Flat Screen Monitors behind instrument panel?

[Crescent]

I was thinking of this: Building the aircraft instrument panel with the holes cut for the instruments. Then take a few flat screen monitors and placing them behind the panel as tight as possible then undocking the instruments to match up. Has anyone tried this? Does it look realistic or no?

I thought of this as an alternative to building your own (which is fairly nightmarish unless you have an electrical/coding background). Let me know your thoughts. Thanks.

[AK Mongo]

many people have done this. This thread: http://www.mycockpit.org/forums/showthread.php/19337-Work-in-progress-MIP has a very good implementation of what you are trying to do. Good Luck!

[Ronson2k9]

Instead of undocking you are better off to create a custom panel for your FSX aircraft using FS Panel Studio (http://www.flight1.com/products.asp?product=FL1-FPS-001). You can create a customized panel that both fits your 'template' and is what you want your panel to be (the way you want it to be arranged). When you have done that. As you load up your aircraft you have your panel load up too. NO setting up the panel and undocking and placing it correctly behind your 'template' everything is ready to go as soon as you load up your plane..

Flight simmers have been doing this for some time now and the advent of LCD monitors made that even more prevalent as you would buy a new monitor (what do you do with the old one.?? well you turn it into your instrument panel of course). Since that time though and the reduction in price of most LCD monitors it's become even better to use them for many obvious reasons.

- Better resolution
- Lighter and easier to 'install'

Best of luck on your build and just take a look at the Photo and Video Gallery (http://www.mycockpit.org/photopost/) for tons of pics on this technique. It's mostly done by us GA pilots out there but the heavies really benefit from it too as most of the real cockpits are 'Glass' these days (LCD panels themselves)...

[Jess]

I have a simple panel for a Bell 206 helicopter, you can see the results if you click on my website below and go about halfway down the page.

-Jess

[Crescent]

Thanks guys for the info. Great projects there. I've decided this is the route to go for sure.

[Scratch]

ok could somebody explain of how to make a custom panel because something is going wrong all the time i try to
Somehow the gauges fail to load or there is something wrong with the background bitmap

[Crescent]

I havn't got to that stage yet....probably in the next few weeks I'll start messing with it, but I'm sure someone in here can shed some light.