Ikarus - loading, saving profiles

[lesthegrngo]

Hi all, after fruitlessly trying to get Helios to output the working IAS gauge to my cockpit, I am trying out Ikarus to see if I can get this to work.

I used the A10C profile that comes with it that has the ADI, HSI, RWR and ASI on it, and deleted all the buttons, gauges, lamps etc that I didn't need. I saved at various points along the way, and kept checking that the instruments still displayed, and finally sized and located them to suit. After a few false starts I got the hang of it .

However when I loaded DCS, the profile that appeared was the original unmodified one with everything. I closed Ikarus down, then reloaded it, and looked for my saved file... and it is nowhere to be found. Not only that, Ikarus in now defaulting back to the original A10C file I used, and I can't change it. If my PC is to be believed, I have not saved the profile anywhere

So can anyone who has used Ikarus successfully help me to either save the profile correctly or how to load the one I want?  

Cheers

Les

[lesthegrngo]

I kept on at this, and after doing a thorough search of the PC it showed that the files were being saved as internet explorer files that could not be opened by anything, but also in curiously random locations. It also did save one .ikarus file on the desktop, so I copied that into the Ikarus folder where the other profiles were.

I opened Ikarus, loaded the file I had saved, and it seemed to work - it showed the cockpit components that I had selected. However once you finished loading DCS, it immediately then loaded the default A-10C file, and ignored my saved one.

I believe that there is a configuration somewhere, and I can't find it, that detects the DCS module you are loading and loads the default profile for that aircraft. On that basis, I made a backup of the default file, then modified the default file to mirror the customised one that I wanted, and that then worked (almost) flawlessly when I opened DCS. So while not perfect, it is a workaround to get this running.

However there are a couple of things to note.

Firstly, the background images have to be replaced by a completely blank one if you are to use it for individual instruments on dash mounted screens like I did, as if not the background gets scaled to suit the desktop and is visible as the gauge backrounds, ruining the effect somewhat.

Secondly, after I made a modified background file to one with a single colour, unfortunately that means for the devices like the RWR where DCS will display the RWR icons and information via monitorsetup.lua, it won't show up as it seems the Ikarus background is displayed over the monitorsetup.lua data. I imagine that there is some way to set the background as either transparent (Helios has this) or that you can move the background layer to the back so that the game data shows up over it. I'm still looking for those options.

Thirdly, while Helios gives you the option of resizing the individual instruments height and width independently, Ikarus does not. That means that if your instruments don't appear as perfectly round on the screen, you do not have a way to correct it, you can only resize it proportionately. This means that the gauges for example are too narrow for the round apertures in the fascia plates I made.

The Ikarus rendition of the instruments that work is good, the IAS, HSI and ADI all work really nicely (aspect ratio aside) but of course the RWR at the moment doesn't display anything other than the blank grid. If I can overcome those little niggles, I would say it would be my go to for this, so hopefully there is a way to do so

 

Les