On Sunday 10 March 2002 05:23 am, you wrote: > On Sat, 2002-03-09 at 22:08, Jim Wilson wrote: > > Fly! uses a 3D cockpit. They use 2D for most of the instrumentation, > > switches and knobs, and 3D models for the things that really need it like > > levers. More than likely the legability problem is your LCD at 1600x1200 > > ;-) In any case we'd be doing great to come up with something as nice > > and usable as the Fly! cockpits. > > I'm not trying to start an argument here, but I'm reasonably sure this > is not the case. The fly cockpits are simply an enormouse collection of > 2D images. The best ones are made by doing a very high detail model in a > 3D suite, and then generating all the images as non-perspective-correct > (orthographic?) renders. If you look at the throttle levers moving on > the PMDG 7x7s, you can see the quality is far too high to be happening > in realtime (unless you used lots of special extensions and really high > detail meshes on high end hardware).
The alternative would be prerendered "frames" if I undrstand what you are saying. I think what Jim was saying is that the, for example, throttle quadrant, would be a separate 3D model with a separate scene graph. Of course I could be talking out my ass.... I'd hazard a guess that external light sources aren't applied. > > The reason I'm going on about this is I'd like to mention a serious > downside of the Fly! approach (even though I think the fly cockpits are > the best I've ever seen): it takes an awful lot of time and committment > to produce even a slightly useable cockpit. > > I would guess this is a major factor in the relatively small amount of > aircraft development for Fly! ... I know of several people who have > exterior models, but can't contemplate the effort required to assemble a > working panel. > I can't really say about Fly, but FGFS 2D panels/instruments are not *that* big a deal to put together. Our current "virtual cockpit" is the 2D panel overlayed on polygons that represent the "vertical" surface of the panel, and as such don't have the overhead of a fully 3d rendered (in the sense that every component of every instrument is a 3d model. My experience is that the actual artwork is the hard part. > H&H > James _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
