I didn't want to get too much "off topic" up in the FS2004 section...... so I will explain more about this relative to your comments down here. This relates a lot to the "glass cockpit" concept... which is more like "HomeBuild Cockpits" type material.
Since I am designing a "generic jet"...... I really don't have to conform to any aircraft's exact layout... so I am researching what the "normal" possibilities are for glareshield layouts. Spent some time looking at real cockpit pictures too.
I know SOME of the typical stuff....... but I am looking to expand my understanding before I committ myself to a design layout in wood, plastic, and electronics.
More advanced functions are ND range and flight path vectors(won't do you any good with the default jets) and some buttons which displays different things on the ND: VORs, Airports, waypoints, weather radar terrain data etc...
Actually....because of the way the "glass cockpit" setup works...... I will have pretty much full functionality of all of these flight controls. The controls for this stuff interact with the EXTERNAL flight gauge software running on the flight instrument computers..... which then interacts with the sim running on the main computer via data transfer with FSUIPC and WideFS. So I already DO have access to stuff like ND range, vectors, and all the WXR, WPT,ARC/ROSE, VOR, NDB, PLAN and other functions.
If you go to the FreeFD site...... you can see the type of stuff they provide. It is pretty interesting.
best,
..................john
Intel i7 960 quad 3.2G LGA 1366, Asus P6X58D Premium, 750W Corsair, 6 gig 1600 DDR3, Spinpoint 1TB 720
