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Two technologies exist today to build gauges in Flight
Simulator: using the Flight Simulator SDK for the 2D and
the 3D panel, and using 3D modeled gauges and needles for
the 3D panel only.
With the SDK, gauges are made of bitmaps, stacked upon
each other. Some bitmaps can be rotated and others can be
translated. An ADI rotating card for example is a bitmap
rotating around a center with the bank angle. With the 3D
modeled gauges, a needle is a polygon with a texture and
rotates with the bank angle as well. Both approaches have
strong limitations.
The SDK approach limits the practical precision of the
gauge because the bitmaps rotates only to the precision of
1 degree, and translate only to the precision of 1 pixel
on the screen. With this in mind, a SDK based ADI rotating
card will jump from degree to degree while the bank angle
changes, and the pitch card will shift up or down only on
a per pixel precision. For most gauges the pitch precision
is about 3 degrees of pitch only.
The limitation of 1 degree rotation precision is also a
strong inhibitor to the usefulness of HSI gauges in Flight
Simulator.
The 3D modeled gauge approach is better than the SDK based
approach for the smoothness and precision of the rotation
and translation, because the displayed gauge elements are
actual 3D polygons rendered by the video card. However,
this approach is only available for the Virtual Cockpit
panel.!
Flight Line T: achieves the highest level of details
with the most fluid experience |
