Gauges for Combat Flight Simulator

[aleatorylamp]

Hello Ivan,
Maybe the herb tea with lemon and honey had a good effect.
I can only drool over the new gauges!
I´m already queueing up.

Update:
The new gauges have all arrived in one piece are working very well. Thank you very much!
They make all the difference to the panel! It´s like Christmas!
Impressive, definitely!

Smilo: Maybe we ought to make a 4-engined German aeroplane now. There weren´t many, but
there must have been at least one, because we absolutely HAVE to use ALL the new gauges now!

Cheers,
Aleatorylamp

 

[Ivan]

Hello Aleatorylamp,

Actually we were snowed in yesterday. Schools closed, all that sort of stuff.
I never had a chance to go out and get any herb tea, so it was just Decaf Black Tea and lots of sleep.
Schools are open two hours late today, but the roads look pretty clear.

My Son was sick for a week with the Flu and I was in close contact, so that is probably what I have now.
I still have a temperature around 100.0 F today and a serious headache so the bug isn't done yet.

Regarding Gauges:
The FW 200 would be a pretty good candidate for a 4 engine German Aeroplane but I suppose then, I would have to do the FW 190 gauges in addition to the Me 109 versions. The Me 109 Gauges looked cleaner which is why I chose to do those instead.
Too bad we can't handle something like the BV 222 Wiking with 6 engines!

With every new gauge I am programming, I am learning new things. and developing different techniques.
Perhaps eventually I will catch up to where other developers were about 15 years ago!
These "Stock" Gauges showed a few things that I did not notice with higher resolution bitmaps.
(When playing with the raw bitmaps, they look quite ugly though.)

Enjoy the new Toys!
I need to choose yet another Gauge to work on.

- Ivan.

 

[aleatorylamp]

Hello Ivan,
Still so much snow... looks like it´s a long winter this year?

That you can do gauges being quite ill is quite amazing too. At least you´re not bored.

The next gauge to choose? Well, that´s an easy one... Four that come into mind, or
two in the case of dual needle ones, could be Oil temperature, Oil pressure, EGT, and CHT.
In the case it was a single-needle gauge, which of these four, would be the most important?
...but of course it´s entirely up to you!

A FW200, the Condor! Of course. I built one of the passenger versions from scratch some years
ago that could be made into a military version perhaps, and adapted for CFS1!

Update: I´ve had a look. The FW-200 loads into CFS1 without the FS98 sounds. The panel works, only some gauges didn´t, so the panel and almost all gauges are. However, there is some confusion with 2 throttle levers affecting more than one RPM or ATA gauge, or none. This now, would not happen, of course!!
Question: Shall I start a new thread with the model pics and info I have, for a possible new military adaptation for CFS1 of this project in the future?

To handle a BV 222 Wiking with 6 engines, it could only be done by duplicating and renaming engine 1,2, and 3 gauges, having a 3-engined .air file with twice the Hp per engine, and running the engines in pairs adapting a 3-engined thrust quadrant bitmap.
Throttle 1 controls engines 1 and 2 (left outboard and left central)
Throttle 2 controls engines 3 and 4 (left and right inboard)
Throttle 3 controls engines 5 and 6 (right central and right outboard)
How´s that for a solution?

You are certainly catching up, and also overtaking. Developers abandoned the issue 15 years ago.

Well, let´s see what happens!
Cheers,
Aleatorylamp

 

[Ivan]

Hello Aleatorylamp,

It isn't necessarily a long winter. It is more like completely unstable weather.
I think that our effects on the environment are the general cause.
In the last couple decades, many tens of thousands of trees have been removed.
From the major roads, we can now see things that were once completely hidden.
I can hear the train station that is about two to three miles away even in the summer.
When I first moved in, the sound could barely be heard when the leaves were still on the trees.
A couple weeks ago it was getting near 80 degrees F outside: a touch warm even with just a T-shirt.
Today it is down in the mid 20's.
The Cherry Tree in my front yard started blooming about a week ago as did many other trees.
Some of the other trees just look brown now and the blossoms are falling without ever having a chance for a good show.
I would imagine that the fruit harvest is going to be VERY poor this year.

Regarding the FW 200, why not upload it in the commercial colours it is wearing now?
It looks pretty good as it is.

Good idea about engines on the BV 222.

Regarding Gauge Development, I believe quite a few folks got much further with Gauges than I have at this point.
I am currently in the lead because no one else is in the race any longer; They finished a couple decades ago....

- Ivan.

 

[aleatorylamp]

Hello Ivan,
Hmmm... Pity about the trees and the flowers. I can´t forget what Geronimo said about that before anyone even worried about it. Then there´s the number of bees...

The FW 200A Condor. I hadn´t thought about uploading the civilian version because it isn´t for combat, but with a parts count of 143.4% I´d probably run into trouble adding guns and ventral gondolas anyway.

