Got Compass?

[CaptainJohnThomas]

I like to free fly but I get lost. Anyone got a compass? Like a global compass HUD widget for any and all craft.

[Hooray]

a compass is part of most HUDs actually:
http://wiki.flightgear.org/Hud


Or just use this:
http://wiki.flightgear.org/Map



You could also use the Canvas/MapStructure framework to create arbitrary displays/maps and show them on a Canvas: http://wiki.flightgear.org/MapStructure

[CaptainJohnThomas]

Clearly I need a better plane haha
I was just thinking a little widget that could be toggled on and off for like gliders and such
Thanks for your help!

[Hooray]

I was just thinking a little widget that could be toggled on and off for like gliders and such

That should be a neat little project for someone interested in learning a bit more about Nasal and Canvas coding, this should be possible to accomplish with less than 50 lines of code actually - there's a ton of stuff that you could reuse (SVG compass rose or an existing 2D panel texture), we have quite a few tutorials on Nasal, Canvas and Image processing (check the wiki).

EDIT: What the heck, here's a working prototype (paste this into your Nasal console):

Code: Select all

var CanvasApplication = {
 ##
 # constructor
 new: func(x=300,y=200) {
  var m = { parents: [CanvasApplication] };
  m.dlg = canvas.Window.new([x,y],"dialog");
  m.canvas = m.dlg.createCanvas().setColorBackground(1,1,1,0.5);
  m.root = m.canvas.createGroup();
  m.timer = maketimer(0.1, func m.update() );
  m.init();
  return m;
 },

del: func me.timer.stop(),

update: func() {
 var hdg=getprop("/orientation/heading-deg");
 me.compass.setRotation(-hdg*D2R);
 
},

init: func() {
 var filename = "/Aircraft/Instruments/gyro.xml";
 var temp= io.read_properties(getprop("/sim/fg-root") ~ filename);
 var layers = temp.getValues().layers.layer;

var z=100;
foreach(var layer; layers ) {
 print("new layer:", layer.name);
 
 # if it's  not a texture, skip
 if (!contains(layer, "texture")) continue;
 
 # get a handle to the texture of the layer
 var texture = layer.texture;
 
 # create an image child for the texture
 var child=me.root.createChild("image")
                    .setFile( texture.path )
               .setSourceRect( texture.x1, texture.x2, texture.y1, texture.y2 )
                                   .setSize(layer.w,layer.h)
                                   .setTranslation(20,20)
               .set("z-index", z +=1 )
               .setScale(2.5);
 
if (layer.w != nil and layer.h!=nil)
  child.setCenter(layer.w/2, layer.h/2);

 if (layer.name=="compass rose") {
  print("Found compass layer");
  # child.setCenter(55,55);
  me.compass = child;
 }
} # foreach


 
 me.timer.start();
 },
}; # end of CanvasApplication


var InstrumentWidget = {
 new: func(x,y) {
  var m = CanvasApplication.new(x:x,y:y);
 },

};

var compass = InstrumentWidget.new(x:300, y:300);

print("Compass Loaded...!");


Note, this didn't involve any real programming, it's 100% copy&paste, all based on wiki tutorials
You can easily change the apperance of the widget/instrument within seconds, no programming involved ...