FSX - 2d & VC Gauge Lighting

[n4gix]

I have just about finished with the FSX version of the Cessna Citation II SP/2 2d panel and VC. There is some very minor texture tweaking to do yet, but 99.9% completed now...

It was a real challenge getting the bitmaps for the gauges to balance out so that the 2d and VC would match closely. There are a total of 4,729 bitmaps in the gauges altogether. The single multi-gauge is 22.216 MB compiled! :o

http://img134.imageshack.us/img134/9554/ciifsxlightingcompletediq9.jpg

http://img134.imageshack.us/img134/8776/ciifsxlightingcompletedgl2.jpg

[Paul Golding]

Very nice Bill, especially as it finally has a slanted centre pillar as well ;-)

The 2d bitmaps look the same in both hi and lo, is this because you're now using the alternative _night bitmap in the panel folder. That route seems be more resource friendly as well giving better control over how FS displays bitmaps at night.

Anyway, as I said........very nice.

[n4gix]

>Very nice Bill, especially as it finally has a slanted centre
>pillar as well ;-)
>
>The 2d bitmaps look the same in both hi and lo, is this
>because you're now using the alternative _night bitmap in the
>panel folder. That route seems be more resource friendly as
>well giving better control over how FS displays bitmaps at
>night.
>
>Anyway, as I said........very nice.

Thanks, Paul. That means a lot to me, coming from you especially! ;)

Yes, the 2d panel bitmap is using the new FSX paradigm for the nighttime alternate. In actual fact, when viewing the 2d _night.bmp in Photoshop it almost looks like pure black! ;) It has to be made very, VERY dark in order to cope with the panel.cfg Night=255,255,255 entry.

This is, of course, required if there's to be any hope at all of getting the 2d panel's appearance to match the VC, since all gauge polys in the VC are fixed at 255,255,255 for illumination now!

In addition, all gauge bitmaps now have nighttime alternates as well, for the same reason as cited above. Now that I have "a method" down pat, my workflow is much smoother and faster. Retro-fitting an exisiting multi-gauge is somewhat of a PITA, but any new gauge projects will incorporate these options from the beginning, so it won't be so much of a pain... ;)