1 - Prem Holdaway long wished for a better working artificial horizon. The parallel horizon bars were way out of place for the Spitfire.
The bars were locked up in a COCKPITS folder .X8 file called ARTHORIZ, from old Rowan days.
No one ever cracked it open to .PCX or .DDS so that we could actually move and modify them.
Prem kept trying to get these bars accessible for changing.
2 - PV, with his acute knowledge of the old Rowan mtt2 tools, came to his aid and cracked open the ARTHORIZ.x8 file to be a .PCX file.
Now we can modify it.
Prem sent me his first replacement of the bars for a Spitfire working artificial horizon. Asked me to line up and color better.3 - Me. I used my previous artificial horizon gauge face and mask files down to a better position than in my Cockpits mod, and lined them all up best I can.
I also created an ARTHORIZ that is .DDS. This masks out the background of the old .X8 and the .PCX, that was intruding upon the instrument panel in a bad way,
and leaves only the bars showing up in game.
This my assembly with the gauge using radium luminescent paint colors, as per Prem's request, and the way I paint gauges.
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?92tam1yz47vn1j3
Here is the same assembly, but uses white graduations and looks more like the stock gauge, but is much better than stock issue.
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?v7jy2pl998rpnpw
Some pics:
The stock gauge face. Not good enough for me. Not even lined up proper as you can see. I have not used this for 4 years or more:
Here is how I made it, straight and level, and no turn flight:
A close up:
After I took the screenshot above, I went to external view to see the wings:
Another closeup look. Call me an obsessive maniac to details if you will. For 39 years.. I have been an Instrument Technician/Mechanic.
My employers from the US Navy on thru all the private companies that I have worked for always demanded instrument readout accuracy.
Also, my father was a perfectionist, and some of that rubbed off onto me. So I look to details, and like all my little ducks lined up in proper row.
I shortened the parallel bars as much as I could from old issue.
During hard maneuvering, the bars stick out of the gauge face. I could not eliminate that completely, but reduced it much from what was.
This is the ARTHORIZ.DDS that I made. It also gets rid of the old background that intruded upon the instrument panel.
Here is the same gauge face with white graduations. A turning screenshot.
Note! These parallel bars are accurate only to level to horizon flight.
On turning, I see a deviation from the bars to game horizon of about 5 - 7 degrees.
I looked at the 3D Gauge Calibration tools that I was given, and see nothing in there for adjusting these parallel bars.
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Now.. this is a Spitfire only mod.
That is, it does not line up good at all in the Hurricane. Can I say whore texture again? As I am the Moderator at this forum, as I can.
So.. I guess that that I will have to make an ARTHORIZ mod for the Hurricane, too.
Easy to do. Raise the bars about 20 pixels (on a cheap 64 x 64 res) texture. Plus give the Hurricane a decent artificial horizon gauge face.
