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any way to get instrumentation details on screen?

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any way to get instrumentation details on screen?

Postby agathosdaimon » Sun Feb 14, 2021 3:39 am

I was wondering, is there a way to have it so that i can see instrument readings on screen, like those you might see comonly in flight sims - spd, alt, hdg, flaps etc as i find it hard with many aircraft to read details on the 3d cockpits - and sometimes the cockpit doesnt have any indication what gauge is what or may be missing numerals next to the flaps controller so i dont know what the flaps setting is
also when i am trying to take off its not convenient to try and zoom in a spot in in the cockpit and zoom out again.

if these details could be displayed on screen that would solve everything
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Re: any way to get instrumentation details on screen?

Postby Hooray » Sun Feb 14, 2021 9:43 am

Yes, everything that's available in the form of a property, can be easily added to the screen - for details, refer to the property browser:

https://wiki.flightgear.org/Property_br ... and_tricks

Image

If you need something more sophisticated, you can use a Canvas and do all sorts of things
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Re: any way to get instrumentation details on screen?

Postby agathosdaimon » Sun Feb 14, 2021 11:11 am

oh cool, thats perfect thankyou!
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Re: any way to get instrumentation details on screen?

Postby danielHL » Sun Feb 14, 2021 12:34 pm

You can also press "h" and display the HUD, this shows you the basic flight parameters and flight surface/controls positions.
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Re: any way to get instrumentation details on screen?

Postby agathosdaimon » Mon Feb 15, 2021 12:08 am

thanks though i dont like the HUD on screen it looks too fighter pilot arcadey and especiall if iam trying to fly an old plane it doesnt suit the setting. - ideally having some small 2d gauges on the screen would be cool, but if i can just get the numbers that will be fine enough
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Re: any way to get instrumentation details on screen?

Postby Johan G » Mon Feb 15, 2021 1:17 am

An alternative to the full size HUD could be Michael Danilov's mini HUD. I have not used it myself, but some people like it.
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Re: any way to get instrumentation details on screen?

Postby Warty » Mon Feb 15, 2021 12:23 pm

One feature that is hard to find info on in FG is the 2D panels. I'm sure someone will be along shortly to explain why they don't want you to use them. But they do still work. You can have as many or few as you want:

Image

A good collection, with examples can be found this old/basic aircraft.
http://mirrors.ibiblio.org/flightgear/ftp/Aircraft/SU-37.zip

Image
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Re: any way to get instrumentation details on screen?

Postby agathosdaimon » Mon Feb 15, 2021 3:27 pm

this pics look awesome - how do i access this display in FG?
Last edited by Johan G on Mon Feb 15, 2021 4:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Please do not quote the entire preceding post.
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Re: any way to get instrumentation details on screen?

Postby Hooray » Mon Feb 15, 2021 4:07 pm

Warty wrote:One feature that is hard to find info on in FG is the 2D panels. I'm sure someone will be along shortly to explain why they don't want you to use them. But they do still work. You can have as many or few as you want:


2D panels are basically a thing of the past, i.e. a legacy feature - however, they can still be useful for certain purposes, like you say.

Speaking in general, they're there to stay - however, there's ongoing work to re-implement the underlying back-end code to stop using legacy OpenGL code, iswhich causing problems elsewhere:

https://wiki.flightgear.org/OpenGL#Status
https://wiki.flightgear.org/FlightGear_and_OpenGL_ES

Basically, any legacy OpenGL in the main loop makes it impossible to modernize the renderer and to makes it really difficult to use a more recent version of OpenGL (let alone Vulkan), which is why FlightGear performance may sometimes "suck" in comparison to other software.

This is a challenge caused by all legacy OpenGL code, not specific to the 2D panels system (HUD, PUI GUI and some other features).

The stated long-term goal here is to unify/retarget the legacy 2D rendering back-end by making it go through the Canvas system (which is mostly using OSG internally, and for non-OSG parts (namely Canvas.Path via ShivaVG), it's at least well-encapsulated so that it can be easily updated once the need arises).

These are actually items on the official roadmap of the post-LTS release plan/development cycle, added by senior core devs:

https://wiki.flightgear.org/Post_Flight ... #2D_Panels
https://wiki.flightgear.org/2022.X_Release_Plan

The overarching set of goals is best explained by looking at these wiki pages:

https://wiki.flightgear.org/Unifying_th ... via_canvas
https://wiki.flightgear.org/Canvas_News#2D_Panels
https://wiki.flightgear.org/FlightGear_ ... 8OpenVG.29

That being said. the 2D panels component/subsystem is being refactored (at the encouragement of James Turner) by another contributor (Gaétan Allaert), and the work can be seen/tracked here: https://sourceforge.net/p/flightgear/fl ... uests/217/

However, it is worth noting that the original designer of the Canvas system (Thomas Geymayer repeatedly discouraged people from creating Canvas trees from C++ and instead suggested to extend the existing sc::Element API and add to that, or create new/dedicated helper elements for a variety of reasons (see the devel list archives for details) - whereas the current set of patches isn't really using that approach but instead builds Canvas trees in C++ space.

