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5.3. SLIDERS IN THE PANEL 73
• Add a “command slider” to the instrument panel. This is labeled “but command slider” in
the “buttons” folder of the panel design dialog’s instrument list (labeled 2 in Figure 5.1).
• Set the cycle time for that slider to 10 seconds in the Sliders tab of Plane Maker’s Systems
dialog box.
If you have more than one slider in your instrument panel, you can figure out which number each
one is assigned by opening the panel design dialog and pressing the Alt key (Option in Mac OS
X). Small green numbers will appear on each duplicated instrument, as seen in Figure 5.3. For
instance, in Figure 5.3, the cycle time for the slider on the far right would be set using the “#3
time” parameter in the Systems dialog’s Sliders tab.
Figure 5.3: Three sliders in an instrument panel, whose numbers are displayed by pressing the Alt
(Option) key
It is also possible to create an animation sequence for parts of the aircraft which you do not
want tied to an actual switch in the instrument panel. For instance, you might want to animate
the landing light housing unfolding from the wing when the lights are turned on. In this case, you
would not want to tie the landing light cockpit switch to sim/cockpit2/switches/slider on because
changing the switch would trigger the animation without actually turning on the landing lights!
To account for this, the slider system allows you to pick any dataref as a “source” for a slider;
the slider on datarefs are merely a default. Thus, in the case of the landing lights, you would simply
need to choose the real landing light switch dataref (sim/cockpit2/switches/landing lights on) as
the source for your sliders. Then, when the landing lights are turned on, the slider will be triggered
and the landing lights will work as they should.
To select a custom dataref for a slider, simply open the Systems dialog’s Sliders tab, check the
box labeled “dataref” next to the slider which you would like to use, then box next to the text field
below the dataref checkbox. A dialog box will appear that allows you to choose which dataref you
will link to.
Note: If you are using custom-assigned sliders, you should begin with slider #24 and move to
lower numbers as needed, since actual sliders in the instrument panel (but command slider) will be
numbered beginning at 1.
Then, in the case of the landing lights, you would set the sliders up this way:
• In the instrument panel, there would be a normal landing light switch.
• Slider #24 would have a cycle time of 5 seconds, with the dataref checkbox on, and a dataref
of “sim/cockpit2/ switches/landing lights on”.
• In a misc. object for the aircraft there would be a key-framed animation based on
sim/flightmodel2/misc/ custom slider ratio[0] that animates the landing light housing.