February 17, 20188 yr Author Thanks Father Bill, I have seen all the different threads about Blender and honestly never really knew what it was. I shall look in to that. Thanks for the tip. As a Gauge Programmer, perhaps you can help me with one last "artifact" of the FS2004 to FSX journey. From the virtual cockpit in the next two screenshots you can see the RPM gauge directly in front, first in the pure FS2004 aircraft (but in FSX) and the second the reworked aircraft (again in FSX) but with the prop blur issue resolved. Engine is at stop because "prop blur" is not the problem now, the vc gauges are. Notice the "squared out area" of the gauge all black? I don't know why it does not show in the pure FS2004 version used in FSX, but does in the reworked version. The third image is the gauge texture bitmap. The textures are, of course found in the gauge cabinet file, but I have extracted them and tried reworking them with DXTBMP to GIMP and back to DXTBMP as well as directly with Paint.net The gauges used in the cockpit are all xml gauges. Every gauge in the cockpit has this black square around it. I also tried editing each gauges bitmap with Panel Design Studio, but no luck. Most had white alpha channels which I, at varying attempts, changed to grey, black, or white. Part of the problem is creating an alpha in paint.net is...difficult for me. I can create one in GIMP, but most of the textures are not "powers of 2" so GIMP automatically resizes them and then nothing shows in the vc but a fully black square. Paint.net and Panel Design Studio keep the original size of the bitmap. Confusing probably, but hopefully you know what I mean. Not really an issue that is a showstopper. The gauges all function and all display, just each one is set in a black square the gauge face sets in. Randy Randy Tyndall You never lose the buzz of flying. Every time you take off, it feels a bit naughty, as if you're doing something you shouldn't do...Matt Jones, Boultbee Flight Academy
February 17, 20188 yr Moderator Check to make certain that the 'black corners' are actually 'pure black', meaning RGB:0,0,0. In FSX and beyond, 0,0,0 is required for full transparency. RGB:1,1,1 or greater is opaque and will allow the gauge texture to appear. The Alpha Channel is rarely used at all. Fr. Bill AOPA Member: 07141481 AARP Member: 3209010556 Avsim Board of Directors | Avsim Forums Moderator
February 17, 20188 yr Author Thank you, I will make sure and report back. Randy Edit: I must be doing something wrong, then, because I made sure the RGB value of the black area (corners) was indeed 0,0,0 and the black area still shows in the VC. I made sure I changed the background color to black (0,0,0) also. (The texture bitmap has a foreground and a background) I kept the original texture size of the RPM Background Texture by loading it straight in to GIMP bypassing DXTBMP. Frustrating. Edited February 17, 20188 yr by Ramjett To Show results of Attempt Randy Tyndall You never lose the buzz of flying. Every time you take off, it feels a bit naughty, as if you're doing something you shouldn't do...Matt Jones, Boultbee Flight Academy
February 18, 20188 yr Moderator Here is an example of an altimeter gauge. The corners are 0,0,0, but the little areas inside (where the drum numbers will be displayed is 1,1,1. Both look black, but the corners are transparent and the little boxes inside at 1,1,1 allow other bitmaps to be displayed in that area (like a window), as the rest of the altimeter background will mask everything that isn't within the 1,1,1 boxes! The digital "tape's" black is 0,0,0 and the numbers are of course not quite pure white (some thing like 200,200,200 if I recall correctly). Fr. Bill AOPA Member: 07141481 AARP Member: 3209010556 Avsim Board of Directors | Avsim Forums Moderator
February 18, 20188 yr Author Father Bill, I have come to suspect that I am up against a proverbial "brick wall" armed with a soda straw to get through it. Couldn't sleep last night, so at 2:00 AM loaded up GMAX (I have been slowly going through the tutorials to get a feel for creating models as well as the FSX SDK Gauge Creation tutorial) and imported the internal model of the Fokker D VII as a .3ds (old) file. After removing all the pieces and parts of the VC so I could better see the planes the gauge textures display upon I fear solving this is, as of the moment, beyond my ken. I suspect the planes are "solid" so even though the black areas of the texture are 0,0,0 and thus, transparent, the underlying square planes are not and, therefore, visible. Each object you see in the screenshot is a gauge location in the virtual cockpit, including the one to the far right, which is the ASI gauge operating off an animated cup anemometer attached to a wing strut. But I do appreciate all your help and guidance sir. Since I couldn't sleep and someone posted in another thread that your "Emissive Lighting" tutorial would help understand how a virtual cockpit is created I read through it. Imparting knowledge with a "light banter" made reading it enjoyable, but really didn't get me closer to a solution to my problem. Randy Edited February 18, 20188 yr by Ramjett Clarity Randy Tyndall You never lose the buzz of flying. Every time you take off, it feels a bit naughty, as if you're doing something you shouldn't do...Matt Jones, Boultbee Flight Academy
February 19, 20188 yr Moderator Since you have the model in GMax now, you will want to convert all of the Materials used for the gauge polygons to FSX Materials, and when setting up the options be certain to flag the FSX Material as being for a virtual cockpit. This should solve the black corner issue. I'm glad you enjoyed reading my article. I did try hard to make it more "fun" to read... Fr. Bill AOPA Member: 07141481 AARP Member: 3209010556 Avsim Board of Directors | Avsim Forums Moderator
February 20, 20188 yr Author Thanks Father Bill, I'm still kinda in the "Looking Around" stage right now. When I do something and try to export it I always get an "Export Failed" warning. I'm sure it has to do with the GMAX settings not point to the FSX SDK correctly, because the SDK, and consequently the GMAX Gamepack, are not in the default locations, nor is FSX. I'll sort it all out and give that a try. I noticed the "Is Virtual Cockpit Panel Texture" tickbox because I had seen previous posts about making sure it was checked so I looked for it on purpose. I also downloaded Blender and opened it...once. Looks more "daunting" than GMAX, but I'll experiement in it also. I'm gonna defeat this...just takes time, experience, and a lot of trial and error. I've got until November when the 100th Anniversary of the WWI Armistice arrives. Randy Randy Tyndall You never lose the buzz of flying. Every time you take off, it feels a bit naughty, as if you're doing something you shouldn't do...Matt Jones, Boultbee Flight Academy
February 20, 20188 yr Moderator Well Randy, I've been at this for closing on 30 years now, and as one of the "early pioneers" I am largely self-taught. I've learned a lot via the old 'trial and error," with MAJOR emphasis on the "error" part. It was without a doubt a very trying experience. This was done without the benefit of AVSIM, Flightsim.com or FS Developer, as none of them existed when I began this journey of learning. I long ago made it a practice to learn at least one new thing everyday... Unfortunately, I'm of an age now where I frequently find that I've manage to forget two or more things every day. If this keeps up, I'll find myself completely ignorant again... Putting it another way, I find myself thinking frequently about the "hereafter," as in walking into the kitchen and then standing there, looking around, and thinking to myself "What did I come in here after?" When I finally find myself in the bathroom and wondering why I'm there, I know that I've completely lost it! Fr. Bill AOPA Member: 07141481 AARP Member: 3209010556 Avsim Board of Directors | Avsim Forums Moderator
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