GTN750/650 Overlays

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AnthonySullivan
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GTN750/650 Overlays

#1 Post by AnthonySullivan »

I realize that people have been asking for an overlay for the GTN750 and 650 from Reality XP but the answer has been to make one ourselves.
Does Air Manager plan to issue one for us at any time soon? It seems inefficient for large numbers of customers to struggle to make their own.

thanks
Anthony Sullivan

Mike Horsten
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Joined: Tue Dec 01, 2020 8:50 am

Re: GTN750/650 Overlays

#2 Post by Mike Horsten »

I would be willing to pay for it.
Building a home Cessna 172SP Steam. X-plane/MFS2020
(ex Name on Airmanager forum Polarair)

AnthonySullivan
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Re: GTN750/650 Overlays

#3 Post by AnthonySullivan »

One other point is that you cannot click through a panel (even though it is transparent) to operate the GTN 750 so you have to follow Russ Barlow's excellent advice to reduce the size of the panel and place it alongside the GTN 750. So making an overlay will not work until Air Manager fix this issue.

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Sling
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Re: GTN750/650 Overlays

#4 Post by Sling »

AnthonySullivan wrote: Sun Feb 07, 2021 2:55 am One other point is that you cannot click through a panel (even though it is transparent) to operate the GTN 750 so you have to follow Russ Barlow's excellent advice to reduce the size of the panel and place it alongside the GTN 750. So making an overlay will not work until Air Manager fix this issue.
That’s not the case. Quite a while ago it may of been but I have a GTN overlay working right in the middle of an AM panel. I can touch the GTN screen and operate as normal. No special tricks needed. If you can’t get it to work it may be your graphics setting or your graphics hardware/driver.

FlyerDavidUK
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Re: GTN750/650 Overlays

#5 Post by FlyerDavidUK »

I still have this exact problem. Workaround up to now has been to create 4 separate panels which are positioned around a hole in the middle of the screen for the RXP GTN650, plus a fifth panel that runs a single small overlay for the Knobster. It's quite a faff starting up and shutting down 5 panels each time I fly, and made it difficult to export the panel to share with my (real world) aircraft co-owner.

The alternative is to select transparent mode for a single panel. This does work but results in all the gaps between existing instruments showing through from the blue Windows desktop in the background.

What I've never quite been able to get to work is enabling a custom image for the panel background. I created a simple one, all black with a hole cut-out where the 650 appears. On panel preview, the hole shows up as a white rectangle (although I checked that in the PNG image it is not filled), and again also when active/running.

It would be great to solve this problem so that I could consolidate everything into a single panel.

Am I missing something? Has anyone else been able to get this to work correctly?

Running X-plane 11.52 with AM 3.7.10 on a pretty standard WIndows 10 PC with RTX 2060 video card, touch screen and knobster.
Everything else works great and I am a very satisfied AM customer and highly recommend the product to others.
UK Private pilot and flight instructor with CPL/IR/FI/IRI approx 2000 hours offering remote flight instruction via Zoom
See my FlyerDavidUK.com website for trip reports around Europe/US, my training experience and services offered

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Ralph
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Re: GTN750/650 Overlays

#6 Post by Ralph »

You can create a custom background image with a hole in it, that's how it is done in the premium Cessna 172 panel for example. There's not really a good and easy solution for it I'm afraid.

There's a GTN750 overlay available in Air Manager 4.0. The 650 is still on my to-do list.

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Sling
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Re: GTN750/650 Overlays

#7 Post by Sling »

FlyerDavidUK wrote: Fri Mar 05, 2021 9:04 am I still have this exact problem. Workaround up to now has been to create 4 separate panels which are positioned around a hole in the middle of the screen for the RXP GTN650, plus a fifth panel that runs a single small overlay for the Knobster. It's quite a faff starting up and shutting down 5 panels each time I fly, and made it difficult to export the panel to share with my (real world) aircraft co-owner.

The alternative is to select transparent mode for a single panel. This does work but results in all the gaps between existing instruments showing through from the blue Windows desktop in the background.

What I've never quite been able to get to work is enabling a custom image for the panel background. I created a simple one, all black with a hole cut-out where the 650 appears. On panel preview, the hole shows up as a white rectangle (although I checked that in the PNG image it is not filled), and again also when active/running.

It would be great to solve this problem so that I could consolidate everything into a single panel.

Am I missing something? Has anyone else been able to get this to work correctly?

Running X-plane 11.52 with AM 3.7.10 on a pretty standard WIndows 10 PC with RTX 2060 video card, touch screen and knobster.
Everything else works great and I am a very satisfied AM customer and highly recommend the product to others.
Please refer to my previous post. The multiple panels method is so out dated now and is totally not necessary. I have many panels for different aircraft with transparent cutouts for GNS, GTN or G1000 combinations to show through. Have you checked your graphics driver. Don't take windows word for it that you are up to date, go and get the latest from your graphics card manufacturer. I also have a little tutorial on my youtube channel shwing how its done.

jasong
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Re: GTN750/650 Overlays

#8 Post by jasong »

If you prefer a physical instrument? This is instrument can easily be made with a small touch screen from ebay, rotary encoders, a couple of push buttons, plastic enclosure case and an Arduino. I had it wired up and running in afternoon (I am no expert :lol: ). I also used SimVim so I didn't need to use AM. It took about 2 mins to code and flash the Arduino.

FlyerDavidUK
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Re: GTN750/650 Overlays

#9 Post by FlyerDavidUK »

I've spent quite a bit of time trying to get this to work, but to no avail.

- Latest video drivers installed (NVIDIA 461.72) and Windows 10 updates
- Single panel with Custom Panel image

The image is located in a directory not related to any Air Manager instrument or panel - unlike instruments, the panels don't seem to have their own resources directory.

I wondered if it was the graphic file format of the custom panel image I was using - I created this initially with GIMP but then also tried with SkinMan. The Windows Picture viewer doesn't help because it doesn't show transparent parts of any image, only in white.

The option to build a physical panel is less attractive to me because my PC can only drive 4 screens which I'm already doing, and this needs to be a screen controlled by X-Plane rather than using Air Player to remain compatible with RealityXP and Garmin Trainer. I also like the ability to instantly reconfigure the panel for different aircraft, including swapping the type of box.

I've attached a Dropbox link to the custom panel file here and the panel config screenshot here.

I would be very grateful if someone could check whether it's got the transparent hole in the middle and in the right format, and whether this works in their Air Manager or not.

--
Windows 10 PC
NVIDIA RTX 2060
Air Manager V3.7.10
X-plane 11.52
BullGuard Antivirus
UK Private pilot and flight instructor with CPL/IR/FI/IRI approx 2000 hours offering remote flight instruction via Zoom
See my FlyerDavidUK.com website for trip reports around Europe/US, my training experience and services offered

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Sling
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Re: GTN750/650 Overlays

#10 Post by Sling »

Let me guess. You have no apparent cut out. Right?

In fact you do but you have the background set to black which just happens to be the same colour as your panel. Hence you see no cut out. If you open the background colour chooser and slide all 4 sliders to 0 and then click save it should set the background to Transparent.

Now run your panel and voila.

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