Hide cockpit panel and/or aircraft

I had Falcon 3 & 4 too. They were the days.

Pop out panel manager almost gives you persistent popouts. The problem with asking for this feature is if it’s not done correctly like in Xplane. They are persistent in that sim but not per aircraft and it causes me a problem. At least POPM gives the per aircraft capability. If it were built into the sim on a per aircraft basis I’d be delighted but I have my doiubts about it being done right based on past performance. Not to mention touch would also have to be fixed. I know Microsoft keep saying it’s not broken it’s just not implemented but to me the OS windows has touch built in so why does one of their own software titles not work with that native OS support. How it could of been chosen to not be implemented is beyond belief and it used to work it a much earlier version of the sim I am told.

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I just watched a youtube video where the chap has his main monitor set really low, so his instruments, touch screens etc are covering up at least the bottom 3rd of his main monitor/outside view covering the default cockpit panel and instruments.

I’ve always struggled with this and have my main monitor ‘jacked’ up to what is probably a very unrealistic height just so I don’t feel like I’m missing out. I actually get a stiff neck from looking up slightly.

I think I’m going to give this a try at the expense of losing the lower 3rd of my outside view, which is instruments anyway.

Any thoughts or ideas on this ?

Thought some more - you can always use the drone to check for icing, confirm the flaps, etc.

Currently, the only way to eliminate the virtual cockpit is to remove the entire plane completely via the cfg file. Drone or not, you can’t see ice on invisible wings.

Two problems are blocking my entrance to MSFS:-

  1. Editing the aircraft’s (in my case the Asobo Baron) “model.cfg” to prevent the sim from loading the exterior and interior models means that no GNS is loaded either and so there is no GNS to pop out. POPM can’t pop it out if it’s not loaded in the first place.
  2. If I edit the cfg file so that the exterior model is not loaded but the interior model is then I get a GNS that can be popped out but I also get a translucent “picture frame” view at the boundaries between the interior and exterior models. This looks ridiculous and is intolerable.
    I want FS to allow me to create the view shown in my picture - what I fly with in P3D (only the wings are visible).
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Mighty nice setup!

Thanks Barbra, it’s a bit of a diy effort done with a 3D printer, battery drill and a hand file. :slight_smile: But my grand children seem to love it and that’s what I was hoping for.

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“Just trying to understand what the community really wants.”
Thank you.
For what it’s worth here’s my 2 cents worth.
I would be willing to pay plenty (subjective term I know) for a model that allows me to have the view shown in the photograph of my sim using P3D.
That is:-An undocked (popped out) GNS530 and ability to see the aircraft model without the cockpit window pillars or instruments.
I have built a full sized replica of the Beech Baron that I flew in the early 1990’s

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Thanks very much for your input.

And would you ever want to look outside your aircraft to take screenshots?
Up close? Or only from a distance?

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Consider this for example.
I’ve cut away the pillars and the panel area.
The interior could be completely removed, or to be more comprehensive, the panel and internal pillars and doors removed, keeping the rest of the aircraft interior intact.

Now this could apply to LOD00 (When you’re really close, for example inside the aircraft), and the standard Caravan LODs could apply from outside when you’re further away for screenshots etc.

Would this be a viable solution?

Or is removing the entire front of the aircraft forward of the pilot more what we’re after? (Or probably further back to remove the A-pillar like the first example…)

These examples would only apply to LOD00, so further away externally the cockpit and fuselage would look normal.

What are the thoughts from some of the other pilots here with home cockpits?

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I can understand why your grand children love it : you built a Big toy, indeed, congratulations.

Back to the view issue, I am a newby with MSFS but maybe a “Custom View” could do the job.
Just go to “Controls Options” and search by name : “custom”. You can then set a camera where you want pressing , say, “Crl+Alt+0” , and then recall this custom view by pressing , say, “Alt+0”.

If you set this custom view near the front shield, you will see the rain drops, and whatever is behind the shield…and you can get 10 custom views.
You probably tested that already but did not suit you…Just in case and for those facing similar issues.

I have never taken a screen shot in 7 years of simulator flying. So to put it in just one word - No. :slight_smile:

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This looks hopeful. Removing the A-pillar is essential. But note: I need the Asobo Baron G58 model.

This is a pretty exciting possibility Parorng

I wonder how one would pop out, say, the GNS from the instrument panel (as it is in my photograph above) if they were removed from the model?

Would it be possible to leave the instruments in the model (for those who want to pop out one or more) but remove the compass that sits on top of the glare shield?

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You are right - I’ve already tried this method.
For some inexplicable reason my installation of FS won’t save custom views. The old Ctrl+Alt+num trick is ignored by FS. (I have confirmed the configuration settings in the FS Options panel)

So I’ve been looking for other ways to achieve the same thing.

Along came an update to FS2020 and now I have been able to save a custom view that has my eyepoint just above the fuselage and I get a view almost the same as the one I have shown above (when I was running P3D)

Very nice setup, are you running projectors or are those tvs with bezel hiders?

Well we could leave the cockpit, but remove everything above the glareshield.

The issue with that is that it is a huge amount of work, as you’d need to remake and reanimate the entire cockpit.

Unless we made a generic cockpit that could ‘plug in’ below the modelled dash, that could be used for all models. I have no idea how difficult that would be though.

The other issue is that everyone wants a different instrument, a different GPS stack, analogue or EFIS instruments, airspeed indicator that goes to x knots at full scale.

I’ve not delved into WASM for the electronic instruments before, analogue are much easier (for me) as they’re just modelled and animated.

Whichever solution we find, it will only be suitable for some.

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This would most likely work for me, but I don’t know how much work it would involve. If we left everything alone below the glare shield, why does the cockpit have to be “reanimated”? Sorry, I admit I am ignorant.

Yes.

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I’m running three projectors beaming on to a DIY 520" curved screen that is 2.7m diameter and 1.8m high.

If I was building it knowing what I now know I would make it a whole lot smaller. There are disadvantages to having the images/pixels tripled in size. That’s why I want to turn off the cockpit view.

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Simply because the importer isn’t up to scratch, nor is it approved by Asobo, only the exporter. The importer brings in the model, but all the textures need to be reassigned, and all the animations redone. It’s a big big job. Some would say it would be easier to make your own cockpit.

Which we could do. Perhaps design a cockpit that we’d never look at anyway, because you use your own. But it would keep the functionality of your instruments working.

But then an instrument for one aircraft won’t fit another, and then you’d need to do the animations again.

An easier solution is to not have any instruments at all in the model. But I’m unsure how that works with the cockpits you have and whether that would render them unusable.

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