Helios Panel CreationOne feature of Helios that makes it so powerful as a user interface is panel creation. Capt Zeen et
al, use this to make complex interactive panels.
Designing a panel can contain sub-panels take a long time to build, and to be a fully functional
interactive panel may require potentially complicated bindings.
The word "panel" as used here, refers strictly to the panel control object within Helios. In the programing sense, a panel is a "container" and can contain any other control including other panels which could also contain panels containing yet more panels.
Remember the Helios cockpit is only a layer that sits on top of the whatever background (MCFD, RWR etc) your monitor.lua file told your monitor to show, that's why to see and MCFD you need to tell your monitor file where your Helios profile expects it to be.
Creating cockpit panels can be accomplished in 2 ways in Helios:
1. Simply dragging a panel control from toolbox to the desired monitor.
2. Simply dragging a panel from toolbox to the desired monitor, then double clicking it and editing or adding other controls on top of it. By double clicking the panel a new tab with the panel name will appear in the central display window.
By using method 2, the panel is now a container object, ie it can contain other controls including other panels.
Method 2 has the advantage of re-sizing all of the controls on it at one time since the panel contains other controls these sub-controls all resize when there parent control is resized. In addition hiding this panel will hide all the controls on it at one time.
Method 1Below are numerous panels, but created using Method 1. Double clicking the panel will show the panel tab at the top but there are no controls contained in these panels.
Here I dragged four panels from the toolbox to monitor 2. The order in which panel is placed first since the first panel is created on the bottom and subsequent panels are place on top. Control objects added in the following order:
Panel Green
Panel Black
Radio Panel 1 Blue
UHF Panel 2 Red
Controls "3D" display from the top
UHF Panel 2 Red
Radio Panel 1 Blue
Panel Black
Panel Green
Position in this stack can be change be selecting a layer then pressing the indicated "Up" down "Down" arrows.
My graphic program showing the relationship of the layer tab and its position in 3D space.
By double clicking on each
Panel a tab will appear at top of the main control window. As shown here these tabs are displayed BUT each tab contains no other controls, so it is NOT a container object.
By clicking on each panel tab, you could see the contents of that tab only, in Method 1, that tab would only show an
empty panel...... adding controls to the empty panel tab is Method 2.
Black squares in the corners of panel!
When I dragged the panel onto the main monitor 2 work space it was black. I selected the panel then click on properties
tab and changed the fill colour to green, this made the black squares appear. The squares are the borders of the panel. By deleting the top right image i got rid of the square in top right. Note also the hidden check box on the properties tab, this tells Helios to display on not display the image at start up.
Notice that I used a green fill, but I could have used any user created file I wanted, best to use PNG file type. When adding images, bigger images usually appear clearer, but too many large images may contribute to slowing the system down.
Double clicking on Panel Green shows a tab with just Panel Green, there are no controls or objects on it, as shown on the empty layers tab.(Method 1)
More tutorials here:
Below are some Helios tutorials using both DCS Warthog, BlackShark and BMS Falcon as examples:
Basic Helios Tutorialhttp://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/4311178/Basic_Helios_tutorial_w/_RWR_i#Post4311178Showing Helios Control Panel and Helios control of DCS Active Pausehttp://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/4313084/Helios_Control_of_DCS_Active_P#Post4313084Helios Panel Creation Method 1 (cockpit design)http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/4312789/Helios_Panel_Creation_Method_1#Post4312789
Helios Panel Creation Method 2, the Best Method (cockpit design)http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/4312877/Helios_Panel_Creation_Method_2#Post4312877Getting Screen Coordinates of Windows without use of graphics program (cockpit design).http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/4313980/Helios_easiest_way_to_get_scre#Post4313980
Helios Gotchas for the Noobie (cockpit design)http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/4313906/Helios_Gottchas_for_the_Noobie#Post4313906
Helios use of "Send Keys" to Control DCS (cockpit design)http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/4312967/Helios_use_of_Send_Keys&#Post4312967These tutorials use Capt_Zeen's, Ice's Profiles.
