View From Cockpit Without Rendering The Aircraft Or Panels

[TallTanBarbie 19]

I'll try asking this again if it wasn't clear enough.

Is it possible to run P3D (or FSXSE too for that matter)  (a) *without* showing the aircraft and (b) also slew the viewpoint? 

Turning off the Virtual Cockpit view works only in a fixed forward direction -- it doesn't allow slewing the viewpoint and stutters with brief flashes of the (semi) rendered aircraft when you try to slew.

I have separate instruments and instrument panel displays and don't need to show the aircraft itself. It just gets in the way.

If it's not possible to have a movable exterior view sans aircraft, then how do you set up the config file if possible to do simultaneous views from different directions with multiple cameras?

Edited November 6, 2019 by TallTanBarbie

[krazyk 157]

If I understand you correctly, you want the aircraft exterior but no panel inside?

If so, that should be easily doable. Depending on what kind of aircraft add-on you're trying to achieve this with, the following steps should largely be universal:

Browse to your add-on in SimObjects\Airplanes, there should be at least (1) model folder in there. If more, then they'll usually be called model.xx (xx being whatever the developer decided to call that particular variant).

Inside this model folder, there should be a file with either a prefix or suffix called 'VC'. For example, the Quality Wings 787-8 folder has a model.RR sub-directory with 3 files inside, one of them is called 'QW788_VC_P3D.mdl'. This is what tells the sim what inside panel to use.
In the same folder, there should also be a text file called 'model.txt'. If you open that, you'll see there is one entry for 'normal' and one for 'interior'. The former controls the exterior model, while the latter contains the virtual cockpit or VC. The latter is what you need to change.

You could simply remove whatever is after 'interior=' or a safer method (in case you want to go back to the default state) would be to add (2) // as a prefix to 'interior=...'. With that the final look of the entries should look like below:

[models]
normal=AB123_GE
//interior=AB123_VC

[TallTanBarbie 19]

Hi Krazyk...thanks for the info.  Actually, I just want to show the world and terrain from the cockpit viewpoint but without showing the aircraft 3D model at all -- as if you were flying an invisible aeroplane. I have separate standard gauges and the Garmin G-1000 running on networked touchscreens.  What would be nice would be to just cut out the cockpit part of the fuselage similar to what you were describing and only show the parts of aircraft that would normally be visible if you were looking through windows.

[DChockey08 299]

you could just go to your model folder and disable the external model.

I run a FDS Jetmax and used to do that with the PMDG 777 to save VAS space.

You can disable the external model and it will just be like you are flying an invisible aircraft.

[Howellerman 104]

I don't know if it works in P3D (that's when I went to Chase Plane) but in FSX I used to hit the F10 key and it would show just the world from the cockpit. Note that the aircraft should NOT have a 2D cockpit, only VC.

If you use Chase Plane you may be able to render the same effect by going to World View and placing the camera slightly in front of the windshield? 

[MarkDH 234]

On 11/6/2019 at 2:03 AM, TallTanBarbie said:

then how do you set up the config file if possible to do simultaneous views from different directions with multiple cameras?

One way of doing this is to use ViewGroups. It's very easy once you know how to do it, but there is precious little documentation. Seach on my YT channel to find a couple of videos explaining how I did a three-screen viewgroup.

[stampee 8]

Hello: I spent a long time figuring this out as well. In your cameras.cfg file. copy the virtual cockpit settings to the standard 2d cockpit setting.  It will look something like this.

Origin = Cockpit
ShowPanel = no
SnapPbhAdjust = swivel
SnapPbhReturn = false
PanPbhAdjust = swivel
PanPbhReturn = false
Track = None
ShowAxis = FrontOnly
AllowZoom = TRUE
InitialZoom = 1.0
SmoothZoomTime = 2.0
ShowWeather = Yes
XyzAdjust = TRUE
ShowLensFlare=FALSE
Category = Cockpit
PitchPanRate=30
HeadingPanRate=75
PanAcceleratorTime=0
HotKeySelect=2

 

 It works great and I have been doing this for 5 years at least.

-Stampee

p.s. do you drive a corvette or an Austin healey?

 

[TallTanBarbie 19]

 

On 11/28/2019 at 9:56 AM, stampee said:

Hello: I spent a long time figuring this out as well. In your cameras.cfg file. copy the virtual cockpit settings to the standard 2d cockpit setting.  It will look something like this.

Origin = Cockpit
ShowPanel = no
SnapPbhAdjust = swivel
SnapPbhReturn = false
PanPbhAdjust = swivel
PanPbhReturn = false
Track = None
ShowAxis = FrontOnly
AllowZoom = TRUE
InitialZoom = 1.0
SmoothZoomTime = 2.0
ShowWeather = Yes
XyzAdjust = TRUE
ShowLensFlare=FALSE
Category = Cockpit
PitchPanRate=30
HeadingPanRate=75
PanAcceleratorTime=0
HotKeySelect=2

 

 It works great and I have been doing this for 5 years at least.

-Stampee

p.s. do you drive a corvette or an Austin healey?

 

 

Ha.  I always wanted the Barbie corvette.  How about an old Blazer or a Jeep?  Will that do?

 

I've been busy but I'll try this and see if it works. 

It turns out that the exterior G1000 instrument panel program from Flight 1 Aviation Technologies (program $250 for the touchscreen version + $50 for airport taxi diagrams + $50 for Beech Baron plugin) does it automatically by switching to a virtual model that renders nothing so it's probably the same thing.  The only drawback is that you can't just use it on any aircraft -- only the a/c models that come with the program and selected additional plugins for other aircraft, so the big drawback is that it works well but you can't use it on whatever you want.

Probably the only universal solution to this is to run multiple instances of P3D on different machines and have one render the exterior view and the other just show the instrument panel and hook them together over the network.

 

[TallTanBarbie 19]

Update (with photo)(Please excuse the junky room)