The panel that comes with, is by Pegasus Design - quite good except for the light greenish colouring - which may however be authentic. With the corresponding acknowledgements, I suppose it could take your 4 new RPM and ATA gauges. That would cure the gauge bug it has now. Here´s a screenshot of its present panel and gauges.
Update: It may deserve a CFS1 .air file, so I will try making one for the upload - preferably NOT using an AI .air file... ehemm!
4 x 1030 Hp Bramo Fafnir will be enticing. I could base the engine and prop parameters on the Do-17Z...

Incidentally, under the RPM and ATA in each column of gauges, there´s an oil temperature one with the wording "Temp. Aceite", probably for the FW200A "Aibatara" that went to Brazil. All four seem to be at maximum all the time. Maybe, as you were asking, perhaps this would be a candidate for the next gauge given its practical use, if you were so inclined!

Talking about bugs, I hope you´re getting better!

BTW, if the rest abandoned making these gauges decades ago, all the greater merit for still doing so, especially as there are no gauge-making programs for them like for newer simulator gauges.

Cheers,
Aleatorylamp

 

[Ivan]

Hello Aleatorylamp,

If the bees all die, we all die.....
Until we figure out a way to find another planet to use up, we had better take good care of this one.

I am still quite sick with a temperature at around 100 degrees F. Hopefully I can get rid of this bug soon.
Last night and this morning it was Chrysanthemum Tea and some Earl Grey.

Before concluding that the other gauges don't work, you might want to see how they behave with a CFS AIR File.
Also check the numbers with Mr. Beckwith's Test Panel. Perhaps they are reading correctly but just out of range for the gauge?

The FW 200 panel looks pretty well done.
Heck, you are re-releasing an old 4 engine machine and I still haven't even released my first twin yet! ;-)

There actually was a program to create gauges called "Easy Gauge" though no one seems to have a copy any more.
The company apparently went away years ago.
Gauges never really interested me until I needed ones that did not exist as stock versions, so I am really doing this to complete a couple of my own projects.... Which is why the next couple sets of gauges will be ones I can use for my own projects.
The problem here as usual is that while I am a pretty good C programmer and can figure out the Panel SDK to some extent, I am absolutely terrible at doing bitmaps and that is where I need to work next.

- Ivan.

 

[No Dice]

May be some info you can use here ??
Has the old demo version also....For what good or not it may be:

http://web.archive.org/web/20070224164113/http://www.easygauge.net/

 

[aleatorylamp]

Hello Ivan, Hello Hubbabubba,

Thanks for the link, Hubbabubba.
I remember a Brazilian flight-simmer called Claudio Mussner who made custom gauges for the Gotha and Zeppelin bombers with Easygauge. It was great! Dual-Needle RPM gauge replica of the original, and an original inclinometer - combination between artificial horizon and variometer. A really amazing thing. There was even a dangling pencil for when you rolled!!

All very wonderful... BUT... here comes the kicker: EasyGauge is only good for FS2002 onwards. Also for CFS2 then.
That was at least what I was told when I got the Gotha and Zeppelin Gauges.
I´ve just downloaded Easygauge and installed it. It asks for the FS2002 Gauge folder... so...

So ever since the beginnings in 2004 of my interest in building for FS98 and now for CFS1, gauges for these sims had to be done in "C", and I´m only good at QBasic 1.1, so you can imagine how I feel now with the new Engine 1 to 4 RPM and ATA gauges !!! Then, a set of oil pressure and oil temperature gauges would conclude the lot and make the entire dream come true.
But that´s entirely up to you, Ivan!
It´s already quite unbelievable with the RPM and ATA ones. That´s why I said it was like Christmas.

Re: Condor.
I can study the gauge behaviour on the FW200 with the current FS98 file, and then see what happens with a CFS1 file.
For the moment, what I´ve seen is this:
-Engine 1 throttle also affects RPM 4, apart from RPM 1 and ATA 1.
-Engine 2 throttle is the only correct one, affecting only RPM 2 and ATA 2.
-Engine 3 throttle also affects ATA 4, apart from RPM 3 and ATA 3.
-Engine 4 throttle affects no gauge at all but does affect aircraft speed.
-All Oil temperature gauges show maximum even with cold engines.

This is what led me to think that your new gauges, Ivan, would be of help here, at least for CFS1.
I could check whether this also happens in FS98.

I´ll also check with the Beckwith test panel.
Incidentally, I can´t find the fuel-flow numbers there... but maybe it´s just me.

I can see your difficulty with gauge bitmaps. The correct angles for the circular dials angles are a bummer!

