Master switch

[Guest jlwoodward]

Hello,I want to attempt to make a working master switch for the VC. I think I can make it with FSDS2 and animate it, but I also want to make it selectable with the mouse. I don't have a clue as to whether some specialized skills or knowledge are needed to do this. Could someone please point me in the right direction?Thanks,John Woodward

[Guest airhead]

Hey John,The first part would be in the animation, so if you can work that out in FSDS (sorry I use gwax), you've already won half the battle. Us gmax users will just have to wait for the SDK's from MS, hopefully to be published before FS2006 is out. I'm not holding my breath...Anyway, I think I can help you with the next bit of making it clickable. If you are familiar with making VC panels, that will be a huge help. What you need to do for the mouse click part is create a VC panel and then place a gauge that operates the switch via a boolean toggle (as you would with a 2D panel) on this new VC panel. This VC panel can be an individual or part of a larger panel, I will not address that issue in depth here. Then it is just a matter of mapping this VC panel to the toggle portion of the switch's 3D geometry. I don't know if the method for doing this is the same in FSDS as it is in gmax, maybe someone else can pitch in here if you need specific help with that.I have used this method for all of the standard VC cockpit controls (prop, mix, throttle, pbrake, starter, elevator trim, etc.) in my FS9 Super Decathlon update (to be released very soon), and it works rather well (at least I think it does). The only difference is, in gmax I can only use the available animation part tags from MS, based on the FS2002 MakeMDL and SDK. Sounds like FSDS might have an advantage here if you can animate the switch geometry based on different FS variables.Hope this helps. :)

[Guest jlwoodward]

Thanks Mr. Head. I will be building the switch this week. I understand about adding panels with transparent textures to the VC and adding the appropriate sections to the panel cfg file, although I have not tried adding one to a moving part. The part about the boolean toggle went over my head. It would be great to make this work.Thanks,John Woodward

[Guest airhead]

Hey John,In referrence to the boolean toggle, this is an issue within gauge coding. Basically, if the switch is on, the FS variables value is equal to 1, if off it is equal to 0. The toggle part has to do with how the mouse area (click spot) is coded. In your case, I assumed that you wanted a "click on, click off" functionality, regardless of where the user clicks, so long as it is on the switch geometry. In contrast, a gauge could be coded using two adjacent mouse areas, one being increment, the other decrement. This terminology and method of coding lends itself more to a gauge setting the Nav radio frequency, as an exammple. I think the former would suit your needs a bit better.To be honest, I would think the animation would be the larger issue here. I am in no way questioning your FSDS skills in saying this, but is it, in fact, possible to animate the switch geometry based on the value of the master switch variable. Currently this is not possible with gmax, at least not until the new MakeMDL and associated SDK are released by Microsoft.If you can accomplish the animation as such, I can assist with the gauge, should you find that you need help there.I hope this helps clarify my previous post a bit. :)

[Guest Karl R Pettersen]

If you hexedit the new (FS9) aircraft's mdl file, you'll see that animated switches actually drives the events - they have event set commands within the model file. Unfortunately this makes it very hard to "fix" or edit already done planes.

[Guest airhead]

Yep, had a go at an FS9 mdl in a hex editor a while back myself. Same conclusion on the events. I threw in the workaround to get something going, and think it works rather well, though not like MS. Once we know the tags for the new interactivity, it should be realtively easy to achieve.Where are the SDK's? (btw, that's a rhetorical) :(