is designed for FS2002 only. This version (V2.0) is a drop-in replacement for previous versions of the gauge - it will not break a panel designed for a previous version. The gauge operation is identical to previous versions. The name of the gauge may have to be changed if the designer of a panel has changed the name. It is usually only necessary to put the gauge in the gauges folder overwriting any previous version of the gauge. If the designer of the panel has customized this gauge by changing any of the bitmaps then the bitmaps in this version will need to be similarly changed. This gauge may work with FS2000 and CFS2 but it has not been fully tested. The Gauge _________ This is a fuelstatus gauge for FS2002 and Win98/ME/2000/XP. There is another 'famous brand' gauge that is similar but it does not support FS2000/FS2002 type aircraft. This gauge is entirely original and only visually resembles that gauge. This gauge contains no funky code that prevents you from playing with it. You may rename it or replace or modify the graphics. All of the bitmaps used are opaque and the gauges may be placed on any background bitmap. This is an FS2002 multi gauge. It contains 3 basic gauges in a variety of presentation formats. There is an airspeed/groundspeed gauge, a round fuelstatus gauge and a square fuelstatus gauge. There are variations of these gauges to support FS98 aircraft, FS2000/FS2002 reciprocating (prop) aircraft and FS2000/FS2002 turbine (jet) aircraft. All of these gauges share their code and resources - they effectively become repeaters. When multiple instances of a gauge are installed in a panel all of the instances share their settings. A setting on one gauge is repeated on the other. Since this is an FS2002 gauge you may install as many instances of a gauge as you like. FS2002 regards this as a single gauge and will maintain one copy in memory but will display multiple copies. FS2002 will not make additional copies of the gauge file in order to display multiple instances. The airspeed gauge is a stand-alone gauge and is included in some of the round fuelstatus gauges and some of the square fuelstatus gauges. The stand-alone airspeed gauge does not repeat with the round and square gauges. All round fuelstatus gauges repeat to each other. All square fuelstatus gauges repeat to each other. The round gauges do not repeat to the square gauges. The round gauges are named 'FuelStatus_' with a suffix indicating which type aircraft is supported and which visual appearance is obtained. The gauges: for all FS98 aircraft description ___________________ ___________________ FuelStatus_98 with a bezel (frame around gauge) with airspeed FuelStatus_98_nb without a bezel (for bitmaps w/gauges built-in) FuelStatus_98_nb_ns no bezel + no airspeed FuelStatus_98_ns no airspeed for FS2000/CFS2/FS2002 reciprocating (prop) engine aircraft (like a C182) ___________________ FuelStatus_recip FuelStatus_recip_nb FuelStatus_recip_nb_ns FuelStatus_recip_ns for FS2000/CFS2/FS2002 turbine (jet) engine aircraft (and most turboprops) ___________________ FuelStatus_turbine FuelStatus_turbine_nb FuelStatus_turbine_nb_ns FuelStatus_turbine_ns The square gauges are named 'FuelStatusSq_' with a suffix indicating which type aircraft is supported and which visual appearance is obtained. The gauges: for all FS98 aircraft description ___________________ ___________________ FuelStatusSq_98 the square gauge (with no airspeed) FuelStatusSq_98_spd with an airspeed display below FuelStatusSq_98_wide with an airspeed display to the right for FS2000/CFS2/FS2002 reciprocating (prop) engine aircraft (like a C182) ___________________ FuelStatusSq_recip FuelStatusSq_recip_spd FuelStatusSq_recip_wide for FS2000/CFS2/FS2002 turbine (jet) engine aircraft (and most turboprops) ___________________ FuelStatusSq_turbine FuelStatusSq_turbine_spd FuelStatusSq_turbine_wide The extraction syntax for this gauge is: Original size of the airspeed gauge: 176x121 _____________________________________________________ RKG_fuelstat!Airspeed, xxx, yyy, www Original size of