I've looked at some of the documentation, guides and information on how to build fgpanel on Raspberry Pi. So I spent a few days trying and pretty much got nowhere. So I called a time out to give it some more thought. And then it occurred to me that fgpanel really doesn't care that it's animating a flight simulator. The basic mechanism of fgpanel is to display images, move certain images based on data. That's it. So I wondered if it would be possible to write a standalone utility in python that does essentially what fgpanel does. And that's what I've done. I tried to keep the format and use of the xml files consistent with how they are used in flightgear and fgpanel, but I changed a few things to make the python implementation a bit easier.
I have NOT yet run this on Raspberry Pi, that will be the next attempt. For now, this is a youtube clip (SenecaII) that I created that shows flightgear on the left and the right panel contains a clock (the time is off a bit, I need to fix the animation), manifold pressure and vacuum gauge. There is no audio, just video capture. I can use most of the flightgear instrument images, converting the rgb format to png using GIMP.
Flight Instruction Elevator Control: pull back = houses get smaller, push forward = houses get bigger.