LOL
Lens Correction…not the issue.
Quote: “It’s not really a big deal”.
I didn’t state, imply or infer that anything was “a big deal”. It seems perhaps you might be misinterpreting my intentions and what I am stating here. I have been very clear from the outset about the issue and provided examples of how professional 3rd party devs have included this feature in their cockpits. How can I be any clearer?
It’s the fact that this issue can be resolved in a very short time since more than half the work (infrastructure) has already been completed. It’s very clear - the original devs already provided several other dials with the full ability I am referring to. And in other dials, only half that ability. Ergo, to amend this would not take an immense workload to achieve. How can I be any clearer?
Quote: “However if you feel you shouldn’t have to make any then it’s good you have plenty of other aircraft to keep yourself busy.”
…my “feelings” are irrelevant. It’s about facts.
Unfortunately the interactions are already as optimized as we (WT, the first party developer who did the new 787) can make them in both Legacy and Lock interaction modes in the simulator.
Because those two knobs have at least one more function each than in the 737, the click spots must account for those interactions. As such it isn’t really possible to provide the interactions in the way that is being requested or the sim might interpret them as pressing the knob in or turning the wrong shaft, making for some interactions being unusable and others usable only from extremely narrow camera angles. Additionally just the geometry of the knobs themselves makes it somewhat impossible to make the click spots for those knobs bigger, or the additional interactions (outer barrels, knob press) would be obscured by the bounding boxes, or run into other controls.
Finally, despite the assumptions being made, each of these controls can be many, many hours of art, dev work, usability testing, integration testing, and then because they’re part of the base sim, build and release, certification, publishing, etc. While the sim XML cockpit behaviors system does allow for some templating, largely each knob stands on its own from a ModelBehaviors XML logic and also modeling perspective.
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People just don’t understand what goes into software development. I can’t tell you how many times I hear statements like “can’t you just change a few lines of code? It’s only one hour of work.”
As a developer for my day-job, whenever I self-estimate a simple change to anything, generally multiply by 3 or 4 for the real number.
Thank you very much for chiming in here with the articulate response. I really appreciate it.
Clearly, I oversimplified the issue and possible resolve for such.
As a matter of interest, I’m in the cockpit right now conducting a flight - observing your explanation of the issue at hand.
Can I ask, purely from on observation POV, as I experiment with the Heading and Altitude dials there seems to be real estate surface available as I observe my mouse and the gui interactions.
My questions is this: on the left side of each said dial, we have 180 degrees North to South on the West side. Can this not be divided into 2 portions? eg: the 9 O’Clock to 12 O’Clock position is surrendered to Clockwise speed turns, whilst the 6 O’Clock to 9 O’Clock is reserved to Counter Clockwise speed turns? (ie speed turns meaning click and hold left mouse button).
At present, the entire real estate is tied to Counter Clockwise.
The outer dial (bank angle) already has it’s own separate real estate from the inner dial, and I rarely have any issues manipulating them and receiving any interference.
Is there a boundary or other issue that prevents you from achieving this? I am purely really interested to know.
Again, I appreciate your time and expertise.
Cheers!
It cannot, no. The sim click spot bounding system must be tied to the geometry of the object being clicked. If you did manage to divide the portions (say by splitting the knob into portions) those would also spin as the knob spun.
The Legacy interaction method generally produces just fine results but in this case the area are just a little tight for it to work any better than it does. I always recommend Lock mode these days (even for third party aircraft) as it gives a lot more interaction options. In this case you could just left click and drag as fast as you want to get a higher speed of knob scrolling in Lock mode.
Lock mode is the best
Again, many thanks for your patience and taking the time to answer my questions.
It’s greatly appreciated.