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  • Please see the most recent updates in the "Where did the .com name go?" thread. Posts number 16 and 17.

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Guage coordinate question

B

Bone

Charter Member
I've reguaged alot of my portovers, so I understand the X axis, Y axis, and guage size coordinates. What I need help with is the Z axis. I need to move some guages so they're just barely floating on the front surface of the instrument panel. The problem is some guages aren't fitting well behind the pre-cut holes in the virtual cockpit panel of my FSD T-38 payware. How do I manipulate the Z axis, or is it even possible?
 
Not that I know. The entries in the panel.cfg only account for X and Y positions and X and Y sizes of the gauges.
 
The z axis is set by the modeller, its the projection plane poly and is positioned in the host CAD program, there is no other way to move it I'm afraid. The XML gauges are projected onto this transparent plane by the sim, it is very hard to ge the poly close to the panel to avoid parallax visual errors and to avoid it disappearing by z clipping from the sim. It is this plane that turns opaque on many prot overs and blots out fwd vision from the VC, this is due to the way FSx renders this screen differently to FS9, ie materials and textures....its actually an invisible texture applied to the plane that will be transparent...except for where the XML gauges are.

This is one reason why 3D gauges are popular, it avoids this small niggle in the VC, the down side of 3D gauges is that end users cannot swap gauges in and out.

Hope that makes some sort of sense ?. Its probably far more technical than that, but thats my ham fisted way of understanding it LOL.
 
mal998 said:
Is that for the VC or 2D?
Click to expand...

For the VC.




michael davies said:
The z axis is set by the modeller, its the projection plane poly and is positioned in the host CAD program, there is no other way to move it I'm afraid. The XML gauges are projected onto this transparent plane by the sim, it is very hard to ge the poly close to the panel to avoid parallax visual errors and to avoid it disappearing by z clipping from the sim. It is this plane that turns opaque on many prot overs and blots out fwd vision from the VC, this is due to the way FSx renders this screen differently to FS9, ie materials and textures....its actually an invisible texture applied to the plane that will be transparent...except for where the XML gauges are.

This is one reason why 3D gauges are popular, it avoids this small niggle in the VC, the down side of 3D gauges is that end users cannot swap gauges in and out.

Hope that makes some sort of sense ?. Its probably far more technical than that, but thats my ham fisted way of understanding it LOL.
Click to expand...

Thanks for taking the time to explain it understandably.
 
i actually use panelbuilder to layout my gauges used in the VC - i then take a screen capture of the layout - rename it to begin with a $ character - and that is my gauge texture sheet for mapping VC gauge geometries

the x and y are pixel values for the upper left of a particular gauge rectangle on the sheet
the size values are the pixel dimensions of the particular gauge rectangle in question

if you have FSPanel builder take a look at a VC window and what your looking at is the texture sheet used to map those gauges in the VC

once it's all mapped in Gmax or whatever is just a simple copy of the values generated by panelbuilder into the VC section of the panel.cfg and Presto!

hint: dont change the location/dimension values when swapping out gauges as strange looking things may occur

or is that TMI?

~knowing is half the battle ....
 
Delta_Whiskey said:
i actually use panelbuilder to layout my gauges used in the VC - i then take a screen capture of the layout - rename it to begin with a $ character - and that is my gauge texture sheet for mapping VC gauge geometries

the x and y are pixel values for the upper left of a particular gauge rectangle on the sheet
the size values are the pixel dimensions of the particular gauge rectangle in question

if you have FSPanel builder take a look at a VC window and what your looking at is the texture sheet used to map those gauges in the VC

once it's all mapped in Gmax or whatever is just a simple copy of the values generated by panelbuilder into the VC section of the panel.cfg and Presto!

hint: dont change the location/dimension values when swapping out gauges as strange looking things may occur

or is that TMI?

~knowing is half the battle ....
Click to expand...

Thanks, but can this method change the size of the guage holes in a photo panel? If it won't, then I'm not sure this will work in my situation. The FSD VC panel is a photo panel with holes cut out where all the guages go. When I reguaged it, all of my new guages needed a coordinate and size change to fit properly...which they do except for the ADI and HSI I want to use.
 
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