OK, then, I hope you get better soon.
Chrysanthemum tea sound interesting! I´d only heard of Jasmine and of course all sorts of fruit teas.
Cheers,
Aleatorylamp

 

[Ivan]

Hello No Dice,

Thanks for the link. You actually posted it in a relevant thread a couple years ago as well.
I downloaded the "Demo" and installed it. When I tried to run it, it was asking for the location of MinGW32.
I had MinGW installed on my old MS Vista laptop but have not installed it on the latest 8.1 laptop.
Since I had found the FS2000 SDK by then, I just figured I would just try to do the programming on my own.
The results are pretty successful thus far, but I really haven't done anything complicated yet.


Hello Aleatorylamp,

Look at the first attached screenshot for the location of the Fuel Flow readout.

I don't know about multi-engine throttles and controls. I figured I would have to built a set for my own use anyway at some point.
I am somewhat surprised though that the throttles don't work because I figure someone else would have commented on them before now.

Attached also is a different background for my gauges.
My original background size is 303 x 303 pixels.
The SDKs use 302 x 302 I didn't change mine just to be different.
The idea is to have a central pixel to confirm that the pointer and background are aligned properly which of course needs an odd number of pixels.
There was an olive drab border though it was hardly visible.
The center dial section is 281 x 281 pixels.
With the different border, the whole background is now 315 x 315 pixels so that I don't have to redo the dial section at all.
The center dial section is actually the easiest to make for me because the process is very well defined.
Basically just draw one tick mark, rotate and overlay it repeatedly.

- Ivan.

 

[aleatorylamp]

Hello Ivan,
Thanks for your indications. I never associated Gph (Gallons per Hour) with Fuel Flow (FF) ...
Duhhhh! Captain Obvious strikes again!

To your Easygauge "question": By the EasyGauge installer, if you accept the Mini-GNU installation, MinGW32 is installed in the bin subdirectory of a directory called MinGW which is in the same path as the main Easygauge installation, and you have to select that in the window before you can use the program. I had some trouble doing that too!

I see that your gauge-makers have a precision torque-screwdriver to elegantly place the screwdriver-groove horizontally. Very good! (pre-supposing identical thread making, of course). No chance of ruining the thread and then have screws falling out like on other CFS1 gauges! I noticed on the tram we have here, all the floor-panel screws also had their grooved heads lined up with panel contour when the trams were new. nowadays more than one is at angles!
Nice craftsmanship on your frames too, to say nothing of the dial itself, of course, and the central pixel!

I wish I could program in "C" - my daughter actually loves it and says it´s just as easy to learn as Qbasic...
If I have time this morning I´ll check on the Condor-gauges functioning.

Update:
I´ve just tested the FS98 Condor panel in FS98. The slightly mixed-up throttle/RPM-4/ATA-4 thing also happens there.
However, the oil temperature was my own fault -Sorry!-, I mistook the fuel gauges for them, which would obviously always show max. tankage at strartup! So that was a false alarm, as these seem OK both in CFS and FS98.

Cheers,
Aleatorylamp

 

[Ivan]

Hello Aleatorylamp,

Regarding the precise alignment of the screw heads:
My Engineers have never installed gauges before and didn't have the proper screws, so they threaded and machined their own.
Production gauges will use standard industry screws instead of the custom made and heat-treated ones that are there now.
Many gauges are installed using only two or three of the four mounting holes. I can't convince the Engineers to even consider that.
Note that certain aeroplanes have their gauges installed with the frames on top of the panel and some are installed from the reverse side and the frames are hidden behind the panel in which case the frame would not be visible at all.

Regarding C Programming:
It isn't really all that hard but knowing the C language will help you much less with gauges that you might expect.
I have run into a few bugs by doing things which should logically work with C but do not because the gauge macros often have not so obvious side effects.
The documentation isn't quite as thorough as one might want. It is pretty much written for folks who already know what they are doing and I am not one of those people.

- Ivan.

 

[aleatorylamp]

Hello Ivan,
I´m still trying to convince my mechanics not to use galvanized iron wire through the gauge holes to tie the gauges to the panel!

I remember writing a sailing simulator and also a flight simulator in a kind of QBasic for the Commodore Amiga 500 called Amiga AMOS Basic, and it had all the gauges in Basic too! Nice instructions like Plot, Draw, Sine and Cosine of the angles for the needles... Another way to do it, if it lets you!

Anyway, back to real life. Gauge programming for pre Z-Buffer era Simulators, seems like another groping-around-in-the-dark situation created by Microsoft. Some habit of making things difficult. They must have been afraid that they would be put out of business!

Cheers,
Aleatorylamp

 

[Ivan]

Hello Aleatorylamp,

Recommend against the steel wire. The gauge may come loose under heavy G Load.

The gauge issues really have nothing to do with Z-Buffering.
In fact the SDK isn't all that hard to use; I have just not done it before and am working out my own "Good Practices"
The Development Practices and creating useful Bitmaps are the difficult issues for me.

