One of the tasks aircraft designers have the most difficulty mastering is mapping the aircraft gauges to the interior of the Virtual Cockpit. Once the designer learns how, it's a simple task. This tutorial will demonstrate how to accomplish this, using step-by-step instructions, and pictures from a simple test aircraft. The example aircraft can be downloaded at the end of the tutorial.

Software required to complete this tutorial are: Flight Simulator Design Studio (must be version two or higher,) Flight Simulator Panel Studio, and a graphics editing program capable of manipulating files in the standard Windows bitmap (*.bmp) format; for this example it was Paint Shop Pro 8. All three of these pieces of software are commercial products, and must be purchased from their respective publishers. This tutorial assumes you already know how to use each program, it does not explain the basics of creating an aircraft or panel.

To start, here is the example aircraft that will be used in the tutorial:

It's nothing more than a simple tube that's been hollowed out at one end, with a set of wings for good measure. The aircraft's flight characteristics are based on the default lear jet, and so this is the panel that is being used.:

Now it is important to add another window to the panel.cfg file. This can be done by opening the file in Notepad or another text editor, or by clicking the edit panel.cfg button in FSPS. After the last window, copy and paste in the following lines:

The first and last lines in the above section are what really allow the magic to happen. The line "file=*.bmp" allows for a bitmap to be mapped directly to a polygon in the virtual cockpit. Depending on the design, this item may be left out, and the gauges set to line up with textures that are mapped directly to the model instead. The last line, "texture=$*" goes another step further in mapping the gauges, and will be explained in more detail later on. Notice how they both share a common filename, "vcpanel.bmp" and "$vcpanel." This is important. What you choose to name the files is irrelevant, as long as these two entries are set up in this method.

In your graphics editor, copy the main bitmap that forms the 2D panel. Create a new bitmap, square and a multiple of two (256x256, 512x512, 1024x1024, etc.) For best results, make the new bitmap at least the size of the one used for the main panel. In the example aircraft, the main panel is 640 pixels while the new bitmap is 1024x1024. Paste the old image onto the new one.

Here is the bitmap that is being used for the test aircraft's virtual cockpit. For the sake of space, it has been shrunk down to 25% of its actuall size."

In panel studio, you should now have a Window that you can select, listed as vcokcpit01. Change to that window, and begin placing your gauges. In some situations, you can copy all the gauges from the main window, and paste then into the vcockpit window.

Here is the vcokpit window again, this time with the gauges applied. Again it has been resized for the web."

Now it's time to work in FSDS. Create a new part consisting of a single polygon. One easy way to do this, is to copy the main fuselage, and paste it back in place. Delete all the polygons other than the one which would be the virtual cockpit. From the Part menu, choose Delete All Orphaned Points, and then Center Axis To Part. Although this part is just one polygon, you will not deal with it in polygon mode, it will always be in part mode.

First, move the part slighty away from the original so that it won't be inside the other part. Now from the Transform menu, choose Flip/Flip Y.

The part will now appear to be upside down:

Now open the texture window for this part, and map the bitmap for the virtual cockpit as if the part was still right side up:

Next, get out a calculator and do some simple subtraction. Take the full Y size of the bitmap, from that subtract the value next to Y Crop, and then subtract from the result the value next to Y Size. In the example aircraft, this would be 1024 - 10 - 320 = 694. Enter this value into the Y Crop feild. The rectangle showing the location of the texture will now appear to be in the wrong place, but it is not a problem.

The view in the 3D window should look like the following:

Flip the part in the Y axis using the same method as before:

Next, from the Edit menu, choose Manage Texture List.

Highlight the texture you have mapped to the part, and click Global Rename. This is where the above mentioned items come in. Rename the texture from xxx.bmp to $xxx. Notice how there is no bmp extension on the second one. If it is not done this way, it will not work.

Next time you click in the 3D window, the texture will no longer show, and the poly will be coloured plain white.

Compile the aircraft and switch to Flight Simulator. If you've done everything correctly your 3D panel should now show within the aircraft: