dll gauges

The F-18 only has no panel bitmap, and one gauge on the main panel. The gauge itself is drawn at run time, so it has no bitmaps either. If you open the F-18 and see a black rectangle, you're seeing the panel correctly.

The F-18 HUD_2D gauge internal version number is 800, which identifies it as a FS2002 gague, regardless of which version of FS it's delivered in. All non-XML gauges are in reality DLL files. Microsoft just got lazy with FSX and was no longer renaming them all .GAU.

You can can check the SDK for more info.

FSPS complains that the Window01 entry does not exist in the F-18, because it doesn't - the windows are misnumbered in the panel.cfg file. If you save the file FSPS will fix this for you.

The EH101 panel.cfg is totally screwed up and starts with Window02. FSPS will only fix one out of sequence window. Note the SDK says that windows must start with Window00 and increase sequentially. You can get around this by manually editing the panel.cfg and renumber the two windows to Window00 and Window01. Future FSPS version will be better able to fix these careless Microsoft bugs.

FSPS reads and will open these DLL gauges. However these gauges are just drawing surfaces, so they are transparent rectangles. About all you can do is move and size them. Note that there is an option, "Gauge:Hide Overlay (full window) Gauges". Make sure you don't have this enabled when the gauge is the same size as the underlying window.

Hope this helps.