my system probably needs more optimization. i would definitely like to reduce the number of render targets that i use. my initial version used 5, the current version uses at most 3. i probably will limit myself to one camera display at a time (so much for the concept of the gunnery control console in bridge simulation), one hud display at a time and one general panel display (which can be sectioned off with uv mapping). i still need to increase the number of scripted hud gauges available to the hud system. but i need to find a work around for the current issue before i continue dev. so the current setup is subject to change (just keep that in mind).
setup kinda works like this:
-make a polygon and uv map it to take up all the space (you may have to flip and/or mirror the mapping to make it look right).
-assign a texture to it. you can make a fake hud texture (this will serve as a placeholder for hardware that doesnt support rtt) for the panel. this texture will be replaced by the rtt texture during runtime.
-in the cockpits.tbl file, create an entry for the ship(this is only partial). keep in mind this table is parsed by a script, not by the engine, so it lacks some of the debug facilities and behaves somewhat differently than the way engine would normally handle tables. use one of the existing entries as a reference.
-in the panel section you should see something like this:
$Panel:
+Texture_Name: panel1
+Texture_Index: 6
this tells the system what texture to replace. you can use name, index or both. index is mostly there so you can use multiple instances of invisible, but im not sure if it works yet. currently its hard coded which panel does what. right now 1 is allocated to radar and 2 of them are setup as keyboard controlled mfds (see input.tbl for commands). im not sure what order they are in so try shuffling around your panel entries till it does what you want. only the first 3 will ever be used (using more may cause a crash). eventually you will be able to set the resolution and panel type (monitor, panel, hud), but this is experimental and may not be on svn yet.
-if you want to use the camera panels you need to setup a $view: entry (at least 1, but you can have as many as you want). they should be self explanatory (read the comments).
-if you want a turret camera, use the +Turret: tag in your $view: entry, with he name of the turret subsystem (only orthogonal-axis multiparts are supported right now). you also need an entry for the turret.
-in the turret entry set the +View: to the name of the view used by that turret (see above). +Lookaim: is not currently implemented. right now turret control override is handled by keystroke (see input.tbl), this switches controls form ship to turret and back again.
-if you want animated cockpit controls use an $animation: entry. all fields should be self explanatory (also see the submodel hierarchy in my models for examples);
-if your ship has a targeting laser, use a $Targeting_Laser: entry. all fields should be self explanitory. only works with LGB weapons defined in drones.tbl, also there is a keyboard command to turn the lasre on/off (this will be made automatic when the weapon is selected in the future).
just remember this is still an alpha. so almost all features are subject to change.
