Gauges to Fit the Aeroplane
Hello Smilo,
Just out of curiosity, what aeroplane were you intending the Magneto Switches for?
I noticed your comment that the switches in the Lancaster were "A$$ Backwards" which I presume means that On is Down and Off is Up?
I did a quick search earlier today and found that this is actually correct operation at least for the Lancaster.
- Ivan.
Late Status Update - LONG!!!
Hello All,
I had not mentioned this before because I really was not sure where it would lead but things are looking pretty promising at this point.
Back in late March, I posted a yet another comment / question about not being able to get the Mouse functions to work in CFS.
A little while later, I got a PM from a fellow called ChrisK who offered to help me figure out what was going on.
We needed first to get in sync.
I believe he was intending to teach me basic Gauge Programming while all I was really looking for was to get some kind of response from the Mouse. After all, that was the major roadblock to building anything else worthwhile.
The other part about getting in sync was that my goal is to have Gauges that work on everything as far back as Windows 98.
My Game Machine used for testing is a Windows 2000 box.
My interest is just in Combat Flight Simulator and Gauges NEED to work there.
ChrisK set up his own copy of CFS so we would have a comparable test environment.
We found out pretty early on that the newer compilers did not generate useable Gauges for the older Operating Systems.
The Gauges he compiled would work fine on his machine but although they would not crash my simulator, they would not display either.
Eventually he went back to a very old (circa 1996) compiler and his Gauges started showing up on my Test Panel.
The problem though is that although they would display, they did not react to the Mouse.
After a couple cycles of a hearing that a Gauge worked properly on his machine and then finding that it did not work on mine, I remembered something unexpected that I had encountered when working on the Trim Test Gauge a while back.
I wanted the Trim Test Gauge on its own Panel because it took up a lot of room at the side of the screen.
The problem was that when I first put it on a blank (all Black 0,0,0) background, it did not display at all.
I had also noticed that when leaving the simulator with the Test Panel being displayed, the Gauges that were not on some non-Black background would disappear first.
I edited the Panel Background to add a non-transparent, non-Black area behind his Gauge and the Mouse functions WORKED!
I then tested a stock Gauge by moving it to a transparent area of the Panel and its Mouse functions STOPPED working.
Next, I tried the same SDK Fuel Selector we had been testing but compiled on my computer this time and it also worked.
Note that in most of my screenshots of Gauge Tests, the new Gauge is set anywhere there is space on the screen which means that it is usually on a transparent area. The Gauges DISPLAY just fine anywhere on the screen. The Mouse functions needed to have some opaque background behind the Gauge in order to work.
So essentially what had been happening was that the compile SDK Gauges wore working just fine all along; I was just not using them correctly and had not figured this out for the better part of a year.
After this little discovery, ChrisK noted that the Gauges should respond to Mouse events no matter where they are located.
I went back to the Test Panel.cfg and started changing it to match one of the stock Panels.
Eventually I found that the Render_3D setting was the culprit.
Since then, I have been using ChrisK to answer questions about how to do things and where to find the information I need to understand how things work. He seems to be quite patient with what must appear to be fairly stupid questions and often provides a code fragment to illustrate the proper usage.
It isn't often that one runs into someone who knows a subject this well and ChrisK is certainly a master in this field.
- Ivan.
Japanese Manifold Pressure Gauge
One of the things that has bothered me for a long time with the panel that I created for the A6M2 and A6M3 was that although the general appearance of the panel was "in the spirit" of the original with concessions to CFS functionality, some of the gauges were not very good matches. They are functional, but the appearance is quite different from the actual Japanese Gauges.
Recently I have been involved in forum discussions about the performance of different versions of the Mitsubishi A6M and was reminded of the panel issues when I took the CFS models up for some "Fun Flying".
The Gauge that bothered me the most was the Manifold Pressure / Boost Gauge.
The actual gauge that I was using was the stock Me 109 version which reads in ATA.
I figured a new Japanese Manifold Pressure Gauge would not be that difficult and started working on the bitmap for the background last night.
I thought the background would be fairly easy, but it actually took a few hours to get it looking the way I wanted. The only things that I could use from other gauges was the frame and screws and the colour scheme.
Lining up tick marks is just plain tedious!
The first image is of the actual gauge as removed from the first A6M2 restored and test by Allied forces in 1942.
The second image shows the aeroplane in which this gauge will be used.
The third image shows the panel with the new gauge installed.
Oops, Unable to upload images. Will add images when I can figure things out.
- Ivan.
3 Attachment(s)
Radiator Temperature Gauge
As can be seen in the P-40N Panel in the prior post, many of the gauges we use for assembling a "new" panel are actually existing stock gauges. There is only one stock US aircraft, the P51D, that has an inline engine and the associated Radiator / Coolant Temperature Gauge and that is the one that seems appropriate when working on an American fighter with an inline engine.
