Du moins une tentative personnelle d'éclaircir le sujet et que je vais essayer de tenir à jour, améliorer, élargir, ... d'autant plus facilement que l'on voudra bien m'y encourager.

Applicable à FSX et à FS2004 - je pense.           

1. To install a panel :          and an xml gauge (or a group of xml gauges) contained in a cab files :    

2. When installing a new panel pay also attention to the titles in the aircraft.cfg file. Make the several titles really different.

3. To edit a *.xml or *.htm file use a "simple" word processing program like Notepad (NEVER Word, Wordpad, ... ).
    To edit a *.cfg file you can use Wordpad or equivalent wordprocessor.

4. To add a comment in a  *.cfg file just add at the end of each line  :  // your comment

5. To hide a gauge in the panel.cfg file : put an apostrophe  'gaugexx=............  either  gaugexx='..........

6. You may have to reset an AP after having changed of aircraft "in flight" (because of differences between the aircraft.cfg files).

7. To make an airplane fly horizontaly, just modify the aircraft.cfg as here and test several values of x (drawback ???) - NOT ALWAYS working :

[flight_tuning]
cruise_lift_scalar=1.x00 // or 0.xxx - default = 1.000

8. If you want to enjoy an operational set of radios (particularly if there is or not a stanby frequency), please check the settings in the aircraft.cfg file :

[Radios]
// Radio_Type.# = available (1=Yes, 0=No or no mention), standby frequency (1=Yes, 0=No), has glide slope (1=Yes, 0=No)

Audio.1 = 1
Com.1 = 1, 1
Com.2 = 1, 1
Nav.1 = 1, 1, 1
Nav.2 = 1, 1, 0
Adf.1 = 1
Transponder.1 = 1
Marker.1 = 1

9. If you use a backup gauge verify that is is declared in the aircraft.cfg file, for instance :

[airspeed_indicators]
airspeed_indicator.0=1
airspeed_indicator.1=1

10. About the VC and the visibility forward it is very often interesting to add/modify the following lines - with approaching numbers:

[VIEWS]    //  in the panel.cfg file.
VIEW_FORWARD_ZOOM=1.000
VIEW_FORWARD_DIR=4.500,   0.000,  0.000      // Pitch Up/Dn - Bank L/R - HDG L/R
VIEW_FORWARD_EYE=0.000, -0.050, -0.450     // Lateral L/R - Up/Dn - F/Back


[Views]    //  in the aircraft.cfg file.
eyepoint= -3.20, 0.00, 1.95      // Long, Lat, Vert - in feet

"VIEW_FORWARD_EYE" is NOT supported in FS-X !

About FS-X :

1. I don't use SP2 - I've had troubles enough up to now !.
2. Even with a poor configuratioon it's possible to fly FSX but with SP1 (and at least with SP1 !), of course no autogen, no traffic at all.
3. Using FSX, I recommand the following add-ons - for fluidity :

"fsx_water_fix_final",  "fsx_forest_v2",  "taxiway_enhancement_v1" et  "reduced_global_env" by Tom Knudsen.
"stars_fsx" by F. Ronchi.
"resautogentexfsx.zip" (31Oct2006) by Bart Dylkiewicz.
I replaced the "terrain.cfg" by the one made by Richard Ludowise and Luis Féliz-Tirado ("fsx_modified_terrain_cfg.zip" Nov 2006).

HW :

Processor : AMD Athlon 64, 2200 MHz 3200+ with updated DX9.0c

Graphic card :   Since october 2009 an ASUS HD4650 1Go (ATI) AGP8x - yes it's not the last updated but ... better than the former nVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT (this one having given good result but somehow short with FSX).

SETTINGS  :  I use 2 different fsx.cfg : High Quality - Medium Quality.

Click to see the details :     

SW:

I use Paint Shop Pro 4.1 (1997!)  for the main drawings.

All other softs are freeware : 

Paint.Net   more modern with its important plug-ins and not too difficult to handle
Colormania  as complement for playing with the colors
Notepad++   to write program in XML as well in HTML
Fillezilla   as FTP
and Faststone Capture (old freeware version).

I also use most of the addons built by Jacky Brouze.

I still use  "FSAutoStart"  for FS9 but  "AutoSaver"  by Omar Damiani for FS-X

    A simple presentation