Graphically I find the gauges unreadable, I tend to use the compass and rpm's thoe most, but I'm sure I'd use some others if I could read them. I even tried zooming in and zooming out on the gauges and they where all fuzzy both ways and normal view. Now this is not true with all planes but most of them. Some have very clean looking words, markers and numbers.

I'm uncertain how the gauges are made, or at what resolution and dpi they are made at. (Whats the max the game can load?) But I'd like to try my hand at clearing some of the instruments up, I could use scaling techniques and filters to sharpen them, and insert numbers where the sharpening doesn't work using the appropriate font.

Another option is to borrow from another WWII flight sim and use their gauges, either by ripping them or by getting screenshots and doing some scaling and re-sampling then some cut and pasting.

I would need to know if there are standard gauges for certain planes or country's and use those for historical accurate.

So how would I get my hands into working with gauges? What tools do I need to get the skins for the gauges and to put them back after I'm done modifying them? Can anyone point me in the right direction? Thanks!

Mark
same problem here tried downloading a gauges file from your post,,But I'm using the readouts at the bottom and taking it as is

Yeah those instrument sharpened patch archive seem to only be for the stock planes and where made probably 14 years ago.

I'd like to sharpen/clear up the planes in the current version of v1.40 addons, if possible.


I noticed the P-38 dials are fuzzy in SPAW. How would I extract the dial artwork for that plane?

Okay I extracted the .PCX dials from a TPC file for the P38.

Increased the image to 512 to better see what I'm doing.

I tried to apply a new dial I screen captured from the CFS3 m3d viewer to the gauge for rpm but when I reduced the overall size back down to 256x256 the text goes blurry again. ugh.

So I took a look at instruments20.zip and tried to see how they sharpened things back in the day. It looks like they slightly increased the size of each gauge by about 20%, leaving center where it belongs and used FONT Text to apply the text and numbers at the 256x256 size, without any more re-sampling etc...
But it does look un-historical, but it works if where limited to 256x256. If we could go upto 512 that would make a world of a difference.

So don't know what I'm going to do, maybe just forget about it.

While working with the SPAW P-38 gauges I noticed that the engine temp gauges appear to be custom. Normally the gauges match up pretty good, but I can't seem to find a temp gauge that looks like the existing one for the P-38. So I made a crude one up to match it just to see what happens.

There's also a cylinder head temp gauge for a p-38 but again it looks nothing like the one in the game, same with manifold. I just have to make some decisions here to get the best positioning of center and the markers on the gauges. Might even have to shift the center of the needles a bit in the DAT file...

Also the one gauge top far right is the wrong gauge, it should be a dual temp p38 gauge, The way the needles are behaving and references to that area of a real p38 indicate this. I happen to find the real image of one online, so we'll see how the range of it works with the needles. I'm really not sure what's its purpose is other than temp. More investigation required.

So are we restricted to 256x256 still for the gauge layout?
If so can I remove some gauges that don't function and/or enlarger other gauges slightly to get the markers and numbers to pop? (I'll have to use custom fonts if this is the case)


Thanks.

Wow not one person has answered my question about the cockpits...WTH guys. Are you a helping loving community or just so secretive? A simple answer could have saved me a lot of time.

Hi Mark.

We did try to use a 512x512 bmp, but with a bigger texture the needles are all out of position. Crashing Jack did the work, but he could not find a fix.

Maybe, if you fancy trying to pick up where CJ left off, we might be able to find a way to get it to work.

To see what the 512x512 gauge textures look like, you need to make a blank 512x512pcx, and convert it to tpc, with picpac. Then resize the 256x256 to 512x512 and save it as 24bit bmp.

The dials should show up smaller, and the gauges look bigger. There is something wrong with the display code, as land tiles and skins all work fine in 512x512. Maybe Tony can fix this, when he has some time.

I mess with 3dz models, and not code.

Tony.

To help Mark you'll need to read this post:

http://mogggy.org/TheGen2/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=3763&hilit=gauges

Have you ever tried to get these MPS Editors to work in 1.40? CJ was using 1.28 before the graphics were changed to 1024x768.



Mark, this post is on our private forum, so you will not be able to read it.

