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I never thought the day would
come when one of my models had a Virtual Cockpit!
The standard method of relying solely on the hat button
to slowly scroll around was not acceptable to me.
It's especially poor for an airliner where widely spread
instruments need to be accessed quickly. Obviously
certain payware & hardware options can improve upon
the situation, but there are some useful tricks hidden
away in the SDK that can help.
The viewing options I've used with this VC have already
been discovered and used by others, but they don't seem
to be in common use.
For me, the simple addition of mouse panning & pre-set
views, along with some careful design, has transformed
the VC into a workable proposition for an airliner model. |
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Something else useful for those who don't know.
The standard setting for scrolling around with the hat
switch can be speeded up.
You can change the setting in the FS9.cfg
file, by manually increasing the PAN_RATE
parameter in the [CONTROLS] section.
It would have been nice to have this on
the FS Menu, but there you go.
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Mouse
panning
For those without expensive hardware such as TrackIR,
mouse scrolling is a great thing to have in a VC.
It enables you to look around in a much more natural way,
giving very quick & easy to control movement.
On the Trident there is an area at the top of the pilot's
panel (and co-pilot) that allows you to pan around using
the mouse rather than the 'hat' on your joystick or yoke.
The area to click for mouse panning is shown in yellow.
Click in this area & hold the mouse button down.
The way it is implemented in FS is not perfect
and the view will likely jump at first.
But moving the mouse around will settle it
down & give a very quick natural method
of looking around. While you can't click
any of the gauges in this mode, you can still
use the full array of keyboard & yoke/joystick
controls.
When you release the mouse button the panning stops wherever
you are currently looking.
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Preset
Views & View Adjustments
In the corner of each pilot's panel there is a small toggle
button marked 'VC'. 
The position of this toggle button is shown in yellow.
Clicking the 'VC' button will open a small popup window
in the bottom left corner of the screen showing a number
of buttons.
1.
Move the view Up, Down, Left, Right, with
the centre button being reset view. All of these
are available on the keyboard, but they are usually multi
key presses and difficult to remember.
Move across left or right eg. to view from the co-pilot
seat.
As well as clicking, the mouse wheel can be used to alter
these view settings.
2.
Level of zoom. It alters the zoom in 25%
chunks for quick changes. The optimum zoom setting
for this VC appears to be 0.75, but that is down to personal
preference.
3.
Move forward & backward.
The default view in the Trident VC is set
slightly further back than it should be to
give a better & more realistic field of
view.
4.
Click any of these buttons to instantly
snap to these pre-set views without having to pan. Main
Forward, Centre panel, Overhead panel, Autopilot (&
pedestal), Fuel (engineer).
Note, the pre-set views are set to work from the Captain's
side only.
The 'X' button closes the VC views popup window.
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