How to display Pilot Figure

[see_e_oh]

How do I get the pilot figure to display?

On some colorschemes for an airplane the pilot figure displays, but on others it does not.

I can see the pilot figure when using the airplane editor.

I've looked at both types of TGA files in Adobe Photoshop and the pilot figure is not there.

There also seems to be no difference in the .colorscheme files.

I've even tried renaming the .dds file from a plane that displays it.

Has anyone figured this out?

[vitek]

The pilot figure is part of the actual mesh, so it cannot be changed using color schemes or the aircraft editor. The export tool will allow people to make pilots for their own aircraft. Unless something changes significantly about the way the aircraft models work, you will not be able to insert new pilot figures into aircraft that come with RealFlight.

Travis

[see_e_oh]

I'm interested only in getting the existing pilot figure to display in existing colorschemes, where, for some reason, it appears in the airplane editor (when wireframe displayed), but not otherwise in the editor in the actual sim.

Is there a setting somewhere for "translucency" of the canopy area?

[Cobra]

Do you mean there is a canopy you can see through at the pilot window? And the pilot is missing?

Or that the canopy window cannot be seen through? I think in this latter case, the colorscheme file controls the transparency of areas. The TGA file supports alpha in the image, and portions with alpha set for transparent are transparent when the canopy is displayed on the plane/heli. At least that's what I think happens. There is also a text file that specifies some visual properties of the colorscheme. I thought that was documented in the RF manual.

But it sounds more like that wasn't the problem you had?

[see_e_oh]

The canopy window cannot be seen through.

I'm new to all of this so:

What is Alpha?
How do you control it?
Is it a property that can be adjusted through Photoshop Elements?

I note that the .colorscheme text files for planes in which the canopy can be seen through are identical to the ones in which they cannot.

Thanks for your help!

[vitek]

Sorry, I thought you wanted to add a pilot figure, or change what the existing ones looked like.

What plane or planes are we talking about? It is possible that the canopy isn't tagged properly. The canopy has to be made so that transparent materials will be applied. If it is not, you won't be able to see through it while running the simulation.

If the canopy is tagged properly, it is just a matter of editing a color scheme tga file so that it uses an alpha channel over the transparent canopy area.

What is Alpha?

In a nutshell alpha tells how transparent parts of an image are.

How do you control it?

You would need to use an image editor like PhotoShop, PaintShop or Gimp. You would have to consult the documentation for those products or find someone to show you.

Is it a property that can be adjusted through Photoshop Elements?

I'm not sure. Your documentation would be able to tell you all about alpha and alpha channels.

Travis

[see_e_oh]

Thanks for the input Vitek.

I'll take a closer look at Photoshop Elements.

[Cobra]

If you want to post the .tga file for one of the airplanes (or let us know which one it is,) I'll edit one with alpha/transparency to show you the difference. I don't know Elements, but I can show you examples from The Gimp if that helps.

[opjose]

Gimp! Gimp! Gimp!

Me likes The Gimp...

[see_e_oh]

OK, 5 hours of trial and error later, never having used GIMP before, I got it to work.

Added alpha channel, created layer mask, set proper lumonosity values...

Canopy is now tinted/transparent, with pilot figure plainly visible.

Yipee.

GIMP is pretty cool. Guess I'm gonna spend more time with it now, and shelve photoshop elements.

Thanks for the input.

[Cobra]

Haha, cool and congratulations! Glad we figured it out. I wasn't up late enough to see your PM last night.