the round gauge: 302x302 _____________________________________________________ RKG_fuelstat!FuelStatus_98, xxx, yyy, www RKG_fuelstat!FuelStatus_98_nb, xxx, yyy, www RKG_fuelstat!FuelStatus_98_nb_ns, xxx, yyy, www RKG_fuelstat!FuelStatus_98_ns, xxx, yyy, www RKG_fuelstat!FuelStatus_recip, xxx, yyy, www RKG_fuelstat!FuelStatus_recip_nb, xxx, yyy, www RKG_fuelstat!FuelStatus_recip_nb_ns, xxx, yyy, www RKG_fuelstat!FuelStatus_recip_ns, xxx, yyy, www RKG_fuelstat!FuelStatus_turbine, xxx, yyy, www RKG_fuelstat!FuelStatus_turbine_nb, xxx, yyy, www RKG_fuelstat!FuelStatus_turbine_nb_ns, xxx, yyy, www RKG_fuelstat!FuelStatus_turbine_ns, xxx, yyy, www Original size of the square gauge: 236x127 I use this gauge with Copilot from Abacus in a separate panel. _____________________________________________________ RKG_fuelstat!FuelStatusSq_98, xxx, yyy, www RKG_fuelstat!FuelStatusSq_recip, xxx, yyy, www RKG_fuelstat!FuelStatusSq_turbine, xxx, yyy, www Original size of the square with airspeed gauge: 236x183 _____________________________________________________ RKG_fuelstat!FuelStatusSq_98_spd, xxx, yyy, www RKG_fuelstat!FuelStatusSq_recip_spd, xxx, yyy, www RKG_fuelstat!FuelStatusSq_turbine_spd, xxx, yyy, www Original size of the wide with airspeed gauge: 400x127 Sized to be used in a separate panel with CoPilot from Abacus. _____________________________________________________ RKG_fuelstat!FuelStatusSq_98_wide, xxx, yyy, www RKG_fuelstat!FuelStatusSq_recip_wide, xxx, yyy, www RKG_fuelstat!FuelStatusSq_turbine_wide, xxx, yyy, www AN EXAMPLE __________ This is what I use in my C182 panel. Included in this archive is the bitmap needed for this. Your window number may not be 05! [Window05] file=copilot_fs.bmp size_mm=400 windowsize_ratio=0.35 position=2 visible=0 ident=ANNUNCIATOR2_PANEL gauge00=CoPilot, 0,0,400 gauge01=RKG_fuelstat!FuelStatusSq_recip, 166,166,236 OPERATION OF THE GAUGE ______________________ AIRSPEED/GROUNDSPEED The airspeed gauge will change its' units of display when left-clicked. The display is initially Knots and changes to MPH then KPH then back to Knots on each click. This applies to the stand-alone gauge and the airspeed gauge that appears in some of the fuelstatus gauges. The airspeed value is TAS or IAS and dependent on the realism settings. The groundspeed value is true groundspeed in the forward direction. The groundspeed value is not reliable while on the ground. FUELSTATUS The gauge has on the left top a low-fuel indicator that indicates the Microsoft FS2000 low-fuel status. It flashes red then turns solid red driven by the built-in FS2000 code. I haven't been able to confirm what MS thinks is a low-fuel condition. It seems to be arbitrary. On the top left is a units indicator light. You can left click it to change the units used in the display. When green it uses US/English units and when yellow it uses Metric units. On the bottom of the gauge are the following indicators/buttons: FLOW : fuelflow REM : remaining fuel USED : fuel used so far TtoE : time to empty in hours:mins RNG : range (until empty) Units used: GPH - gallons per hour PPH - pounds per hour LPH - liters per hour KgH - kilograms per hour GAL - gallons LBS - pounds L - liters Kg - kilograms KN - nautical miles MI - US miles Knt - Knots MPH - miles per hour KM - kilometers KPH - kilometers per hour Left clicking a button lights it up and indicates what is being displayed on the gauge. Some of the buttons can be clicked again to change what is being displayed. Click again to change the color of the indicator and the display changes as follows: units=green (US) units=yellow (METRIC) ___________________ ____________________ button green yellow green yellow ____________________________________________________________ FLOW GPH PPH LPH KgPH REM GAL LBS L Kg USED GAL LBS L Kg NOTE: You can right click the USED button to reset used fuel to 0. You could use this feature to measure fuel use over a flight segment. The fuel used calculation takes into account the addition of fuel. If you use the Aircraft|Fuel menu to add fuel (or any other