Masks for Glass Instruments
X-Plane’s panel system does not have true “masking” based on a bitmap. You can clip an instrument to its rectangular region, but most masks are made by overlaying another layer or instrument on top of...
View ArticleA Few More Manipulators
I’m not sure if these will make it into X-Plane 9.30 (we’re trying to close down features, but it doesn’t do much good to hold off features that help people make airplanes) but…while I was in Italy I...
View ArticleWhere Did All of Those Lights Come From?
Javier posted a video of his CRJ on the dev list today. I have not tried the plane, but there is no question from the video that it looks really good. What makes the video look so nice is the careful...
View ArticlePopup Panels?
X-Plane doesn’t natively and directly support popup panels, but that doesn’t mean you can’t pop them up. Generic instruments have a dataref-driven set of show-hide fields. (The “filters”.) Now what you...
View ArticleThe 3-d Panel Is Not Always Necessary
There is no need to use the 3-d panel if you only want 3-d cockpit. That might be the most counter-intuitive statement in the entire universe. Let’s break it down and see what’s going on. Originally we...
View ArticleI Feel Manipulated
Tom has a new video on youtube of his just finished Falco. The video shows what screen-shots cannot: that the mouse interactions on the plane are really well crafted. If you’re just discovering X-Plane...
View ArticleWhat is the Difference between ANIM_hide and ATTR_draw_disable?
In order to understand the difference between hiding geometry and disabling drawing, you need to understand that an OBJ triangle can serve many purposes. Broadly, those purposes are: Drawing (the most...
View ArticleLighting Rheostats in X-Plane 9
There were a few threads regarding lighting rheostats in X-Plane 9. Here’s a short version of the issue and why we’re not changing X-Plane 9’s behavior. X-Plane 9’s policy toward lighting rheostats is...
View ArticlePerformance of Panel Texture vs. 3-d Cockpit
I sometimes get questions from authors considering how much to rely on a 2-d panel mapped to 3-d via the panel texture vs. a true 3-d panel. I can’t comment on what will look best, but I can comment on...
View ArticleLet Your Eyes Adjust
This is a feature I looked at putting into X-Plane 9, but it turned out that it affects so many different parts of the sim (and has to be done all-or-nothing) that it got kicked to v10. Consider these...
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