DVCs: wht's inside the MDL for them??

[Mariopilot 9]

Hi everybody!!It's a long time I'm trying to make a DVC work... I'm working with Aircraft designer 2002 v1.2 (look www.actpub.com)the matter is about what's truly inside a DVC...as I'm not able to make one work!!!!first we need to explore wht is inside the MDL:level 0) the header and the call instrucitons for assemblies... here also a texture list of the files used by the model, with some properties as normal ,alpha for reflections, or light-nigh mapping. also an index from 0 to 255 wich meaning I don't know, generally set 255, and a texture color, generally black...what this color mans, boh... level 1)a) the main assembly: your plane... b)the VC assembly: this assembly is called when you look from the VC view. c) mip levels assemblies: they replace the main assembly if the model on the screen is less than some pixels of size...level 3) inside the assembly: the sub-asssemblies: the contain first a color instruction(try deleting the textures of an aircraft and you seee it painted in a color: that's it), then, if the sub-assembly is textured, a texture instruction, regarding to the texture mapping options (generally a part of an aircraft not uses the whole texture, since FS2000): if the texture is from right-top-front view or left-bottom-aft. THere's also an instruction regarding the sub-assembly transparency level...0 100% in 10% increments, and only 50% -100%if sub-assembly is textured.level 4) the polygons: they are only triangles...or hidden polys if more than 3 points.So, a DVC is certainly a sub-assembly: no othr place for ploys in MDL!!but it makes use of triangles and a texture instruction, or just a hidden poly with the texture instruction?the $panel.bmp is a normal texture instrution?? it does not need to be in your texture folder of your plane...FS should create automatically it...but it does not, and if I copy the $panel.bmp file in the texture folder, it's not loaded...depends only by the $, as if I place something like

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>Hi everybody!!>It's a long time I'm trying to make a DVC work... I'm working>with Aircraft designer 2002 v1.2 (look>www.actpub.com)>the matter is about what's truly inside a DVC...as I'm not>able to make one work!!!!I'm not familiar with the program you're using, so cannot even speculate on how you might implement this...Have you read my tutorial on VCdesign posted as a link at the top of this forum?Basically, in order to display gauges in a VC, you need to create a set of very simple planar surfaces. Ideally, these will be the exact size and shape of the model's "physical panel." These planar polygons will "float" a few mm in front of the "physical panel." Think of these a "movie screens" on which the gauges are "projected" by the sim! :)You must apply square texture mapping to each set of "projection polys," and apply an 8bit texture with a filename that is prefixed by the "$" character. This is a reserved character in FS that simply means "autogenerate this texture at run time." Therefore, you do NOT need to put an actual texture file in any folder for this to work.The "magic" is all accomplished with the "Vcockpit" entries in the panel.cfgI'm not going to go much further with this, as it's all in the aforementioned tutorial...Personally, I think your time would be better spent learning GMax and/or FSDS2, as both programs were designed to accomodate this task easily... :)BillAVSIM OmbudsmanFounder and Director,Creative Recycling of Aircraft Partshttp://catholic-hymns.com/frbill/FS2002/images/fartslogo.jpg