For the AI watchers a followers part 2

On the other thread I went off on a tangent so I will keep them separate.

 

I have been experimenting using Traffic View Board to not only follow an ai but to travel in the cockpit with it.

 

At first I went the long way round but now I'm slowly getting there, this works on most ai and converted flyable but not all.

I'm still having a couple of problems but it is another way to view and travel with the ai.

 

I created a background panel and used the TVB as a gauge within the panel as you will see from the pics, now the problem I'm having is, when I start the sim with the TVB the panel is very small in the bottom corner of the screen and I have to drag it to full size so it fits, once it is full size it's OK.

I have looked at other panel cfg's and copied their format but still my panel is small, so somewhere I'm not getting it.

 

So any help in getting the background to start in full screen please?

 

Once I/you click on an ai to follow you can select cockpit view and it places you inside the aircraft, in some you have to play about with the zoom and/or the height to get the right view but once you get it it can be fun, you can stay in the cockpit the whole journey just like you can when you follow as a spot plane, if you get fed up just select spot view again.

 

now the problem I'm having is, when I start the sim with the TVB the panel is very small in the bottom corner of the screen and I have to drag it to full size so it fits, once it is full size it's OK.

 

I had asked this identical question, although with different panels, and was told that FS does not save information about separate screens in a "Save Flight" activity. Sadly, I can confirm that this is still happening, well at least it is for me :D So you may not get a pleasing result on this :(

 

Steve from Mudgee.

This is what I can't understand, if I select a flyable aircraft the panel opens full screen, in the past I've swapped a panel for a better on that I have downloaded and they have been full screen but this has got me puzzled.

like I said in my above post, I have even copied the same entries in to my panel CFG but it still opens up small in the bottom corner and I have to drag it full screen with the mouse.

Once it is full screen it stays like that for whole sim session but close the sim and start again and it is back to being small again.

I know it only takes a few seconds to do it but can you imagine if you had to do this with all the cockpit panels.

Update:

I made more of a breakthrough, I downloaded a panel with a decent view of the outside, it was made for the default B737.

So I made sure it worked with the default 737 first then saved it to one side to edit it for the Traffic View Board.

I noticed the radio came up on the default so I replaced that for the TVB, I replace the Throttle Quad for the Follow Function but left all the other gauges in place.

I then put the new panel in the Traffic View Board aircraft folder with it's new name and directed the TVB to look there for the new panel.

Now when I started FS, again the the panel was small but the TVB was the right size, I had to drag the background panel to full size as I had to with the previous trials.

Now this bit is important, you must also have Traffic Explorer working.

I selected an aircraft in Traffic Explorer, then selected the same aircraft in TVB, then I selected Cockpit instead of Spot View and there I was inside the ai aircraft cockpit.

The exciting part was most (not all) of the instruments were working, like attitude indicator, Compass, Vertical Speed, Height Indicator which made it even more real.

 

I could flick from Cockpit to Spot without a hitch and all the other functions worked like selecting map view etc.

I did not touch any of the cockpit controls for fear of losing everything, so I left them alone for now but I will experiment further now I have this bit working.

Not much further with progress, I did try a few other things but to no avail.

 

I'm still getting the small background cockpit screen on start up, I know it only takes a few seconds to drag it to full screen but I would like it full screen to start with.

 

As I said in the previous posts, this method works with (Some not all) of the aircraft, on the ones it doesn't work you either get positioned behind the cabin door or there is some other obstacle in the way of the view and adjusting the height and zoom doesn't do anything to make it better so I switch to another aircraft.

 

I see a lot have read the thread and I wondered if anyone has tried it yet and come up with any ideas, your comments are most welcome.

Help required!

 

I think I may have hit on a slight improvement, in my above post I mentioned this works on some but not all aircraft, the ones it doesn't work on are the ones with a cabin set in front of the background panel view and zooming and tilting won't go past it using the keyboard.

 

So I tried playing the the eyepoint view view in both the panel CFG and the aircraft CFG, I looked online but a lot of the posts were referring to the up and down views where as I was looking to go SLIGHTLY forward so as I'm past the obstacle and also I won't get the nose wheel in the way either.

 

Any ideas please?

Well since my last post I played around with the panel CFG and added and edited a couple of lines and this seemed to work, I am now in front of the ai aircraft and by passed the cabin obstacle plus no nose wheel view either.

 

I added these lines:

 

View_Forward_Zoom=2.000

View_Forward_eye=0.000, 0.040, 20.100

View_Forward_Dir=12.000, 0.000, 0.000

 

The second line where I put 20.100 I played with till I got no obstacle in my view.

I took a quick screenshot with the new settings, also a view of the aircraft with spotplane insert.

The aircraft is the CS300 flyable that I was using as an ai, the reason I used this was it doesn't wing dip as an ai and I wanted to demonstrate I got past the cockpit cab and wheel view.

Uhh, as usual I'm way behind the conversation here. How are you going in saving the flight with the various windows as you want them, and then later opening that flight and having the windows exactly where you left them? Or was that in fact never the problem?

Hi Steve,

Thanks for the reply, Usually I stay/watch the aircraft landing so I was under the impression that flight was over and I never bothered saving because as I said the flight is over so I thought there was no point in saving.

But now you have brought this up again I promise to try it and let you know.

 

What I have been experiencing now is since I added the new lines in the panel CFG it opens with TVB on the screen but when I click on TVB it vanishes and I have to activate it again from the menu bar at the top, once I do this it works no problem.

Since I have added the new lines in the panel I have been able to jump in the cockpit of any aircraft and not been troubled with something obstructing my view, sometimes I have to use the shift+enter or back space to go up or down but that isn't a problem.

Hi Steve,

 

I did as promised and saved the flight, reloaded FS again and sure enough the panel was full size.

I resurrected one of my old threads just to add I've made slight progress.

 

On the earlier posts I was having a problem using the cockpit view along with Traffic View Board, well it dawned on me the other day to try something different and it worked, here is what I did.

 

In the Panel.CFG I added the Instrument panel AFTER the TVB entry, where as before I was putting the instrument panel first, this is how I did it:

 

[Window Titles]

Window00=Traffic View Board

Window01=Follow Function

Window02=Neues Instrumentenbrett

Window03=yoke1-panel

Window04=Throttle-Panel

 

In the case above I am using a downloaded SAAB 2000 panel but obviously if you try this then use a panel of your choice.

 

So to go through it again, this is just a novel way of using TVB, you can have it in spot view of if you select the cockpit view it puts you in the AI aircraft.

It is also good because you see the various instruments working as the aircraft climbs and banks, one thing I can't get to work is the speed dial, for some reason it stays at zero but I can use TVB extended screen to see that any way.