Instrument/Control Panel add-on?

[JazziFan19]

Hi, everyone!

I'm new to this board, although I've been using Celestia for several years now.

I'm thinking about starting a project - adding an instrument/control panel to Celestia, similar to an aircraft's. Before starting, I'm trying to contact everyone who is involved with other Celestia projects. There are two qustions I'd like to ask you:

1. How would you go about adding a 2D instrument and control panel to Celestia?
2. Are you aware of anyone else who's tried this?

Thanks a lot for your response! Hope to see you "out there"!

-- Jerry

[t00fri]

1. How would you go about adding a 2D instrument and control panel to Celestia?
-- Jerry

I would not want to add a 2D instrumetn and control panel to Celestia...

Just switch to 'Orbiter' if you tend to like that sort of stuff.

Bye Fridger

[trenner]

If a joystick could be set up to work like it does inFS2002 and FS2004, that would be really nice. Especially the top hat

Regards
Terry Renner

[fsgregs]

Dear Jerry:

I write the Educational Activities for Celestia. In them, I ask the readers to imagine themselves riding in a hyperdrive spacecraft. We even have a model of it. Its called the Celestia 1.


The effect works well, and the kids who journey through Celestia space in my activities enjoy the idea of flying through space. It animates their imagination as they take the trip.

As such, I would be very interested in an add-on which superimposes a cockpit/instrument control panel of sorts in the Celestia window. I have no idea how to do it, and I would not want it taking up much room in the scene, but some hint of glowing dials near the bottom of the screen would be a very nice touch for my purposes.

If you do find out how to do it, I for one would be excited to download the add-on, and use it in my Activities.

Regards,

Frank G

[Larryman]

YES! Lets get this function working. I think it would be like a 'skin' function for Celestia. Personally I would like to fly the Celestia universe by looking out the forward viewport of the TV series "Lost In Space" Jupiter 2 flying saucer. It had a good sized view port. Or sometimes seeing it through the Star Trek TOS bridge main view screen. And surely there are many other sci-fi ship viewscreens to overlay the Celestia display with. Of course make the skin optional: on/off menu-switchable.

[selden]

A way to provide a graphical overlay for Celestia's window would be welcome, I think. It should not be described only as a way to create spacecraft control panels, however. There are many other uses for it.

[maxim]

Isn't there a image overlay patch from doctorjoe already available???

maxim

[ElChristou]

...It should not be described only as a way to create spacecraft control panels, however. There are many other uses for it.

If we can add fonctionality to such garphics (button, menus, guides, grids etc) why not... if not appart for the SciFi fans I don't see the interest...

[Malenfant]

...It should not be described only as a way to create spacecraft control panels, however. There are many other uses for it.

If we can add fonctionality to such garphics (button, menus, guides, grids etc) why not... if not appart for the SciFi fans I don't see the interest...

Actually, having clickable buttons/control panels etc might be useful. The outreach centre at the observatory near me has a computer running an interactive 'solar system tour' type thing where you can fly round the solar system in a spaceship. You can go to any planet by selecting it on the control panel, and launch a probe to investigate it further and access more info. It's pretty good, but the graphics are really lousy.

If you could do this in Celestia then you could link each button to a script that would run and show info on the screen.

[Cham]

I TOTALLY disagree with that idea. NO COCKPIT in Celestia, PLEASE ! This is useless and reduces the view, ... for what ? For nothing !

The very limited coding ressources we currently have for Celestia should concentrate on the important things only, and there are already a lot of them. IMO, this cockpit idea is completelly futile.

Geez !

[Malenfant]

I TOTALLY disagree with that idea. NO COCKPIT in Celestia, PLEASE ! This is useless and reduces the view, ... for what ? For nothing !

Did you read what I just posted? This could potentially have a beneficial use for some situations (ie as an interface for an educational activity).

I agree though that the usual crowd of developers should focus on more important issues. But that shouldn't stop anyone else from giving it a go.

[Cham]

I TOTALLY disagree with that idea. NO COCKPIT in Celestia, PLEASE ! This is useless and reduces the view, ... for what ? For nothing !

Did you read what I just posted? This could potentially have a beneficial use for some situations (ie as an interface for an educational activity).

I agree though that the usual crowd of developers should focus on more important issues. But that shouldn't stop anyone else from giving it a go.

Then what you are asking for are floating palettes (which could be moved around), not a cockpit.

[ElChristou]

In all case this kind of stuff should be really optional, better at addon level, and better by people not working in the principal dev...

[Boux]

Wait a minute guys,
looks like some people are willing to re-invent some kind of KDE user interface

[Malenfant]

Then what you are asking for are floating palettes (which could be moved around), not a cockpit.

No, I'm saying that the software that the outreach centre had was a cockpit. If you want to make something that random people can sit down and interact with for educational purposes then something simple and fixed is better than floating palettes. Though I'm talking about a specific use for a cockpit type addon here - I definitely wouldn't want to see this become a part of Celestia though.

[Tanketai]

...

I was wondering about this 'cockpit' view and and I came up with this:



The green square is actually being rendered by celestia (not a montage[is this spelled right?]), as the logo image. I found out that celestia only uses multiples of the original image's size. (the original logo was 256x64, the green square is 1024x256 [I used this on the star flares too, it gives more detail using a 512x512 pic])

So, the question is: How to turn the 'logo fade-out' off? It isn't in the start.cel file, nor in the celestia.cfg, so it seems that there is no quick-fix addon for this, right?

Well, at least it was worth something; now I have a custom logo (crappy, but custom)

[Boux]

Hi,
The fade out effect, sizing of picture and time are hard-wired in the code in celestiacore.ccp, lines 3393 to 3435 where the logo is called to show at start.
I have tampered a little bit with the code to make a picture stay as an overlay.
It works, but there is a problem with visual artifacts in Celestia in the background where some textures are disappearing (when too many of them stacked? I don't know).
It is probably not the right place to play with in the code I believe, because the logo is drawn and removed before Celestia actually starts rendering.
There is also a piece of code that is entirely commented out that states "Experimental code for overlaying images". See lines 3361-3389 in celestiacore.ccp.
This may be the proper toy to play with.

[Boux]

OK, its works.
No artifact whatsoever.
Only issue is that the console window is hidden behind the overlay.
Should'nt be very tricky to fix it.
I borrowed a cockpit shot from Orbiter to do a /very/ quick and dirty test.
Here's the result:

Edit: old picture deleted.
Please see other post below.

[Malenfant]

Y'know, that actually looks damn cool. Doesn't obstruct too much of the view either.

[Boux]

Yep, it's damn cool.
After some time, you find the Celestia experience changes a lot.
Perception is different. It's no longer an "anonymous window".
You're like being there. Strapped in the pilot's seat.
If you add your favorites KDE buttons as another overlay on the cockpit foreground, it feels like you ARE THERE! ... With full control.
Still working on it.
Will post a new result