Exported Radar Picture Too Bright

[brettt777]

I figured out how to export the radar display to an MFD in the Phantom, but for some reason in this plane, it's way too bright and washed out. I have a Winwing 3 MFD setup and most of my modules have one to three displays that can be exported to these MFD's. Three of my modules are not included in the Winwing app to export a display. However, one of those modules, the F-1 Mirage, exports its radar display to one of my MFD's on it's own. The app doesn't even need to be active. Curious as to how this happens, I started asking around to try to figure out how this all works. Then I started looking at various .lua files in the Mirage cockpit/scripts directory. I found a file where it references the viewport handling and then it says to "try to find" this viewport or that viewport. So I went to the other two modules that didn't export... the AJS-37 Viggen and the F-4E, and found some similar init.lua files. I added the lines that talked about trying to find this or that viewport to the same init.lua file that talked about viewport handling, and with a bit of trial and error, I got a completely functional radar display on my MFD for the AJS-37 Viggen. So I tried the same thing with the Phantom. At first, I had the added lines in the wrong init.lua file and all I got was a radar overlay on the main gaming screen. I found a file called init_bake.lua and tried that and then I had radar on an MFD as well as the overlay. Ironically, when I had it like this, the radar display on the MFD seemed somewhat normal. When I removed the lines from the first init.lua file, I got rid of the overlay, but then the radar display on the MFD is totaly bloomed and washed out. I have to tweak the displays controls a bunch in the airplane and then tweak the MFD displays with this other mod I have for that, and I can get the MFD radar display somewhat usable. But then the radar display in the airplane is too dim to see. So my obvious question is how can I adjust the brightness and contrast of the radar display going to the MFD without affecting the radar display in the cockpit? I would think there would be some way to do this but it's beyond me at this point. I figured there had to be some .lua file somewhere to adjust this. Everything else in DCS is controlled by a .lua file. I have heard that the Phantom is not yet set up for exporting displays. I obviously figured out how to do it but maybe there's more to it...? Is some secret file that needs to be tweaked for this to work? The Viggen radar display works great on my MFD. When I adjust the display in the cockpit, the MFD display matches it. So come on Haatblur. What am I missing here? How can I make this radar display on my MFD usable?

Edited May 2 by brettt777

[Zabuzard]

Sounds like you did not export the right display, can you share a screenshot or something?

Yes, the Phantom is not setup for exporting yet. So you likely will have to standby.

[TheBiggerBass]

vor 1 Stunde schrieb brettt777:

I figured out how to export the radar display to an MFD in the Phantom, ...

Would you mind sharing how you did that?

Thanks.

[TheBiggerBass]

I just modified my init_bake.lua as mentioned in your text and got this (see attached). The MFCD is not useable and I also can't modify intensity, contrast or anything else.

Edited May 2 by TheBiggerBass

[MAXsenna]

1 hour ago, TheBiggerBass said:

I just modified my init_bake.lua as mentioned in your text and got this (see attached). The MFCD is not useable and I also can't modify intensity, contarst or anything else.

null

This is exactly what I get when I "patch" with Helios, and the exported display on the HUD. 

3 hours ago, brettt777 said:

However, one of those modules, the F-1 Mirage, exports its radar display to one of my MFD's on it's own.

That's because Aerges did due diligence and export the radar as with left right  centersomething mdf, and you have the correct settings for those in the monitor.lua

There's no sorcery WW does for you except write the file for you. Helios does it in even better ways, and neither needs to run, only write the file for you once. Helios will also "patch" every module that has MFD exports that needs it. I believe I wrote that in another post. Helios will also help you with exports that are not defined, and you can make profiles, and drag and drop around a lot of stuff that's not included by default. Also, Helios will keep the unpatched files as a backup, so you can open and compare in like Notepad++ etc. To make you have a better understanding of all this. 

Myself, I made exports of everything possible in the MB-339 even if it doesn't have any MFDs. 

Cheers! 

[brettt777]

17 hours ago, Zabuzard said:

Sounds like you did not export the right display, can you share a screenshot or something?

 

17 hours ago, Zabuzard said:

Yes, the Phantom is not setup for exporting yet. So you likely will have to standby.

