Custom kneeboard pages

How to add your own custom pages to aircrafts kneeboards (either all aircrafts or the one you choose).

DCS version

This document applies to DCS WORLD 1.2.10 (September 2014).

Kneeboard ?

The kneeboard is the small scratchpad your pilot can use to read informations or personal notes while flying his aircraft.

In DCS, that kneeboard may be visible on your pilot actual knee, if your pilot is visible, or it will be shown as a flat page at the bottom right of your screen (by default) on demand.

Kneeboard pages may be defined for :

• A given terrain ("map"). Not used atm, with only one map available.
  
• A given aircraft
  
• A given mission
  
• Everywhere

There are 4 major input bindings associated to kneeboard : Kneeboard On/Off, Kneeboard glance, kneeboard previous page and Kneeboard next page.

As an example, the Su-25t default bindings are :

Why add custom pages ?

custom pages could be used for :

• detailed procedures for a given aircraft (cold startup, takeoff, targetting, ...)
  
• airfields radio data (APP, TWR, ILS, TACAN)
  
• extra mission informations (useful if your mission briefing is already truncated)
  
• keyboard/joystick bindings reminder - useful when you come back to DCS after a while

How are pages defined ?

Kneeboard pages are png or jpg images located at various locations according to the item they are attached to (aircraft, terrain, mission, default).

Specifications

• jpg or png format + extension.
  
• 3:4 width:height ratio (otherwise distortion will appear)

File location

Before you start adding/editing files under your DCS installation, please read this :
Current dcs build (1.2.10) can load multiple customisation files from your user directory, so you can keep your DCS installation untouched.
If you don't want to lose any modification you've made, you should really use your user directory instead of the dcs installation directory.

Default location
Files located under the following directory will be visible on every kneeboard, whatever the terrain, mission and aircraft you're flying with.

C:\Users\<YOURUSERNAME>\Saved Games\DCS\Kneeboard

Note that this is the default directory under a windows 7 machine, it may slightly differ for you ; browse your own userdirectory to find the base 'DCS' directory.

Per aircraft location
As indicated above, you can also add kneeboard pages on an aircraft basis.
If you want to make such pages available to one single aircraft only, store your files under the following path scheme :

C:\Users\<YOURUSERNAME>\Saved Games\DCS\Kneeboard\<AIRCRAFT_NAME>\

for example, the A-10C kneeboard custom pages are located under :

C:\Users\<YOURUSERNAME>\Saved Games\DCS\Kneeboard\A-10C

To get the exact directory name for a given aircraft, you can browse your 'Mods/aircrafts/' directory under your DCS installation path.
(but do not store anything there or you'll lose it on the next game update).


Per mission
As you probably already know, dcs mission files (.miz) are zip archives containing a few files and eventually directories.

Once you're satisfied with your newly created mission, you can add your custom kneeboard pages to it :
1. create your pictures with gimp, photoshop, illustrator, whatever.
2. backup your .miz file
3. add your kneeboard pages to the .miz archive under the following directory structure scheme:

Kneeboard\<AIRCRAFT_NAME>\IMAGES\

Per terrain
path:

Terrain\Kneeboard\

and eventually (for a given aircraft on a given terrain) :

Terrain\Kneeboard\<AIRCRAFT_NAME>\

Note: the "per terrain" feature have yet to be confirmed to work, as only one terrain is available at the moment (DCS 1.2.10 - September 2014).

Pages ordering

Pages are displayed ingame according to their filename, alphanumerically sorted.
You can use the following file naming scheme, or prefix every file with its page number, it's entirely up to you :

Airfield-001.jpg
Airfield-002.jpg
...
Startup-001.jpg
...

Sample kneeboard pages

DCS 1.2.10 comes with two free aircrafts (Su-25t and TF-51D), the second includes a few kneeboard pages.

Here are two sample pages :

Convert manual pages to images

The easiest way to convert a few pdf pages to png/jpeg is probably to use "The Gimp" free software :

open the pdf file with the gimp like you would open a picture, The gimp switches to pdf import mode, where you can import one single page, a range of pages, or multiple pages (using Ctrl to select pages).

Extra links

• Set of kneeboard pages for default keyboard bindings, for various aircrafts[forums.eagle.ru]
  
• KNEEBOARD BUILDER[forums.eagle.ru] - pdf to multiple png files

[gekobal]

I don't seem to have a folder called "Kneeboard" under that directory you indicated. Should i create one by my own?

[Vincitore Becchi]

great job. managing kneeboards is damn useful in DCS. After i learned this i made some kneeboard artwork myself, i credited your guide in my works since i don't think i can explain better, tell me if it's not ok for the author. here the link to the guide and artworks that credits your guide http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=673640719

[Yannick]

verry good, thankls for doing this great guide!

[JLX]

Fantastic guide. Comprehensive, to-the-point and very helpful. Thanks for making the effort to put this together. Appreciated!

[accettastocazzodinome]

great guide. thanks

[Qwer]

nice thx man help alot