HOW TO: Replace Red Arrow With Car Image

[skicrave]

is it possible to take a rear shot of the car and change the coding so the unit uses a bmp image of the rear image rather than the .spr file altogether? I'm sure it would take away the rotating feature, but does anyone even use that anyways?

 

It might be possible, but it's definitely not as easy as just changing the file name to reference the bitmapped image. I'll take a look at it tomorrow to see if I can figure something out.

[Stephanie]

I've been digging through the scripts and I can't find where it references the car icons - for 2d or 3d. I'm going to re-activate 3d on my nav unit so I can play with it and see if I get any clues as to what it's actually doing.

 

Won't have any info till after work today, but I'll post back after I've had a chance to mess with it.

[skicrave]

It's in ui_pioneer/common/day2color.ini and ui_pioneer/common/night2color.ini.

 

I think you might be right about the spr files, as the color is defined in the files above as well (line 344-348).

[Stephanie]

Good call - I don't see the daycar.bmp referenced in the 3d ini, but there is a "car.mdl" file instead. car.mdl is in the data.zip\gfx folder... so we probably do need to replace that with a new "mdl" file to get the 3d car customized.

[skicrave]

Hmm, looks like this is going to be a little more complicated than we thought.

 

It looks like some of the PND guys have solved this one using something similar to CMIYC's suggestion above. I'm downloading the files in this blog post right now to see if I can figure out what was changed in their DATA.zip file to enable that functionality.

[CatchMeIfYouCan631]

SWEET!!! One thing I noticed Ski, one of the last steps says replace the 3dauto.bmp with one of the downlaoded ones... so if the F uses a .spr file for the 3D view, changes have to be made regardless for it to accept a .bmp file instead of the .spr, no?

 

EDITED TO ADD: Ski, That .zip is just a bunch of rear shots of cars in a .bmp format. AND IT HAS THE BATMOBILE!!! lol.

[Stephanie]

I haven't had a chance to fully understand what they are doing, but from the looks of it their process uses a bmp for the 3d car icon. The F is using a mdl file for the 3d car icon. I guess using their method would allow one to make their own transparent bmp file and use it as both the 2d and 3d icon... assuming we can use their method on the F series.

 

Another way of proceeding would be to find out what software is used to make the mdl file and see if that's an option. It'd be easy to drop in a new mdl file, but if making the mdl is more complicated (or costs money for the software) then it's probably not a good option.

[skicrave]

After digging through their files, I think they must be doing something with the car.mdl to reference that bitmapped graphic in 3D mode. I'm not certain on that yet, but that's the only difference that I can find (other than the ton of differences that exist between the software for our hardware and theirs).

[CatchMeIfYouCan631]

After digging through their files, I think they must be doing something with the car.mdl to reference that bitmapped graphic in 3D mode. I'm not certain on that yet, but that's the only difference that I can find (other than the ton of differences that exist between the software for our hardware and theirs).

 

Well what would happen if you put a .bmp file of a car into the same directory of the .mdl file (apologies for saying .spr, got confused), found the script where it called for the .mdl and just change it to call for the .bmp image??

[skicrave]

It might work, or it might not. If the application (iGo8) is expecting to get an .mdl file passed to it we could get a fatal error that ends the application. Or we could not get an error, but just not have anything show up. Or it might work, but I'm not sure how realistic that is.

 

Also, check that post I linked to above again, there's also a data.zip file that needs to be installed, and I'm pretty sure that's the key to unlocking how they were able to do it.

[Stephanie]

The blog instructions say to rename the car icon of your choice to 3dauto.bmp. A quick search of their replacement data.zip reveals the only reference to 3dauto.bmp is in their version of our navigatemap_800_480.ui where they have this section:

 

In our navigatemap_800_480.ui we have that layer but it is empty:

 

So I'm figuring that the other scripts in their data.zip are to suppress the 3d mdl icon, and replace it with the 2d bmp file. There's probably some scripting to ensure that the 2d bmp file is positioned in the right place, or maybe that's hardcode with the x214 y185 functions.

 

Edited to add: A closer look at the screenshot on that blog page does make me believe this is what is happening - the car icon looks like it's a 2d icon, positioned on the 3d map.

[skicrave]

I think it's hardcoded, and that's why it's only available for those screen resolutions they list (that position is the mathematic center of the screen).

 

Do you want to try it, or do you want me to?

[Stephanie]

I think it's hardcoded, and that's why it's only available for those screen resolutions they list (that position is the mathematic center of the screen).

 

Do you want to try it, or do you want me to?

 

heheh - well I don't use 3d mode much myself, so I'm not too eager to try it. If I get too bored at work though, I'll have a go at it. The daycar.bmp icons on the F's were 85x85, and the coordinates are to the top-left corner of the image, not the dead center of the image, so by my calculations, the coordinates we'd want for 3d mode are x=358 and y=318. That should put the middle of the icon at exact center left-to-right and at 75% down the screen top-to-bottom, which is where the icon goes now.

 

That's the easy part The rest of it is just figuring out what we need to toggle to 'disable' the use of the mdl icon.

[skicrave]

[pwnin o'brien]

I have a request. I have been searching and searching for a specific navigation arrow, the one used in high-end vehicle navigation systems. I still haven't found it anywhere, but I have made a very crude rendering of what I am talking about below. If someone can find (or make) this arrow I would be ecstatic and in debt to them forever.

 

There is one other problem with using this arrow, however. Ideally the location of the vehicle with respect to the arrow is the very tip of the arrow, not the top of the circle surrounding the arrow. Is there any way to make that possible (change the coordinate of the arrow so it's higher than the actual vehicle location on the map)? If this isn't possible then that's fine, it would be difficult to notice anyhow. I really appreciate any help I can get!