A couple of wild ideas

[AndyHill]

I noticed RuggButt's impressive work with the F-15 and got a couple of dumb ideas. We already discussed some of this over at SimHQ, but mostly only about future stuff. Here's what we could do right now.

First of all, there was a neat weapons control screen for the F-15 among RuggButt's files, but AFAIK it wasn't actually functional (meaning it doesn't show live data on weapons). If it already does, WOW. Anyway, the data is available if TB can somehow utilize the Lock on lua exports. All hte necessary data should be available, I use some of it in my pit design. Here's what the Lock on payload exports can give you:

LoGetPayloadInfo() -- return weapon stations
result_of_LoGetPayloadInfo
{
CurrentStation = , -- number of current station (0 if no station selected)
Stations = {},-- table of stations
}
station
{
container = true/false , -- is station container
weapon = {level1,level2,level3,level4} , -- world database classification of weapon
count = ,
}


Another wild idea is the Warning panel system. I think it could be useful to have that data visible on the touch screen. It's also easily available from the lua export:

LoGetMCPState() -- (args - 0, results - 1 (table of key(string).value(boolean))
returned table keys for LoGetMCPState():
"LeftEngineFailure"
"RightEngineFailure"
"HydraulicsFailure"
"ACSFailure"
"AutopilotFailure"
"AutopilotOn"
"MasterWarning"
"LeftTailPlaneFailure"
"RightTailPlaneFailure"
"LeftAileronFailure"
"RightAileronFailure"
"CanopyOpen"
"CannonFailure"
"StallSignalization"
"LeftMainPumpFailure"
"RightMainPumpFailure"
"LeftWingPumpFailure"
"RightWingPumpFailure"
"RadarFailure"
"EOSFailure"
"MLWSFailure"
"RWSFailure"
"ECMFailure"
"GearFailure"
"MFDFailure"
"HUDFailure"
"HelmetFailure"
"FuelTankDamage"

If you REALLY REALLY want to make my day you can create a map view with waypoints on it. I'm horrible at finding my way around the map and I would very much like to have a printed map on my kneeboard with the waypoints on it. That's a bit difficult without a separate display (like a touchscreen) and even with one it's probably not going to be easy. You can get waypoint coordinates from the lua exports, but you'd need to display them on a map somehow. Hmm I can already see it with my own eyes, zooming into the map by drawing a rectangle on the screen with my finger...

It would also be kind of nice to display the RWR on the touchscreen and it might even be possible with the present exports.

How difficult woild it be to actually use the lua exports with TB? Is someone planning on doing something like that?

And since you're all probably excited about the possibilities by now it's a good time to remind you of the more gloomy possibilities. AFAIK Il-2 for example has problems with TB when running on a single computer, what are the chances of LO:BS and its new clickable cockpit -feature causing similiar problems? It would be pretty bad for many, I think, since not everyone has a separate computer for running TB.

[Wild.Bill.Kelso]

Zorlac and I have already discussed this and will see what we can do when we get some time. Right now, we're busy with TB & TBTk 1.02.

But I did a test to see how an ActiveX interactive interface would work in TB and it seems to work ok. Check out this Test. It shows that I can write a VB6 app and imbed it into a TB tab using the ActiveX Plugin feature. Zorlac thinks he can feed me the LUA info from Lockon. If so, then I could display this info in a Plugin.

We just need time to work on all this stuff. But anybody who can program in VB6 could write their own Plugins too...

[zorlac]

It shouldnt be too hard to get this going, but probably in v1.0.3. I have written Lomac LUA quite a bit, so thats pretty much done, and the "getting the info to the reading app" should be easy too (if local mode, read the file, if client/server, then the client requests the file from the server, the server sends it and is written to the client machine's HDD, and the local app reads it)

Its near the top of my to-do list, once we can get v1.0.2 done, dusted and released

[Urban]

Sweet TB just gets better and better

[AndyHill]

Sounds very promising. However, I'm still concerned about TB and Lo:BS. I hope ED won't ruin TB dunctionality when they code the clickable cockpit.

[ruggbutt]

All of the functions for the clickable pit have duplicate keyboard commands. Instead of seeing ALT or CTRL commands, now you have LALT (left ALT) and LCTRL commands along with the respective right side commands..

[AndyHill]

Originally Posted by ruggbutt

All of the functions for the clickable pit have duplicate keyboard commands. Instead of seeing ALT or CTRL commands, now you have LALT (left ALT) and LCTRL commands along with the respective right side commands..

Yup, but they've introduced clickable cockpits for the first time in the series and I'm wondering if it can screw TB up.

[zorlac]

we have a user on here who is on the ED test team, and uses TB with Black Shark Beta. Click on the cockpit button with the mouse, or send a key press... no difference...

[AndyHill]

Originally Posted by zorlac

we have a user on here who is on the ED test team, and uses TB with Black Shark Beta. Click on the cockpit button with the mouse, or send a key press... no difference...

Ok that settled it for me IF he's also using TB on the game computer. I'm going to have to order a touchscreen sometime soon and join the Touch Buddies' club. Do you think it could be harmful for me if I didn't eat for about a month?

Now someone needs to stir some interest on the Sturmovik forums so that Oleg can make his game (and the sequel) TB compatible.

[zorlac]

The beta test user is Polecat..

POLECAT, you reading this? Can you confirm to Andy that TB works fine with LO:BS?