method) the gauge will continue to add to fuel used. If you land and refuel, for example, the fuel used quantity will not be reset - it will continue to add up resulting in a fuel used value greater than the total fuel capacity of the aircraft. If you change aircraft inside the simulation to an aircraft containing this gauge in a panel, the gauge is freshly installed and the fuel used is set to 0. TtoE Time to empty does not change when clicked. RANGE: The distance displayed is range until empty based on current speed and fuel consumption. No assumption is made in consideration of lower fuel use during descent, approach and landing. The groundspeed values are true groundspeed in the forward direction. The groundspeed values are not reliable while on the ground. units=green (US) green yellow blue red ________________________________________________________________ RNG KN MI Knt (groundspeed) MPH (groundspeed) units=yellow (METRIC) green yellow blue red ________________________________________________________________ RNG KN KM Knt (groundspeed) KPH (groundspeed) NOTE: When the low-fuel light is red, when FS2002 signals a low-fuel state, the color of the display will change to orange. REM (remaining fuel), TtoE (time to empty) and RNG (range) will change color. TO INSTALL __________ Unzip the file, RKG_fuelstat.gau, into your FS2002 gauges folder. OR... Unzip the zip file anywhere and move RKG_fuelstat.gau to your FS2002 gauges folder. If you want to use the included bitmap, I'm assuming you know how to create a panel and edit it and you'll know what to do with the bitmap. Put the bitmap into the folder containing the panel.cfg or put it into any folder and use a relative or absolute address. See also the example above. Ex: inside the panel's folder ......... file=copilot_fs.bmp inside \aircraft\copilot .......... file=..\..\copilot\copilot_fs.bmp A NOTE ______ This gauge was tested with WinXP with service pack 1 and Q306676 hot-fix from Microsoft which includes a new D3D8.dll for Windows DirectDraw3D. The Q306676 may not be required for all installations and fixes some Video card related problems. The Q306676 hot-fix is available from the WinXP update site at Microsoft.com. This gauge was tested with NVidia geForce2 and geForce4 video cards. This gauge may seem large but 531Kb is the bitmaps. The code that runs the gauges is small and fairly fast. The bitmaps you don't use aren't kept in memory, only the code is permanently resident. The code used by FS2002 to operate the gauge is about 12Kb in size. I have done nothing slick in the code - it does use FSUIPC but does not require any special handling. If the gauge seems not to respond, for example displaying 0 fuel flow, remember that aircraft can be of three varieties: FS98 imported aircraft, FS2000/FS2002 prop aircraft and FS2000/FS2002 turbine aircraft. Many available aircraft advertise that they are FS2000/FS2002 aircraft when they are really made over FS98 aircraft. Some turboprop aircraft and helicopters are reciprocating engine in their .air files and some are turbine engine. I have yet to find an aircraft that can't use this gauge. If you believe this gauge is causing your FS2002 to fail just stop using it. This gauge can not damage your FS2002 files. The behavior of the previous version (V1.0) of this gauge has been fixed. When the V1.0 gauge was run under WinXP and FS2002 it would cause FS2002 to abruptly close with no warning or error message. This was apparently a WinXP problem possibly related to the inclusion of debugging info and exception handling code in WinXP. This gauge now includes exception handling code which makes it somewhat larger and unnecessarily complicated but does not seem to slow down FS2002. Copyright 2002 Robert K. Guy. You may not make money with this gauge in any way whatsoever but you may freely distribute this gauge with any panel you design that is exclusively freeware. You are also free to upload this gauge to any other FS site that does not charge a fee for access or for downloads. This is Freeware. Bob Guy zbobg@juno.com