Software & Hardware Requirements

It is assumed that you have at least the following software installed and running:

• Microsoft Windows (7 or later)
• X-Plane 10.31 (or later)
• Saitek's ProFlight X-Plane Plugin (Get them here)
• Gnu Image Manipulation Program (Any image editor should do, even MS Paint, but as I'm a GIMP user I am assuming that you are either using GIMP or know your way around your chosen editor well enough to achieve what I'm suggesting from the "GIMP perspective").
• A decent text editor (ie not Notepad - it does not handle unix-style line breaks which many if not all of X-Plane's files are) - I would suggest Notepad++. Syntax highlighting is a Godsend. 

It is also assumed you have the following hardware installed and correctly configured:

• Prerequisite hardware such as a joystick or yoke and pedals
• 1 or more Saitek Flight Instrument Panels (FIPs) - as this blog is dedicated to making gauges for these units this should go without saying!

In addition, I also have the following hardware which shouldn't matter if you don't have them:

• Saitek Radio Panel
• Saitek Switch Panel
• Saitek Autopilot Panel

I have a fairly powerful computer; because of this I can't be sure my gauges won't negatively affect performance on less powerful machines. For reference, my machine is:

~3Ghz Intel CORE i7 (quad core)

16Gb RAM

AMD Graphics (Not top of the range by any means)
Windows 7 64-bit

Finally it's worth noting that I only have the one machine with X-Plane on; this means I can only realistically test for the machine I'm using, and users may find that my gauges don't work on 32-bit systems, with an older Windows version, etc.