The present invention relates to the visual representation of an input value, and provides an instrument, which can be given any predefined characteristic of its visual display. Cross-coil instrument is provided, said cross-coil instrument comprising a driver for the instrument characterized in that it further comprises a digital input terminal, a predetermined characteristic of the instrument stored as a map of input/output values in a digital memory and a microprocessor, said input value being a value represented visually by the cross-coil instrument, said output value being the value applied to the cross-coil instrument to visual represent the input value.