Unfortunately, the P51D Radiator Temperature Gauge does not appear to work.
A possible solution would be to use the gauges from the stock Spitfires or Hurricane but although the functionality is addressed, the style doesn't really match.
I was reminded again of this when testing some updates to my rework of Eric Johnson's P-39D.
How do you tell the engine is warmed up when the Coolant Gauge is broken?
I figured a new gauge (or set of gauges for all four engines) would be easy..... Famous last words!
A couple days later, I believe I am finally done.
It should not have taken so long when I was starting with existing bitmaps, and it would not have if I had not managed to find so many ways to make mathematical and programming mistakes.
The first screenshot shows the stock P51D "Engine Temperature" Gauge and two new Radiator Temperature Gauges for Engine1 and Engine2 on a chilly Autumn day. Note that temperature which starts at 70 degrees Fahreheit has dropped to 58 degrees F and a digital gauge reads the equivalent in Celsius.
Note that all three "Coolant" all look about the same.
The second screenshot shows the three "Coolant" gauges with the engine fairly warm. Note that the stock P51D gauge isn't really dead but did change slightly. The other two seem to match up pretty well with the digital gauge.
The third screenshot shows the Engine1 "Coolant" gauge showing the engine cooling off after ignition was cut. There are only ignition controls for Engine1 on the test panel.
The new gauge set (at least Engine1 and Engine2) seem to work as expected for -70 C, 50 C, 90 C, and 150 C which takes care of a nagging problem with the stock gauges. They will be included in updates for my panels which currently use the P51D Engine Temperature Gauge.
- Ivan.
2 Attachment(s)
Late Model P-47 Fuel Gauge
Hello All,
When working on updates to the P-47D-25 that has been stuck in Ivan's Workshop for a while, I came across a very slight problem.
The stock P-47D fuel gauge is appropriate only for the early models of the Thunderbolt up through about the P-47D-23.
Those models of the Thunderbolt had Main Fuel Tank of 205 Gallons capacity.
Later models of the Thunderbolt starting with the P-47D-25 had a larger Main Fuel Tank of 270 Gallons capacity.
The Auxiliary Fuel Tank remained at 100 Gallons.
The stock P-47D fuel gauge is incapable of reading up to 270 Gallons, so it will be necessary to program a substitute gauge.
The stock gauge is rather simple with a Background and two Pointers: One for the Auxiliary Tank and one for the Main Tank.
The proper way to program this gauge is to also have a Mask but for a first attempt, I will try to keep things as simple as possible and use simpler Bitmaps and avoid using the Mask at all.
The Second attached image is the stock P47D Fuel Gauge Background at 3X actual size.
It is pretty obvious that the quality of the image is not particularly good.
The First attached image is of an actual 270 Gallon P-47D Fuel Gauge in reduced size.
The original photograph of this gauge will be the reference image to create a bitmap.
At the reduced size typical of gauge bitmaps, some of the details of the original image would need to be simplified so that they are still readable at reduced size.
What needs to be avoided is getting hung up on creating detail in the bitmap that will not be visible in use.
- Ivan.
1 Attachment(s)
Duplicate of Stock P-47D Fuel Gauge
I figured the easiest way to program the gauge I wanted was to first program a duplicate of the stock P47D fuel quantity gauge and then change the markings to match the 270 Gallon version and make adjustments.
As I have commented before, the programming is generally fairly easy.
Creating the Bitmaps is the hardest part and I was intending to use the stock gauge's bitmaps to sav time.
The problem though was that the stock bitmaps are VERY small and hard to see, so I figured I would expand them to 3X original size and work with those. The original background is 97x98 pixels.
When expanded, the Lettering and Tick Marks looked even worse and nothing quite lined up, not even the Screws.
After a couple hours trying to fix things, it made more sense to just replace everything, so only the general appearance of the gauge and general location of the tick marks is the same.
I also found a gauge I had done earlier that had two pointers and a mask, so the programming was likely to be pretty easy.
After a couple days of editing, I finally finished the Bitmaps and Code Edits. Another half day of fixing stupid mistakes, and I now have an duplicate of the stock P-47D Fuel Gauge.
The attached screenshot shows the display at 60% Fuel Load.
Note that the Aux Tank is showing 60% of 100 Gallons or 60 Gallons while the Main Tank is showing 60% of 270 Gallons or 162 Gallons and not 60% of 205 Gallons.
Next step is to modify it to create a 270 Gallon Fuel Gauge.
I had already done the Background for the 270 Gallon Gauge but can't seem to figure out what happened to it.
It appears that all the BMP files in a directory I was working in just disappeared when I renamed the directory.
Nothing ended up in the Recycle Bin.
- Ivan.