Well, like I said, I can play around with the brightness and contrast in the cockpit, plus modify the gamma and saturation of the MFD with another mod I have, and I can get it usable (while making the radar display in the cockpit unusable). So it is most definitely the correct display. There's just something else I am missing that needs to be done and it probably won't happen til Heatblur gets around to it.

[brettt777]

16 hours ago, TheBiggerBass said:

I just modified my init_bake.lua as mentioned in your text and got this (see attached). The MFCD is not useable and I also can't modify intensity, contrast or anything else.

I have been able to play around with the brightness and contrast and the gamma and saturation and get a usable display, but it makes the cockpit display unusable. It has to be something with the Heatblur code because I did this exact same mod to the AJS-37 Viggen radar and it worked perfectly.

[Zabuzard]

4 hours ago, brettt777 said:

 

Well, like I said, I can play around with the brightness and contrast in the cockpit, plus modify the gamma and saturation of the MFD with another mod I have, and I can get it usable (while making the radar display in the cockpit unusable). So it is most definitely the correct display. There's just something else I am missing that needs to be done and it probably won't happen til Heatblur gets around to it.

You are misunderstanding me. There are like 8 different textures in play when it comes to forging the final picture for the DSCG and you might just have caught the wrong one.

 

But if you dont share anything we can not really help you and possibly tell you how to change your setup so that it finally works.

A screenshot and sharing your "mod" would be highly appreciated and the way forward for assisting you with this  

[brettt777]

11 hours ago, Zabuzard said:

You are misunderstanding me. There are like 8 different textures in play when it comes to forging the final picture for the DSCG and you might just have caught the wrong one.

 

But if you dont share anything we can not really help you and possibly tell you how to change your setup so that it finally works.

A screenshot and sharing your "mod" would be highly appreciated and the way forward for assisting you with this  

Okay, so here is a screenshot of the cockpit anf the MFD. For some reason, I can't even tweak it to get a radar display now. This is the best I could get it which, of course, is completely unusable.

So, this is what I added to the init_bake.lua file in the DSC/Mods/Aircraft/F-4E/Cockpit/Scripts/DSCG/Indicator/DSCG_Pilot directory.

 

dofile(LockOn_Options.common_script_path.."ViewportHandling.lua")

local HUD_onlyRightAligned = true
local HUD_onlySz = 0 --8

if HUD_onlyRightAligned then
    update_screenspace_diplacement(1, false, HUD_onlySz)
    try_find_assigned_viewport("RIGHT_MFCD")
else
    update_screenspace_diplacement(1, true, HUD_onlySz)
    try_find_assigned_viewport("LEFT_MFCD")
end

 

It's what I found in the radar init.lua file for the F-1 Mirage. I did the same thing for the Viggen and it worked great. Now, at first I put these lines in a lua file called init.lua (along with the aforementioned DSCG_Pilot init_bake.lua file) and I believe it was in the DSCG/Indicator directory. When I did this, the radar display on the MFD worked great, but I had a radar grid overlay on the main cockpit screen. So I removed the lines out of the DSCG/Indicator directory and that got rid of the radar grid overlay but then my MFD picture looked like what you see in the image.

I'm not sure what changed but when I first did this a few days ago, as I said before I could tweak the heck out of the cockpit display controls and get a somewhat usable radar picture. For whatever reason, I can't even do that now. The cockpipt display controls have no affect on the MFD picture at all. So apparently what I am seeing on the MFD isn't even a radar picture. I can completely power the radar down and the MFD still looks like that. So, what am I missing here?

[TheBiggerBass]

vor 14 Minuten schrieb brettt777:

Okay, so here is a screenshot of the cockpit anf the MFD. For some reason, I can't even tweak it to get a radar display now. This is the best I could get it which, of course, is completely unusable.

So, this is what I added to the init_bake.lua file in the DSC/Mods/Aircraft/F-4E/Cockpit/Scripts/DSCG/Indicator/DSCG_Pilot directory.

 

dofile(LockOn_Options.common_script_path.."ViewportHandling.lua")

local HUD_onlyRightAligned = true
local HUD_onlySz = 0 --8

if HUD_onlyRightAligned then
    update_screenspace_diplacement(1, false, HUD_onlySz)
    try_find_assigned_viewport("RIGHT_MFCD")
else
    update_screenspace_diplacement(1, true, HUD_onlySz)
    try_find_assigned_viewport("LEFT_MFCD")
end

 

It's what I found in the radar init.lua file for the F-1 Mirage. I did the same thing for the Viggen and it worked great. Now, at first I put these lines in a lua file called init.lua (along with the aforementioned DSCG_Pilot init_bake.lua file) and I believe it was in the DSCG/Indicator directory. When I did this, the radar display on the MFD worked great, but I had a radar grid overlay on the main cockpit screen. So I removed the lines out of the DSCG/Indicator directory and that got rid of the radar grid overlay but then my MFD picture looked like what you see in the image.

