Gauges?

[Steve1970]

In building my main panel, I am considering gauges from three companies

1 Project Magenta GA IFR gauges
2 FSexpand
3 GA Panel from Peix


Any experiences and recommendations greatly appreciated, bearing in mind that my favourite is Project Magenta, and although they are more expensive, you do get a copy of Wide FS thrown in if I read it correct.

Any suggestions?

Thanks

Steve.

[No Longer Active]

Here's the low down from my experience of all 3.

Peix is cheap, very good value but has some limitations, you cant resize all the gauges like they say and you cant move all the gauges. It only works with a limited amount of hardware devices and there have been many known issues with software that limits its functionality. Many users buy this to start of with, only when you need more out of your cockpit does peix become limited and of not much use. But excellent value for money, I bought this at first and moved up.

FsXpand is a solid workhorse that does everything you need, very good functionality and its less limited than those like Peix. Only thing I hate about FsXpand is the quality of the gauges, they are not that fantastic looking and not that realistic looking either, looks wise not good but functionality wise...excellent but then the price goes up......all in all a good and reliable bit of software that will do the job nicely, just not that brilliant in looks in my view.

Project Magenta....

If you have the money.....buy it! Best bit of kit you will ever buy, 100% functionality, excellent backgrounds and type templates + black background. Totally resizable and repositionable, there are hundreds of offsets to use, works with practically everything and very reliable. Excellent graphics, easy to use and the best soft gauges on the market....it doesnt get better than this...buy this for professional results as it looks the part...but at 300 euros.....you decide if its worth it!

Good luck!

[Steve1970]

Alex,

The price of the PM software is 1/2 that you mention, perhaps it came down in price since. I agree, I think PM has to be the way to go.

BTW What rotary encoders sit behind your Cessna panel to adjust hdg, baro etc?

Thanks

Steve.

[No Longer Active]

.....PM has dropped in price now since last time I looked...agreed!

As for encoders, I just used plane old 2 bit grey scale encoders, does the job nicely....

Any more questions...fire away....

Good luck!

[Steve1970]

would CTS290 encoders work, have been on the open cockpits site but some of the posts are so old.

Would like to use these directly into the master card, what do you think?

http://www.ctscorp.com/components/datasheets/290.pdf

They are 2-bit Gray and offer a no detent model which would be perfect.

Thanks

Steve

[No Longer Active]

Yes they would work, well with the leo bodnar cards anyway, not too sure if they would work with the OC Master Card but I see no reason why they would not work, I would like a few of these myself as I really like the idea detentless encoders which would be perfect for OBS knobs, but I do like detents with the radio stack......

Good Luck....
Alex