posted 04-03- 03:14 PM               

Now, one thing that is the hardest thing about cockpits are the gauges. So last night it hit me! (and it hurt)

Why not make the gauge which is on a square poly a seperate object under the panel.

then we can put the needles for that gauge as a child object under it so when we move a gauge the needle doesn't get out of wack.

We could make an SM file that is just a large flat surface that has all the gauges on them like a template. Then all someone has to do is open it, copy the gauges and paste into thier plane and put it where it needs to go. It would be that simple to add gauges to a plane when doing the panel. You would have to change the ref to point to the plane and the texture but it would be way simple to add new cockpits.

The hard part would be find some people to help make the cockpit SM and get the needles all lined up. but the reward afterwards would be worth it don't you think?

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Tony "Razer" Martin
FS Hangar

posted 04-03- 09:20 PM               

Dials have a DOF that is tied to some query... like airspeed, or another DOF's position. The dial can be any mesh - like a real dail, or a control stick - anything. It has one DOF for motion, and that DOF is tied to some standard query - and a parent object (your plane)

So this means you can create an object that is an airspeed guage - then a child that is the dial. Then the dial is set up as a Cdial object and has a DOF so it rotates.

Or.... you could model one big instrument panel. Then you make a bunch of dials as children - and line up the dials to match the texture of the instrument panel.

The benefit to modeling a guage alone is that you can fit more texture on it - like a 256x256 if you wanted to.... this means allot of detail. One trick is the create the panel with a full instrument panel texture, then add the new gauge objects over it and line them up... this is who the SE5a was done my Nuum.