Sunday, August 7, 2011

Ifly 737 NG FSX weather radar

Many of the latest FSX airplanes are lacking a weather radar. I know because of  the way FSX weather is programed it is difficult to make  a  realistic weather radar, still my own view is that it will still be good to have one no matter how accurate it is, just to add to the  overall realism of the simulation.
If you are missing a  weather radar in your Ifly 737 NG for FSX and you own WX500 package from Reality XP it is  possible  to add that one in the place of the lower DU. Not the most realistical place in the cockpit, but  there isn't much room  to place it in another position. If you are using the MAP/EFIS combination of  displays, the lower DU is seldomly used anyways.

The instalation is easy.
Firs thing first make a backup of the panel.cfg of the 737 variant you want to  add the radar to to  be able  to revert if something is not right;
  1. Using the WX500  config tool provided by Reality XP with the instalation of the  weather radar, add the radar to  the 737 panel of your choice (the variant you are usually using).  This  will add  the radar to the 2D pannel as popup. 
  2. Now the tricky part open  the panel.cfg  of the  variant you are changing with notepad and look for the [VCockpit01] section of  the  file (I assume you  are familiar with the structure  of a panel.cfg file). This is where the virtual cockpit gauges are defined.
  3. Comment this line by adding two slashes"//": //gauge07=iFly737-BBJ!LOWER_DU,247,237,247,237,VC
  4. Now add under the commented line the follwing line: gauge07=rxpWX500!RDR,247,237,247,237
  5. Save the file and you  should  be done. Similar setup should  work for FS2004 but gauge names are different.
Make sure you are using and EFIS/MAP configured aircraft so you don't miss  important features  in lower DU display.

LE: Add this in a RXPWX500.ini named file placed in your aircrafts main  directory to make the gauge appear without the frame and with click spots that appear on mouse over:

[SETTINGS]
Wx500Popup=15500
NoFrame=On


Disclaimer: As always do this at your own risk and make sure you backup any  changed files so you can revert quickly if things are not working.