Now that info greatly helps me, Thank you so much.

If the game itself has a builting Cockpit editor that's great!
What about the Cockpit Editor Crashin' Jack used, he said its from Microprose?

I would imagine it would need hex editing to change the resolution if the program even runs on newer windows.

Hi Dave.

The editor is part of the game code, and a special version of the code needs to be compiled. The snag is we have made so many changes to the game code, there is no way of knowing if these editors will still work. In a lot of these cases it's easier to understand what is going on and make a new tool which works on WinXP on.

We need to wait for Tony to return, and see if he can make a new editor. None of us has ever edited VCG.dat [Virtual Cockpit Gauge Data], files, so we need to first know how the work. Maybe you could do a bit of hunting for VCG.dat files in the EAW Archives? There is always lots buried there.

I have done nothing at all in this area

I am still trying to fathom out the type 4 element problem.
I found something odd in the code, but the two obvious fixes made things worse and I am back to square one.
I thought I was used to the hot weather after 40 years in South Australia, but right now the continuous heat is wearing us out.

From my understanding all we need are the X and Y cords of the center of the needle for placement, if your increasing the size by doubling the pcx file to 512x512 then the values in the DAT file need to be doubled.
This measurement starts in the top left of the image.

Hi Tony.

I've only found those two posts on the subject, and since 2007 there has nothing been done on this area.

Anyway, fingers crossed the weather cools down a bit, were due for a heat wave here at the end of the week.

Here's what it comes down to:

ONE - It's a fault in EAW that's been there from the beginning.

The gauges right out of the box were never very good. Most guys only needed the digital display in the lower corners to fly and fight successfully. About the only gauges that were important were the fuel and attitude gauges. Both of which are good enough as is.

Sure a few aficionados watched their temp gauges but I'd hazard a guess that the average offline player turned off engine overheating in the difficulty settings. Seems like a good compromise as all you could do was throttle back to reduce temps. EAW doesn't have a full engine management set of controls so there aren't any cowl flaps to fiddle with. (Not sure but I think the online players do have to watch engine management a bit more.)

TWO - At this point, 14 years later there isn't anyone around to upgrade a couple of hundred different cockpits.

So we're not ignoring you, we're just tired.

You missed one thing Ray, maybe a newbie would like to have a crack at it.

Very true what you say though, after all these years, we are all a bit tired!

John, I hope I didn't sound too negative so to be clear, I welcome the enthusiasm of a newbie.

What I was trying to convey was that this particular problem is way down the list of priorities. There's a lot of other unfinished projects that would provide a bigger bang for the buck than fixing the gauges.

For instance, the target upgrade for the EAW world is about half finished. It would be a big boost for the game to complete it.

I stopped because I ran into some kind of memory problem which Jel suspected might be due to the large number of TMODs I had placed at the various target sites.

That plus I got tired. It's not exactly "sexy" work. If I had a partner I might work up the enthusiasm to pick it up again. The good thing about Jel's latest target editor is that each target is a distinct file which can be shared, meaning two or more modders can work on the project at the same time.

Or, a newbie might want to get involved with Moggy's CAW upgrade. Plenty to learn about EAW in that scenario and the extra manpower would be a boon.

Be that said, we all have our own particular interests in this hobby so if a newbie is really passionate about a particular facet of EAW then he should have at it.

Hi Ray.

No you didn't sound too negative. The office, is a badly neglected area, but like you say there are other areas which need attention.

I'm a bit surprised these type 4 elements are causing so much bother, but then we have never used them before.

I'd love to see CAW finished. It seems a lifetime ago when I made the Terrain tiles and Habbaniyah airfield model, and I doubt I could do it today.

I was able to get the 1.2CE (Cockpit Editor) to work on Windows 7, It installed right over v1.2.
I used Aqrit's ddwrapper
http://bitpatch.com/ddwrapper.html
With these settings, cause I was getting flicker from the "menu" overlays. And the usual color fix setting need to be on to display the editor correctly since it's using DirectDraw2D to display the cockpit.

