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[karo]

I truly hope my previous post was not taken as projecting any snarkiness; none was intended. But I realize that my writings, in their focus upon fact and detail, can come across as coldly frank, or even haughty. But trust that only the best intentions motivate and drive me.

No problem my friend. I see that you are very focused to deliver us the best "product". I appreciate it

Well, I did some online skulking, but found little in the way of detail. But enough to suggest that no luminous green paint was in use. And so I made the ColorScale data for all instrument _night textures read:
1.0 0.5 0.0 0.3
Which is an orange-red of 3/10 opacity (mostly transparent).It provides just enough of a boost to the background texture to bring the gauges and needles into decent enough visibility. I like it, and it has the advantage of consistency in behavior. Unless proven incorrect, I'll stick with this.

I could not find anything else about illumination of gauges/cockpit on Grumman planes in my historical sources, so I started to seek how this was done in other aviation sims ...
I found two issues (AVSIM and Vertigo Studios). The illumination of gauges/cockpit in F4F (AVSIM) was yellow/orange. The same thing in F6F (Vertigo Studios) was yellow/red. I did not see any green light in those cockpits.
   

[WxTech]

Thanks for taking the time to do the checking, karo. It seems the evidence is converging toward the no-green scheme. Amazing how long some things take to change for the better. Pacific Fighters was released a decade (or was it 12 years?) ago, and only now are we enthusiasts realizing the facts and doing something with them.

[karo]

Pacific Fighters was released a decade (or was it 12 years?) ago, and only now are we enthusiasts realizing the facts and doing something with them.

Well, this is our hobby

I found another interesting information about cockpit/gauges night illumination. This time it is an old post on 1C Company forum. One guy claimed there, that he was an owner of two cockpit instruments from Do-217 and He-177. Both of them were green-glowed in darkness because of a phosphorescence paint (not fluorescent) on their dials.

I found also this picture of a cockpit panel of Bf-110 (below). As you can see, some gauges glow in green indeed.

I guess, that we can define that the green light is correct for gauges on german (Luftwaffe) planes...     

[WxTech]

I have the sliding canopy curves smoothed, as noted previously by 'only' doubling the number of segments. While this is not as refined as the noticeably smoother results by Geronimo and Barnsey, the meshes do not suffer near the degree of 'bloat' either.

I find the improvement eminently satisfactory. But I expect a few folks might not be satisfied still, after enjoying the rather smoother results applied by means of work-reducing 3-D modeling software.

[karo]

Does it mean that the cockpit ver.3 is ready?

Ps. It would be good to smooth additionally an edge of glass of Mark 8 Gunsight...

[WxTech]

Still slaving away; it's taking every bit of time I feared, this doing it 'manually' with a spreadsheet. I now know why I balked at the notion of undertaking this! Remaining to do are the frontmost elements, they being the armored glass support and surrounding frame. The sliding canopy is finished, as well as the stationary arch it abuts when closed. It sure makes for a more pleasing overall impression.

I suppose the gun sight reflector could be given the smoothing treatment as well, while I'm at it.

[WxTech]

The smoothing work on the canopy curves is complete for the F4F-3. Adapting to the -4 will follow in short order.

And I think I will smooth the Mk 8 sight's upper reflector edges (mounted in the -4.)

I also added a couple of hier.him entries for the mirror and its base. In addition to the default tilt of 10 degrees, I defined tilts of 12.5 and 15 degrees. The farther you lean forward, the more tilted the mirror must be if you are not to be seeing just sky toward your high six. And so if you fly and fight near the sight (hey, that rhymes), you can choose a more strongly tilted angle so that you still see directly behind you (instead of looking at a more upward angle.)

All you need do is open hier.him with any text editor and remove the preceding "//" characters for the line entry you want to activate, and make sure all other lines have that preceding "//" in order to disable them. At the end of each line I have a brief comment indicating the relevant angle for both [BASEMIRROR] and [MIRROR], so it's straightforward to make the selection.

Needless to say, a backup of hier.him might be wise. Or you could make three versions of this file, each with a different mirror angle selected. With these files each residing in its own subfolder, you can then simply drag and drop, with no fear of mucking things up.

If you inadvertently set different angles for these items, you will have part of the view clipped to invisibility because of the two surfaces intersecting. The mirror must be located a short distance nearer to you than its backing base, with no contact between the two objects.

[SAS~Storebror]

Great to see how the Wildcat cockpit evolves.
This is a true work of art, thanks a lot for sharing it with us WxTech, much appreciated!

Best regards - Mike

[sakai]

Smoothing the "curves", oh yes ! thanks a lot Mr WxTech... I'm eager to see the result (I'm alredy very happy to fly in the new cockpit)
thanks for your dedication

[WxTech]

The F4F-4 has now had its curve smoothing work completed, except for the Mk. 8 sight's reflector, which I'm about to start. Only the exposed edges of the reflector plate will be so treated, otherwise the whole sight would have to be tackled--no thanks!

Note that the smoothing I've performed has involved just a doubling of segments. Doing this 'manually' with a spreadsheet is labor intensive! And so there are still apparent angular discontinuities. The kind of smoothing other lads have undertaken by aid of 3-D modeling software is visually superior. But it comes at a cost. I tried Barnsey's version, and his sliding canopy mesh had ballooned to 389 KB vs my 38 KB.

Now, just that crude, low-level doubling of vertices makes a *very* considerable difference. Further granulation into ever finer segment lengths is more like 'icing on the cake', for the bulk of the reduction in the jarring angularity has already been achieved. If one were to be foolish enough to try to quantify the aesthetic, it might be said that my humble effort gets one, say, 80-85% of the way to an agreeably 'perfect' smoothness. That's good enough for me. And yes, in spite of my general persnicketiness in matters of detail.

Oh yes, I plan to create the damaged versions of my instruments, instead of relying on the sometimes notably different ones that came with the big cockpit repaint pack available here at SAS. I was pointed to a web site offering oodles of textures by a fellow member here, and found lots of great broken glass images. That former lack of textures is principally what held me back...

[karo]

I keep my fingers crossed for a quick finish of your work.
I can't wait for the newest version of the cockpit

[WxTech]

I'm currently dealing with the damaged instrument textures and their _night versions, not all of which are so treated, it seems. My Panel_D1.msh has the artficial horizon and gyro compass, and a few other 'minor' instruments, given no damage textures, instead just applying the undamaged ones as used in Panel_D0.msh.

I'd be curious to see a current version of the [Materials] and [FaceGroups] sections taken from Panel_D1.msh. To see if there has been any change made since 4.08/4.09.