On Sat, 2002-03-09 at 22:08, Jim Wilson wrote: > Fly! uses a 3D cockpit. They use 2D for most of the instrumentation, switches > and knobs, and 3D models for the things that really need it like levers. More > than likely the legability problem is your LCD at 1600x1200 ;-) In any case > we'd be doing great to come up with something as nice and usable as the Fly! > cockpits.
I'm not trying to start an argument here, but I'm reasonably sure this is not the case. The fly cockpits are simply an enormouse collection of 2D images. The best ones are made by doing a very high detail model in a 3D suite, and then generating all the images as non-perspective-correct (orthographic?) renders. If you look at the throttle levers moving on the PMDG 7x7s, you can see the quality is far too high to be happening in realtime (unless you used lots of special extensions and really high detail meshes on high end hardware). The reason I'm going on about this is I'd like to mention a serious downside of the Fly! approach (even though I think the fly cockpits are the best I've ever seen): it takes an awful lot of time and committment to produce even a slightly useable cockpit. I would guess this is a major factor in the relatively small amount of aircraft development for Fly! ... I know of several people who have exterior models, but can't contemplate the effort required to assemble a working panel. H&H James
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