Hi can anyone help me or point me in the right direction. Im interested in building glass cockpits, project magenta style.Im id say an advanced beginner in C/C++ programming scene and would like to try and build airbus style glass cockpits that can be used on seperate screens to create a home cockpit style set up.any ideas would helpkind regardsDave LongAITG

Hi,some links...http://flyreal.free.fr/English/main_E.htmhttp://a340gc.iradis.org/the links are wrong on the main page the extension en is used instead of the htmlhttp://a340gc.iradis.org/download/index.htmlhttp://a340gc.iradis.org/faq/index.htmlhttp://opengc.sourceforge.net/http://sourceforge.net/projects/freefd/BrgdsEugen

Do you already know with what you wanna draw? E. g. GDI, GDI+, OpenGL, DirectX?

Well i havent thought that far ahead as of yet. I wouldn't be phased by working with any of the above.With the soon to be released fs04 acof I would probably go for DX it depended really on time and effort.Do you have any ideas or what would you decide on. Whats Project magenta built with?kind regardsps Thats the main reason for me posting in here to get a discussion going so that I know what im geting myself in to...Dave Long

>Do you have any ideas or what would you decide on.I, personally, *would* go for DX (I'd really love to use it for my gauges, but I am too dumb).GDI is easy, but is not ultra fast and has limited capabilities, e. g. no anti alias etc.GDI+ is not very recommendable, since it is damn slow. Looks good though, with anti alias and other nice things.Don't quite know about OpenGL, might be a choice, no idea.I personally would, as said above, prefer DX.>Whats Project magenta built with?No idea also, sorry. ;-)Etienne :-wave

Well i just jumped right in and started downloading the DX9 sdk. All 222mb of it. thank god for broadband!Well i'll see, I have a half decent understanding of VC++. Just having a look at DX9 because the new FS04 ACOF uses DX9 so I thought might as well be as upto date as FS04.I know a little bit of opengl.How slow do you reckon GDI is? When you think that i'm building these panels/gauges to sit on their own monitors on a networked group of computers and have the FS scenery on a seperate 3 display system. So it shouldn't really matter about the anti alias and all the other graphic goodies out there. The only thing on the screen would be the gauge.Dave Long

Yeah, ok, if you really have this thing networked and really one PC has only to care about one single gauge, you can kick in and take even GDI+, if you want.Well, GDI doesn't use hardware acceleration (like GDI+), as far as I know, and that's why it ain't as fast as DX for example. It anyway is sufficient for vector drawn gauges etc. If there's just one mega huge gauge on one monitor, even the lack of anti alias ain't a problem, since the gauge will be, as just said, somewhat big.Etienne :-wave

Yeah what i have in mind is for the seperate gauges to sit on say a 15" monitor, so they aren't gonna be too big and they don't have to completely fill the screen.Basically im aiming for something like an airbus cockpit plane and simple 2 maybe 3 computer run gauges on their own system. Then The main powerful machine running a matrox parhelia with 3 screen display showing just the forward and side views the out of the windows views you see.Dave Long

Nice.Then have some fun and... good luck! ;-)Etienne :-wave

Hello Dave.What do you mean by "...the new FS04 ACOF uses DX9..."? MSFS has used DirectX for it's core engine for quite some time now. The gauges in the new FS04 seem to be all XML, including their GPS. Go figure.....Project Magenta uses OpenGL.

The sim as a whole uses DX9. DX9 comes with FS04. I know becuase im a beta tester. I know that the gauges use XML, what i meant was, as the sim uses DX9 i might as well start there!answer your question??Dave Long

Dave, what sort of instruments are you lloking at duplicating? I have *some* stuff from the 744 if you are interested in that aircraft.

Well eventually i'd like to build more or less a full cockpit. Im definately interested in the commercial jets. Id originally thought about the airbus, becuase i already have a good amount of background info. But info isn't too hard to come by these days.What kind of stuff do you have. Original intruments and the like?The 744 would be very interesting to put together, i'am a fan of the big bird.get back to me anything would be useful...Kind regardsDave Long

As you are a FS2004 beta tester, maybe you can answer my question:Do the vector gauges (drawn with GDI or other) appear in the virtual cockpit?Thanks.

Please explain your question further...Dave