I'm not sure what changed but when I first did this a few days ago, as I said before I could tweak the heck out of the cockpit display controls and get a somewhat usable radar picture. For whatever reason, I can't even do that now. The cockpipt display controls have no affect on the MFD picture at all. So apparently what I am seeing on the MFD isn't even a radar picture. I can completely power the radar down and the MFD still looks like that. So, what am I missing here?

As we are all getting the same results on different systems I guess the F-4E modul simply does not support MFD export (yet ?). I suppose sending a support request to HeatBlur would be the best approach.

[Zabuzard]

37 minutes ago, TheBiggerBass said:

As we are all getting the same results on different systems I guess the F-4E modul simply does not support MFD export (yet ?). I suppose sending a support request to HeatBlur would be the best approach.

Correct, it does not. Its on the list.

The screenshot looks like you are not actually exporting the DSCG at all. Its just all-green, none of our internal or external textures looks like that.

[TheBiggerBass]

vor 3 Minuten schrieb Zabuzard:

Correct, it does not. Its on the list.

The screenshot looks like you are not actually exporting the DSCG at all. Its just all-green, none of our internal or external textures looks like that.

Again, I guess only HeatBlur can provide the required infos how to export DSCG, MFDs. We are just poking in the dark.

[brettt777]

1 hour ago, Zabuzard said:

Correct, it does not. Its on the list.

The screenshot looks like you are not actually exporting the DSCG at all. Its just all-green, none of our internal or external textures looks like that.

That is what it seems now but when I first did it, I was able to tweak the picture enough to where I could get a somewhat usable picture on my MFD. But then when i went back to it last night and today, all I get is what you see in that image. Not sure what changed.

[TheBiggerBass]

vor 53 Minuten schrieb brettt777:

That is what it seems now but when I first did it, I was able to tweak the picture enough to where I could get a somewhat usable picture on my MFD. But then when i went back to it last night and today, all I get is what you see in that image. Not sure what changed.

At least we see exactly the same, so there's probably nothing wrong with your setup. May be HeatBlur can support.

[Zabuzard]

1 hour ago, brettt777 said:

That is what it seems now but when I first did it, I was able to tweak the picture enough to where I could get a somewhat usable picture on my MFD. But then when i went back to it last night and today, all I get is what you see in that image. Not sure what changed.

Are you sure that you ever had a state where your exported texture actually displayed content from the DSCG and not just all-green or possibly even a different screen instead?

Cause if that's the case I might be able to help you by giving you the full list of all internal texture names to try out instead of just going with the one you guessed there.

Edited May 3 by Zabuzard

[brettt777]

On 5/3/2025 at 4:46 PM, Zabuzard said:

Are you sure that you ever had a state where your exported texture actually displayed content from the DSCG and not just all-green or possibly even a different screen instead?

Cause if that's the case I might be able to help you by giving you the full list of all internal texture names to try out instead of just going with the one you guessed there.

The first image is with those added lines in the init.lua file of the Scripts/DSCG/Indicator directory and the init_bake.lua file of the Scripts/DSCG/Indicator/DSCG_Pilot Directory. As you can see, I had a totally usable radar display on the MFD with no adjusting the brightness or contrast. But I also had the overlay.

The second image is after removing the lines from the init.lua file of the Scripts/DSCG/Indicator directory. No overlay but MFD is once again a big bright useless blob.

Not sure what I was seeing at first when I thought I had a somewhat usable radar display on the MFD without the overlay (with lots of tweaking) but whatever I thought I saw, I guess it was overwritten when I did the last update. Anyway, this is where I'm at now. Whatever textures or functions it is missing for a fully operational radar only on the MFD are obviously added with the other init.lua file. But I don't understand why I'm getting the overlay. I don't understand everything about how these files work to make that determination. It's a bit above my paygrade.

 

Edited May 6 by brettt777