How to change the A-10C cockpit to not display any superstructure??

[Osita]

Just to be clear, I don't want to "hide" the cockpit using the hide cockpit key combo, I want to prevent it being drawn at all, while still preserving things like rain effects, view of the wings when looking left or right, and the HUD glass tinting. So the idea is I want to remove all the instruments, consoles, MFDs, HUD, compass, accelerometer, canopy frame, seat, mirrors, etc. Still get the cockpit effects (rain, shadows, glare) without the cockpit being visible or being able to click on any of the hotspots, etc, and the player can still switch to "HUD only" view which removes all effects as well.

 

You don't have to tell me exactly how, but if you can at least point me in the right direction, that would be very helpful. Most of the mod stuff already on the forums is about how to add things or change the appearance of things, not much there about how to subtract things.

[Harker]

You should be able to make anything invisible by setting the opacity (alpha channel) of said texture to zero. You can find the cockpit textures somewhere the in \DCS\Mods\aircraft\A-10C\ directory. You can alter the opacity on different parts of the texture, so you can choose what you want to make transparent and how much.

 

You'll need an editing software, such as Gimp, paint.net or Photoshop with a DDS plugin, to edit DDS files. I've found that Photoshop with the Intel DDS plugin works very well.

 

Make a backup of the texture files before you start and store it somewhere outside of the DCS directory, for safekeeping. Alternatively, you can repair DCS if you mess things up.

 

The only thing I'm not sure about is whether you'll be able to keep shadows, since the parts normally generating them will allow the light through. It depends on how they're generated, but you should be good if they rely 100% on the 3D model and not the textures on that model.

 

As for removing the ability to click on switches with the mouse, I don't know how to do this, but take a look at \DCS\Mods\aircraft\A-10C\Cockpit\Scripts\, there should be something like clickable_data.lua there. I'm guessing that you can start from that.

 

Good luck.

[Osita]

Great, thanks Harker! I will post results if I'm successful in achieving the goal and also if I remember that I said I would! :)