IS THERE A CHANGEING TREND BY AC DESIGNERS?

[Rex_King]

Dear All,

Thank You for allowing me to post this question, which I have wanted to do as I see a trend of change in airplane design for FS2002,  I am and always will be a big fan of Mr Chuck Dome, when he designs and builds a new plane its always a beautiful creation of his talents. But, I see these many wonderful planes now being designed and what I see is someting I have not seen before, when in the cockpit I look to my left and to my right but the designer has removed the wings and tail, all there is, is the panel. of course you will always see the plane from a tower view, but no wings no tail, I am no expert at anyting but I have read and talked to a number of pilots about how important looking out at the wings are, they said in some planes not all the wings are used as a reference point. If this is the case, what would you use in FS2002 when flying a DC-3 with no wings.  Maybe I am spoiled as I have used FS98 for years and have just switched to FS2002 where I am finding this trend.  In closeing this is just an observation, I sure love these wonderful planes that are being made, but I wonder if anyone has asked this question before? I hope Mr Chuck Dome will someday make a DC-3 or a Lockheed 12 Junior of the 1930s. He is great. Again thank you for allowing me this time.


Sincerely,

Rex King

[Felix/FFDS]

I moved it to the Design Forum ...

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There are several reasons - you *may* be seeing planes designed for FS2000, and "converted" to FS2002.  
For FS2000, the "outside" views had more or less to be textured into the overall package.

For FS2002, the "outside" of the plane is visible if the modeller has included a "virtual cockpit" - basically an additional "model within a model" that is made up of the parts that would be visible from the cockpit.

The trend for designers IS to include virtual cockpits....

[Hagar]

I've often been asked similar questions. New FS users probably don't realise this "design trend" can be explained by the development of the sim & not the 3rd party designers themselves. Let me try to explain.

The FS98 default aircraft featured a dynamic virtual cockpit (DVC) with functional gauges much like that used in FS2002. The DVC included interior views of parts of the aircraft visible from the cockpit. This feature was also included with CFS1. At the time it was not possible for 3rd party design programs to duplicate the DVC but most 3rd party aircraft included some sort of virtual cockpit with a static panel + the interior views & visible external parts of the aircraft.

FS2000 broke the mould & the defaults no longer had any sort of virtual cockpit. The new graphics engine made the DVC impractical so the idea was dropped in favour of extra views incorporated into the panels. The extra panel views, although made up of 2D images like the main panel view, give the illusion of a static 3D "virtual cockpit" with detailed side, rear & quarter internal views. These can include wings & those parts normally visible from the cockpit. The main drawback with this idea is that the panel is only suitable for one type of aircraft & further, one particular version of the aircraft as the paint scheme will most likely not match other liveries.

Most 3rd party designers went along with this trend, hence the FS2000 aircraft with no internal views. This was left to the panel designers. Aircraft with any sort of interior views will conflict with this type of panel, hence the lack of this feature in most FS2000 3rd party aircraft. An extreme example can be demonstrated by aliasing the panel.cfg of a low wing aircraft with a DVC to one of these FS2000-style panels intended for a high wing design. You will end up with internal views which resemble some peculiar biplane.