FSX, MPD menus and Perlin Noise

Quite a scrappy day. Installed Microsoft Flight Simulator X and the SDK, there's an interface I want to try and build as a gauge in FSX. I've used the Simconnect API to interface to my own radio panel, now I need to build a gauge to talk to the Simconnect DLL.

I re-worked the avionics menu page using the new vector glyphs, adding some commands to toggle the chat console, about page for version information. The UTIL page sets the FMS channels (Flight Management System or FLCS FLight Control System) in the Helicopter State.


FMS_AXIS_PITCH:Int = 1;
FMS_AXIS_ROLL:Int = 2;
FMS_AXIS_YAW:Int = 4;
FMS_AXIS_COLL:Int = 8;
FMS_AXIS_TRIM:Int = 16;
FMS_AXIS_ALT:Int = 32;
FMS_AXIS_HEADING:Int = 64;
FMS_AXIS_HOVER:Int = 128;


These are bitwise settings as we need to be efficient sending helicopter stability settings over the network, seems sensible to use a single byte to do this. There's a lot of data needed to set up a complete helicopter if you're coming in over a network and jump into one ready to take-off. Console states won't be updated that often but when we do, we don't want a bottleneck.

Time to sit back and examine the feature list, clear up where are priorities are and how far away are we from the major milestones. It's important to get this bird ready for some serious flight testing, there's the terrain LOD system to work out as we don't want ugly popping, Raleigh Scattering for the sky dome, additional fog and integrating FFD (FreeFlight dynamics tm) flight model.

We might strip down the FCR a bit, the TSD we'll keep on a par with Longbow 2. There are lots of things it can do for designating fire zones and splitting them into groups which we just don't need for this version of the game. Even considering dropping the MPD cursors as they won't do much except mark areas on the TSD.

I learned something interesting today, In 1980 Ken Perlin of Perlin Noise fame worked at Magi, the company that worked on Disney's film "TRON". His paper on a function to generate non-random "noise" was publish in 1985 and is often the basis of many shader techniques today. I read this today when looking at how we might introduce more ground detail into surface textures. That's the problem with shader programming, once you start, it's difficult to stop. Good job Dave knows when to stamp on my toes.