Making Aircraft Gauges: A Step-by-Step Guide

Creating analog gauges and dials for use in military aircraft, with examples for each step of the creation process.

Prequisites

While creating gauges is possible without mods, i would not recommend it, as mods allow for text to enhance gauges. Requirements for this guide are:

• Being_Bright's resizer mod - Used to scale down number plates to make them practically usable in gauge creation.
  
• Being_Bright's mesh deletion mod - Used to remove the number plate mesh, leaving only the text to be used in gauges.
  
• Colin's lightweight hemi servos - Use these, unless you want each gauge to weigh 20 kilos.
  
• /BuilderCamera.Settings.maxSpeed = 2 - This command slows down builder camera speed, which allows for more precise building, as the default camera speed at the scale we're working at is too fast. This scales the camera speed from 5, to 2.

Being_Bright's mods and Colin's hemi servo can be found on the official Homebrew Discord. If you have any further questions, please ask me there, as I will respond faster than if I am asked questions on Steam.

Step 0: Doing Research

Before creating a gauge, I start off with figuring out what I'm dealing with. In this case, I'm going to be building a Vertical Speed Indicator, or Rate of Climb Indicator for my F-104 Starfighter. Luckily, I've managed to find a technical drawing of the instrument panel, which I'm using as a reference for each of my gauges.



The Vertical Speed Indicator, or VSI, is #18 on the legend. This is what the gauge looks like up close:



Now that I've got the gauge isolated, I use Geogebra to find the angles between each numbered tick mark, like so:



Using the Angle tool in Geogebra, I've found the distance from 0 for each numbered tick. I don't use the exact angle measures specified; instead, I use the angle measures rounded to the nearest half.

And that's all there is to Step 0. On to Step 1, where the building starts!

Step 1: Creating the Gauge Body

AFTER EVERY MOVE AND ROTATE IN THIS STEP, HIT R. OTHERWISE YOU WILL BE SCREWED AND WILL NOT HAVE A FUN TIME. THIS IS NOT A JOKE. DRIFT CAUSED BY MOVEMENT AND ROTATION HAS ADDED DOZENS OF HOURS TO MY BUILD TIME. USE R. SERIOUSLY.

To start off with, set your grid scale to whatever small scale you like. I prefer 0.0125m, or 1.25 cm, but 0.01m works fine as well. Once you've done that, you'll want to create a matte black cylinder, with a radius that you like:

I'm using Hue 0, Saturation 0, Lightness 0.2, Glossiness 0.1 painted metal.


Next, you want place a low-thickness plate (<0.02m) down on the gauge body:




Then, manipulate the plate so that the plate covers a quarter of the gauge rim. Don't worry about it not being perfectly circular; we'll get to that next.




Next, hit M and look at the dimensions of the plate. Ideally, the the plate's dimensions should have
equal width and height, ignoring slight differences caused by floating point errors.




Take the "radius" of the plate and divide it by 20/11. This will provide you with the radius of your adjustment nodes, and will create a more-or-less perfect circle. I don't know why it's 20/11, it just is ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Ask Dargino, he was the one who figured it out.

Next, use loose adjustment with shift+drag and pull each adjustment node out so that they're r/(20/11) from the parent nodes. In this case, my radius is 0.0375, and dividing that by (20/11) roughly equals 0.0206 m. I then apply that to my adjustment nodes, as seen below:

Don't worry if you can't get it perfectly! Just get it as close as you can. It'll look good as long as you're close.



Voila! One quarter of your gauge rim is done. Now, take the plate and copy and paste it. Then, change to the rotate tool and hit alt, and select the center of the gauge. You've now set your center of rotation as the gauge center, and that lets you rotate the newly-created plate copy around the rim of the gauge. Rotate the rim so that it looks like so:




Then select both plates, and copy and paste, and rotate the new plates so that the entire rim is plated.




Paint the rim however you like it.

This color is Hue 0, Saturation 0, Lightness 0.2, Glossiness 0.5 painted metal.

