since this is my very first post, I'd like to introduce myself briefly. I am (real world) glider pilot located at Germany. I am in the business for quite some time (since I was 14) but I never spend any time into flight simulation or FlightGear, so I am a newbie in this area. My primary interest in FG is using it together with my student pilots for on-the-ground procedure trainings of powered sailplanes, similar to the ASK21-MI.
I was rather happy to find the kind of ship I am looking for on the download site. However, I realized that it has neither controls nor instruments for the engine, so I decided to have a look at how to improve aircrafts. Following the good advice at Howto:Make an aircraft I planed to start simple and to evolve later. Let's see how far I can get on my wishlist before ending up totally frustrated
- placard "Starter"
- starter button (re-used rather than modeled myself)
- power lever
- propeller brake lever
- engine control instrument
All of the above can be seen at the lower part of the instrument panel shown here
So eventually here comes my question: How do I add a thing that does exactly nothing like a placard to an existing panel?
I do have a placard ready as PNG. Do I have to convert this into an .ac file or can I reference the PNG itself in one of the aircraft's XML files? What would be the approproiate XML path for that?
I would love to share my experience and contribute a tutorial later compiled from this thread maybe, but for that I have to find a start for such a simple thing...
Thanks inadvance for your advice!
Cheers,
Willy