RealDDrawPath = AUTO
BltMirror = 0
BltNoTearing = 0
ColorFix = 1
DisableHighDpiScaling = 0
FakeVsync = 1
FakeVsyncInterval = 18
ForceBltNoTearing = 0
ForceDirectDrawEmulation = 0
NoVideoMemory = 0
SingleProcAffinity = 0
ShowFPS = 0

The only thing I see missing so far from the editor is "Drag and Drop" the needle position. The VCG****.DAT file still needs to be hex edited.

LOL, I found this thread this morning, and I did have to have a chuckle. My apologies for laughing, I'm sure Mark spent a considerable amount of time searching threads. When I had come up with all the cockpit stuff, I couldn't get any interest at all in someone else fiddling with it. I did, however, post quite a few threads explaining how to use the editor; they are in the archive now, do a search for "Crashin'" and you'll get quite a few posts.

The difficulty for changing the way the gauges work is that they are built into the P****VIEW.CPT file for each slot. This file is ALL the info for the 2D cockpits, but also for all of the details on how the gauges work. The VCG file then gives you a place to store the X and Y coordinates for the 3D cockpit, with a few bits dedicated to fine tunning movement if I recall. The gauges, though, are set up using the 640x480 resolution of the 2D cockpits. Actually, the image size is taller because in the 2D cockpit you could still look down to see the iages, which is why the cockpit struts were set up as sprites rather than part of the image.

I did get a Cockpit Editor to at least start with the 1024x768 screen size, but the cockpit image and thus the gauges still occupied the 640x480
area. Here is a pic I just took:


I just noticed something interesting. Before I load "New Plane" the screen location shown in the lower right says 1023x767 (one pixel smaller than it should be..hhmmm....). But after loading a Pview file, the lower right corner now shows 1023x977. This would be the same proportion for the forward view in the 2D cockpits when adding in the additional percentage needed when looking down at the instrument panel....

Creating a new Pview file requires loading static images to be used in the various directions you can look whne using the 2D cokcpit, i.e. front, left, left up, left rear, etc. These are missing the moment so it loads nothing.

Looks like the yard work won't be getting done today........

I was excited doing new gauges for a p38 in the 1.40 cause the gauge was wrong in one area. I thought it would be easy but it was beyond me I think I concluded.

I still have the P38 gauge images, most are from the CFS game, expect for one or two I had to get real world image and modified it. If you want them I'll send them to you, if not for sh*ts and giggles.

Hi Mark !

What kind of problem did you run into for making gauges? I have a pretty sizable collection of reference photos as well as gauges built from scratch for British, Russian, German and Japanese aircraft. For some reason I never got around to doing the American gauges but they are fairly simple to make if you have Photoshop, but they are tedious if they have a lot of hashmarks.

If you are looking to mod the panels, I would be more than happy to guide you through using the cockpit editor and the VCG files. I have extensive documentation for the PVIEW files too if you want to hack them in hex code.

I wouldn't mind having a look at the gauges you have, I will PM you with my address. I use gauges from other games as a reference rather than as a working image because if they are from screenshots they may have a bit of distortion to them.

Let me know if I can help !

Cheers!

CJ

I'm not into it anymore, I couldn't understand why the images when shrunk lost so much detail. a 512x512 pcx would work great if the game supported them tho.

The archive I sent you may not even contain the pcx I was actually working on. I may have been to discourage and deleted it.


EDIT: looks like I was playing with the planeX bmp by centering the gauges on existing dials as a guide. Think I used a semi transparent mask when I was placing the dials so I could see where the cent was on the old ones.

Its pretty amateur work I have to say.


EDIT2: looks like I enlarged the numerals on all the dials as well. I guess I did do alot more than I originally thought.

So?

Baby steps before running...

Stumble and fall, then get up and try again...

Do not give up, you can and will crack the problems.

Hi Mark,I have factory drawings for the P38 panel if you are interested..

I'd love to have copies of any of that sort of thing as well...

This do?Unsure of model though.US gauges only use a couple of diameter instrument cases and bezels so only thing to draw up are the faces.

Found this one, looks different.

http://www.lonesentry.com/blog/p-38-instrument-panel.html



EDIT: The more I look at it, it doesn't look like a p38 cockpit.

It's a P-38.Here's a P-38 L to compare it to. Notice the shape of the panel:

Might be a later version.Try this one