Whew, plenty of discussion...
Procedural elements - I don't know if anyone noticed, but I'm using the idea already (the predictor circles on ASCENT TRAJ or HORIZ SIT are drawn by simply calling a function that returns a vector with the vertices for the path.
I've toyed with the idea of coding various ladders the same way (it'd be easy to write the function), but I found it faster to simply add them to my SVG line-drawing workflow.
Now, I confess I'm not sure what the issue with th ADI sphere is, sorry. I thought it's basically something like a HUD - with a pitch ladder that also shows roll as well, surrounded by a heading ring. We can do HUDs in canvas - so what's the specific problem here? Why is it different?
I don't think the math is particularly complicated, and in fact from all shots I have seen (can't really watch movies), it does not look like an actually projected sphere (there ought to be distortions of symbols at the edges, it looks like some trigonometric corrections applied to a 2d structure. I can certainly come up with a function that draws ladders (even with lots of customized complexity) if that is what is needed to make progress. Compared with procedurally generating cloud formations, that's a piece of cake
By the way, Orbiter's SSU is under common license, IIRC. If they agree to donate its virtual cockpit for FG Shuttle, would it be possible to import it? Their cockpit is very mature and almost all main panels are already available, and my impression is that labels are more readable. Just saying.
Possible - yes, SSU is LGPL. Desirable?
My understanding is that Chris Kuhn's cockpit mesh we're using is quite detailed as well - in fact that's the problem, because it's the reason Richard and Wayne had to spend a lot of work reducing it's complexity (it's the #1 framerate killer in the Shuttle at the moment) and also the reason we don't have the complete mesh in.
I've tried in vain to locate SSU cockpit screenshots to get a comparison - from what I found (YouTube starting stills mostly), I have to honestly say I prefer the potential of Richard's work. The textures extracted from photographs give an impression that's hard to match otherwise. True - it might still take a long time to get it all ready, but I'm trying to evaluate the potential. Maybe you can post shots yourself for comparison (I'd have to get out my windows box and see what Orbiter installation I actually have (it's been a while), then try to acquire and install SSU,... - I'm really a Linux guy...)
Also, note that a sizable chunk of work is not just getting the mesh - it's separating the switches, animating them and hooking them up to control properties. So even if we had a complete mesh tomorrow, we wouldn't have functional switches, nor would we have all the systems modeled.
A small request: It's possible to make an option to assign num pad to shuttle keypad?
I use the num-pad for flying (the ability to center controls is just hard to beat with the mouse) - but this is FG - you can edit your setup however you want at the expense of writing a little xml, there's no need to ask for support for this.
Key bindings look like this
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<key n="4">
<name>Ctrl+d</name>
<desc>Force external tank drop</desc>
<repeatable type="bool">false</repeatable>
<binding>
<command>nasal</command>
<script>SpaceShuttle.force_external_tank_separate()</script>
</binding>
</key>
and the particular bindings you want to execute are
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<binding>
<command>nasal</command>
<script>SpaceShuttle.key_msg_reset(1)</script>
</binding>
The list of current bindings for the mouse-driven keyboard is in SpaceShuttle/Dialogs/dps_keyboard.xml
and the argument of the function being called is always the keyboard ID (the virtual keyboard is assumed to be the CDR-side keyboard).
The proper functionality is better described in the documentation; but one of the most interesting features of PFD are the error bars in ADI and HSI, which provide some guidance under manual control.
Without delving into the details, but that seems to be standard technology familiar to anyone who has ever done radio-navigation in an airplane and can operate a VOR receiver.