At the time, Tom's thinking was that extending the Canvas system by adding to its elements (or creating new ones) would mean that the Canvas system could become self-sufficient in that these same elements could also be used to solve other problems, i.e. by simply writing a parser in scripting space to automatically retarget the HUD/2D panels system using the same set of patches, while also making sure that other people/projects using the Canvas system would benefit from these changes, i.e. without those being specific to a single use case (like the HUD or 2D panels).

Back then, this was inspired by the idea to unify all other legacy OpenGL code using the same approach, including the PUI back-end by retargeting that to use a "pui2canvas" translator (an idea repeatedly discussed between Tom and James at the time, back in 2012, i.e. almost 10 years ago).

This would have meant that the underlying Canvas system only needed to be extended to add the missing bits to support what's needed for the HUD/2D panels and a PUI runtime, while people developing avionics using the Canvas would benefit from the same enhancements - at the mere cost of maintaining 3 distinct Nasal parsers to build up the corresponding Canvas hierarchies to map supported primitives to Canvas elements.

Again, the motivation at the time was to quickly get rid of legacy OpenGL code (HUD, 2D Panels and PUI), all in one swoop.
Other than that, there's no reason why people should not continue to use the 2D panels stuff.

https://wiki.flightgear.org/Pui2canvas
Image
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Re: any way to get instrumentation details on screen?

Postby Johan G » Mon Feb 15, 2021 4:14 pm

agathosdaimon wrote in Mon Feb 15, 2021 3:27 pm:how do i access this display in FG?

It is rarely defined for aircraft and the default one is more or less emulating a typical eneral aviation (GA) aircraft panel. You can access that panel by pressing Shift-P.

I could speculate that early on in FlightGear there was aircraft without 3D cockpits, and the 2D panel could be used instead.
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Re: any way to get instrumentation details on screen?

Postby Hooray » Mon Feb 15, 2021 4:30 pm

that's right, 3D cockpits were a new thing at the time - most aircraft only had 2D panels, and many even shared a handful of common 2D panels.
The other relevant development here is that thanks to Torsten's Phi/mongoose work, there also is a browser based 2D panel system available.

Also, the original 2D panel system is extremely basic/archaic, it really just works with an arbitrary number of stacked/clipped textures that are animated/populated by a handful of properties - basically, each 2D panel consists of a set of background images on which an arbitrary number of "gauges" are displayed, these gauges consist in turn of layers of textures that are stacked together and "updated" by properties or text animations.

Basically, the whole thing became somewhat obsolete rather quickly thanks to so called "glass cockpits", which the 2D panel system really cannot simulate easily ... (imagine doing a CDU or moving map display that way). This is why FlightGear also has a thing called "owner-drawn" gauges (OD gauges) which basically show a texture that is then created/updated by C++ code.
In other words, more sophisticated avionics had to be implemented in C++ space (at the time the DCLGPS, wxradar, agradar and much later on the map/ND stuff implemented by James).
These days, the Canvas system uses a similar approach (an OSG texture visitor to replace a static texture with a dynamic one) but instead of using C++ code to update that texture, the Canvas system exposes a handful of primitives that can be grouped (stacked) together and separately updated/animated using properties and Nasal code.

However, given the simpliciy/nature of the 2D panel system it would indeed be rather straightforward to write a parser to render such panels/instruments to a dialog placement (or the Canvas desktop placement), and it would be much less work than creating a complex panel from scratch.


https://wiki.flightgear.org/Howto:Parsi ... the_Canvas
Image
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Re: any way to get instrumentation details on screen?

Postby Warty » Mon Feb 15, 2021 6:09 pm

agathosdaimon wrote in Mon Feb 15, 2021 3:27 pm:this pics look awesome - how do i access this display in FG?


@ agathosdaimon - if you pick an aircraft I will make you an example.
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Re: any way to get instrumentation details on screen?

Postby Warty » Mon Feb 15, 2021 10:24 pm

Here you go, agathosdaimon - a mod-kit for the c172p

https://github.com/John-Bray/2D-Panel-example

Image


If you want to take it further, Hooray has tracked down some good references.
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Re: any way to get instrumentation details on screen?

Postby agathosdaimon » Mon Feb 15, 2021 11:44 pm

that looks cool, what about for Detlet Fabers BF109?
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