Weather watching

[Paul K]

To celebrate finally - finally - getting Manfred Jahn's B-50 external model and Virtavia's B-29 VC working happily together, I took the WB-50 up from Elmendorf AFB, Alaska for a short sortie north. I've been finding my way with the process of merging models and still keeping all the functionalities of both, but now that I'm retired, I have time to do things slowly and carefully. And Dave G, if you are wondering, I've used the 'Enola Gay' flight deck with this unarmed WB-50, so no internal gun turret tub inside. Also added are Wothan's weathership gauge and the FSX-updated bubble sextant by Dave Bitzer and Mark Beaumont. Some long range trips in the offing !

[FlyTexas]

Beautiful screenies, Paul! The B-50 definitely looks at home in that environment.

Brian

[Elvis Presley]

Very nice
Jim

[Airspeed]

Paul, you go where this man has never gone!
That sounds like pretty advanced stuff you're doing.
The B29/WB50 is a mighty bit of kit.

[Vancouver]

I would love to know who you go about doing things like that. The other day I came across a FW190 and the left hand tail Swastika was back to front. Brain thinks - "I'll give that a go at switching it about". Well, to make a long story short I made a complete pigs ear of it and ruined the plane.

[DaveG]

Very nice.
Glad you got the merge sorted. Good idea using the Enola Gay VC. Might have to pinch that idea.

[Paul K]

Thanks for the responses, gents.

Very nice.
Glad you got the merge sorted. Good idea using the Enola Gay VC. Might have to pinch that idea.

Dave, I remember you offering to talk me though it all, but it's only recently that I've had the spare time to do it anyway. It's been worth doing myself, because it's taught me a few things, and inspired me to try another exterior/interior merge - Manfred's C-97 series with A2A's Stratocruiser VC.

Mike, thanks for 'bigging me up' as the young folk say. I have to admit that it's not so much advanced stuff, as keeping on top of what files you've moved where, and which configs require what edits. I'm the sort of person who can put a set of car keys down on the table in front of me, blink, and then I've forgotten where I put them. So, just simple file management in Windows can be a bit of a challenge. There is a thread at SOH that deals with the merge process, but it's a bit fragmentary, and in the end there were some things I had to work out through trial and error. Now that it's all done and working, I've zipped up the whole thing so I don't have to re-do it all come the next clean installation.

I can't recommend Manfred's B-50 highly enough. If you like vintage big ones, you'll love this. And I wish every add-on aircraft came with his Monitor gauge - it's superb.

[Tako_Kichi]

I wish every add-on aircraft came with his Monitor gauge - it's superb.

Adding a new pop-up panel to any aircraft is far easier than what you did trying to merge in a new VC. It should be fairly straightforward to add that to whatever you like, you just have to get the paths right so the the gauge reads the correct xml files.

[Paul K]

Hi Larry,

Yes, the thought did occur, but I assumed the Monitor was kind of 'hard-wired' to that particular aircraft ( sorry to sound such an amateur...but I'm an amateur ). I think I will explore the possibilities further. Thanks for that.

[Tako_Kichi]

If you wanted to add the panel to more than one aircraft it would probably make sense to copy the B-50 gauge CAB file into the default 'Gauges' folder and then reference it from there as required. You would just need to copy the relevant window sections from the B-50 panel.cfg file and paste them into the destination panel.cfg file and then change the paths for each line to call the specific gauge from the 'Gauges' folder instead of the B-50 panel folder.

I have a couple of panels that I add to every aircraft in my hangar (one for piston engines and one for jets) so that I have the same functions available regardless of the aircraft I'm in. I have another one that goes in all my helicopters so I can have the key gauges show up in external view as I prefer external view for landing choppers.