Monday, November 10, 2008

Radar indicator for J-35J

As the Viggen simulator is placed in winter storage work has begun on programs for the Draken simulator. Most notably is the radar indicator.

Due to the problems we've had with using an old CRT TV monitor for the radar in SUL37, we tried a different approach for the SUL35. A small and cheap LED projector as back light for the radar display seem to do the trick. We've got a great source of information about how this radar worked. So we'll hopefully have this unit up and running and plotting targets in the sky in no time. The fact that we're using FSX for the SUL35 makes it even easier since it allows me to use SimConnect that presents nice functions for importing positions of other air planes.

However, the asynchronous calls used in with SimConnect presents a few problems to my FSapp-framework. But it's just a matter of time before those issues are handled. Here is a film of some early test we've performed with the new software I'm developing:


One feature I'll need to add is the latency in the original screen that makes plottings stay visible for some time after the sweep has passed. I first intended to solve this by using the accumulation buffer but it turned out to have some nasty limitations, so I might have to go with frame buffer objects (fbo). But before that I will try to use auxiliary buffers. I'll get back on the result of these tests.

Here is a few films from youtube were you can see the radar in use:
At 3:37 in this film...


...and at 0:44 in this film.