Improved Visibility Gauge Needles

This is a new COCKPITS.CDF file, which contains all of the 2D cockpits and a lot of the information for the gauges in the virtual cockpits as well. I have changed the bytes for the color of the needles to be a bit brighter with a slight green tinge, similar to the radium painted needles and dials used in the World War 2 era. 

Installation:
Unzip and drop into your EAW folder, or use OAWunified. For OAW, you might want to extract all the files and add them as you need them.

Known problems:
Becuase this is a change to the palette that is used for the instrument panel, there are several instances where the change in color affects things a bit too strongly. While all cockpits are affected, only a few use this color in sufficient quantity to be faily noticeable. The P-51 D is the worst case; the white band surrounding the IFR instruments is greatly affected. The other spot I noticed was on the Bf-109 E -- the panel to the upper right (I believe this is supposed to be an instruction card or some such) but this doesn't seem as offensive as the P-51 D. These are the two worst cases...I suppose I will attempt some patches to correct these colors as well.

For those that want to just downlad this file and do the changes themselves, it's pretty simple really: First use the CDF extraction tool (available at Sandbagger's I'm sure, or email me and I will send it.) to extract the desired cockpit file. Use this chart to find the right one:


P001 = P38H		
P011 = P38J
P021 = P47C		
P031 = P47D
P041 = P51B
P051 = P51D		
P091 = HURRICANE
P101 = SPITFIRE MKI
P111 = SPITFIRE MKIX
P121 = SPITFIRE MK XIV
P131 = TYPHOON		
P141 = TEMPEST
P161 = BF-109E
P171 = BF-109G
P181 = BF-109K
P191 = BF-110C
P201 = BF-110G
P221 = FW-190A
P231 = FW-190D
P241 = ME-262

Open the file in any Hex Editor (I like Hex Workshop - don't know if it's still available. Again, be happy to send you a copy.) The first few lines will look like this:

F2D5 0580 0605 0513 1110 1F1D 1A2C 2C25 
3739 3040 463B 4751 4651 5E54 5D6A 6469 
7674 747F 8180 878D 8E90 979C 9CA3 A9A7 
ACB6 B3B8 C3C0 C3CE CDCE D9D8 D8E5 E4E4

The last three sets of numbers are the ones you want.:E5 E4 E4 They are at offset #0000003D.
I changed this to E0 F0 AA. 
Save the file and drop it into your EAW folder and fly.
That's about it. Enjoy!

Brian "Crashin' Jack" Baker
bakerinnodesign@aol.com
12/30/2005