You might be wondering: What do you mean by "Good Practices"?
In the beginning with the FS98 SDK, I only built one gauge of each type, so everything related to the 3500 RPM Tachometer had the prefix
KPW.Tach35...
thus
KPW.Tach35-BG.BMP
KPW.Tach35-Needle.BMP
KPW.Tach35.c

and for a Dual 4500 RPM Tachometer, I would have

KPW.DTach45-BG.BMP
KPW.DTach45-Needle1.BMP
KPW.DTach45-Needle2.BMP
KPW.DTach45.c

But.....
In reality, the Background for every 3500 RPM Tachometer whether Single or Dual are the same, so why am I naming them differently?
The Needles only really come in three flavours: Needle, Needle1, and Needle2; It makes no difference whether they go to a Tachometer or Manifold Pressure Gauge or what the display range of the instrument is....

So now it is a matter of going back and naming things in a manner that is consistent and makes sense.
....But hang on a second: Note that we are now building Gauges for at least two countries and their pointers and backgrounds are different, so perhaps the naming convention needs to account for that as well.... And my goal is to eventually build both Japanese and Russian Gauges too.

Yet one more consideration is that the highlights of different colours on the background would be different for different engines even if the ranges were the same.

The same applies to creating new bitmaps.
The screw head is the doctored up image of a rivet head.
Make one to see what the general appearance will be and if it look good, put in different angled screw slots.....
This one is supposed to look like a slotted pan head screw. What about a Phillips screw? Round head instead of Pan Head???
Consider this the beginnings of an inventory system for Gauge Parts.

I had to do the same kind of thing with standard practices when building models in AF99.
Figuring out a standard naming convention so that I could find things pretty quickly and figuring out what kinds of tasks I did repeatedly and programming the utilities for the most frequent tasks took more time than actually learning the tools.

As in C Programming, learning the language isn't difficult. Learning to break down a large project into meaningful modules for maintainability requires a bit more thought. Consider this as my software development background getting in the way.

Getting things done as a one-off really isn't that hard as I showed with my first FS2000 Tachometer a while back.

- Ivan.

 

[aleatorylamp]

Hello Ivan,

I understand that Z-buffering has nothing to do with gauges. I meant to indicate that the lack of this coincided with another lack, namely the lack of specific gauge-creating software. Both appeared after the Z-bufferless FS98 and CFS1.
I hadn´t expressed myself clearly, I´m afraid.

This consistency system for parts naming is something I never really got into, and when I do it, it is only to a certain extent.
Thus, it always takes me quite some time to figure out what´s going on when I re-work a model I made several years back.
I was never one for conscientious, detailed planning anyway - more for quick practical hands action, otherwise I can´t see what I´m doing and get lost in the plan. This has serious drawbacks when something goes wrong and only gets worse, until it has to be re-done from the start! The few times I do make a plan, I never follow it very long anyway!

With gauges however, I agree that a system does seem much more necessary, as otherwise one would get totally lost with so many similar parts for different things. It facilitates future expansion too - KPW International Gauges Corporation!

Cheers,
Aleatorylamp

 

[Ivan]

Hello Aleatorylamp,

I come from software development background; I have often worked as the lead developer for projects and had to break apart fairly large problems so that many developers could all work simultaneously on different sections.
Modular is a good thing.

You have actually had a chance to look through a couple AFX's of mine and probably saw the naming conventions I used for the pieces.
(I think I sent you an early copy of the Lightning and one of the P-3 Orion.)
The Parts names like Tail02L12.afp are pretty boring but fairly unambiguous and make things really easy to find.

My current approach to gauges is probably overkill, but keeps things straight in my mind.
The trick is to do enough to stay organised but not so much that it becomes tedious and too much like work.
After all, this is a hobby done for enjoyment!

- Ivan.

 

[smilo]

wow...and you question,
"Ivan is meticulous"?
your organization skills are phenomenal.
i had no idea.

my friend, you take meticulous
to a whole new level
and i applaud you for it.
well done, and please,
keep up the good work,
for as long as it remains
enjoyable for you.



now, about that trim gauge.
just kidding, i couldn't resist.

 

[aleatorylamp]

Hello Ivan,
I´m sure that your super organized methodology is one of the
reasons why your work is so much more precise than mine,
and I can only share Smilo´s opinion!
3 Cheers!
Aleatorylamp

 

[smilo]

would someone, please tell me
the correct path to display Ivan's new gauges?
gauge01=KPW.MP60Mxxxwhat?

i got it to work the other day,
but, i seem to have forgotten
what it was i did...sheesh

 

[Ivan]

Hi Smilo,

You can rename the gauge to anything you want.
After that, it is just a matter of putting a "!Engine1" after the gauge name.

- Ivan.

 

[smilo]

got it, thanks....very nice gauges.