Step 2: Creating the Gauge Face and Needle

Now onto the most important step! This is what will show on your gauge, from tick marks to text to the needle on the gauge. This step looks hard, but actually isn't very. It's mostly a lot of copy+pasting and rotating precise amounts.

Ticks

First, create a cube and shift+drag it down to the smallest cube you can make, like so:




(If you're making more than one gauge, I'd recommend keeping all your base parts up in a little area that you can quickly copy and paste from, like so:





Stretch the cube until it's your desired length of tick, and place it on the rim of the gauge.




For this gauge, my 0 tick is 90° counterclockwise, so I rotated my tick that much, to make creating the rest of the gauge ticks easier.




Next, using the angle measurements you found in Step 0, rotate the ticks so that each one lines up to the IRL tick angle. When you're finished, it should look something like this:



If you're creating a double-sided gauge like I am, and not one that simply goes from 0 to 100, you'll need to mirror the ticks on the bottom, like so:




Next, copy and paste the 0° tick, and shorten it. Use rotation to place this mini tick as many times as you need to flesh out the gauge. When you're done, it will look like this:





That's the tick section of the gauge done. Now onto the labels!

Labels

This part is what requires the resizing mod and the mesh remover mod. Everything else here can be done without having to install mods.

To start off with, place down a number plate, found in Parts > Other




If you haven't noticed, the number plate is pretty huge compared to my gauge! To remedy this, we use the resizer mod. Holding ctrl+drag to uniformly scale down the number plate, scale the plate until it's a little bit more reasonably sized; i.e. so that the top text won't look too big next to the gauge. This is hard to demonstrate through words, so I'll just show you:




But we've still got a problem! The number plate is big and visible, and will block the gauge from being visible! To fix this, we use the mesh remover mod to remove the mesh of the number plate, leaving the text still visible.




Change the text color to white with this : <color="white">yourtexthere</color>




Then align the text so that it is just floating above the gauge, without clipping through the gauge body.




Line the text up so that the labels match the ticks, and copy and paste and readjust until all the ticks are labeled:




For the gauge labels, repeat the process before but adjust the sizing and position so that the labels fit and match the drawing on Step 0.

Creating the Needle

First, copy the gauge body, push it forwards a bit, and resize it down to look like the hub that holds a needle in place:




Next, create the needle from cube and cylinder shapes.

Parenting

This is pretty easy. Place down one of Colin's lightweight servos, behind the gauge.




Resize it down to something manageable.




Parent the needle to the servo.




That's the gauge finished! On to moving it into the cockpit.

Step 3: Placing the Gauge into the Cockpit

While this step may seem like something you can gloss over as it seems self-explanatory, it is not. If you're not careful, you will ruin your gauge. Trust me. I've had it happen more than once.

WHEN YOU'RE MOVING THE HEMI SERVOS, HIT R! MOVEMENT IS GARBAGE BECAUSE OF DRIFT! HIT R! HIT R! HIT R!!!!!!

First, pull the hemi servo that the needle is parented to away from the gauge.




Next, select the gauge (WITHOUT THE NEEDLE AND HEMI SERVO!) and save it as a selection, renaming it to something you can find easily in the future.




Next, place another lightweight resized hemi servo behind the gauge body.




Parent your gauge body selection to the newly-placed hemi servo, along with the hemi servo that the needle is parented to.




Replace the hemi servo that the needle is parented to back into its normal position in the middle of the gauge, and then select the hemi that everything is parented to, and drag it down into position where you want it in the cockpit.




De-parent the gauge body selection you created earlier in this step from the hemi servo, and parent it to the main vehicle.



Repeat that process for the hemi containing the needle.


Delete the hemi servo that you just unparented everything from.


Your gauge is now finished and in place in your cockpit!




Thank you for reading this guide. I hope it helps, and if you need clarification, hit me up on the Discord. If you can't get me to respond, ask the rest of the discord. They know lots, and can help you with basically everything you need help with.

[AXEL_X]

thank you so much for your tutorial, first i thought that those were mods but then what i found out that aren't i search and ask how to create them and you finally answered my question :) can you do one about the AH gauge please??

[doggo]

0/10 grammar bad