This modification will replace the red arrow used in 2D navigation mode with an image of your choosing (car or anything else you want to use).

Required Software/Files/Content

- Copy of DATA.ZIP

- Image to use as arrow (the higher resolution the better)

- Photoshop (or other image editing tool capable of color channels)

Step 1: Prepare the data file

Unzip your DATA.ZIP file, and navigate to:

DATA/pioneer_ui/common/

There you'll find a daycar.bmp and nightcar.bmp. Rename these to something else (daycar.bmp.bak and nightcar.bmp.bak work well) so you can go back later if you want. Now we're ready to create our new images.

Step 2: Create the images

Open the image you want to use as your new arrow in the image editor of your choice (we'll be using Photoshop CS2 here). You need to select just the car so that the background can be cut out.

There are a number of ways to do this, I won't go into detail here, but the best way to get a clean selection is with the pen tool. With the car selected, invert the selection and remove the background so only the car remains. Retain the selection.

With the car still selected, switch to the channels palette and add a new channel. It will automatically be created as an Alpha channel, and filled with black.

Now select #cacaca as your foreground color, and fill the selection. This will create a mask of the content we want to show up on the screen, the car.

Next you can trim the image, resize the canvas so that it is a square, and then resize everything to 82px X 85px. Also, make sure your car is facing forward (up), so it displays correctly on the map.

Now we can save the new image into our DATA file in preparation for installation. Select Save from the file menu, and in the dialogue that pops up, make sure you have your file type set to BMP, and that Alpha channels is checked. Browse to find DATA/pioneer_ui/common on your computer and save the image as daycar.bmp. A dialogue will pop up asking you to confirm the image settings, just click OK. Complete the same process, but save the image as nightcar.bmp and you're ready to load it on your F-Series.

Step 3: Load your changes

Go back to the DATA folder you created in step 1 above, and select all of the subfolders and the two files. Create an archive of those (right click -> send to -> compressed file). You will end up with a new zip file that you will need to rename to DATA.ZIP.

Boot your F-Series into Windows CE using the TESTMODE hack and copy your new DATA.ZIP file to the flash drive. When the copy is done, remove your SD card, and restart the headunit to get your new car to show up.

That's all there is, enjoy your newly customized nav system!

For any BSG fans out there, I've attached a zip'ed set of bmp's of a colonial raptor. Day, Night, and both Ghosts (shadows) are included.

Cheers!

raptor.zip

Nice, hopefully we can get a collection of options for people to select from here.

Thanks for mentioning the ghost as well, I should have said something about it. The ghost is the faint image that shows up along the green path of the navigation route. I chose to leave mine as the arrow that comes from the factory, but you can update it to be the outline of your car following the instructions above.

can somebody do this Phillies logo? i just wanna see how it looks

also, if anyone knows how to make the splash image... can you put that logo on this background?

and of course make it the right specs...

thanks a TON to whoever does this...

Come on, at least post requests in the right thread!

Just wanna clear something up for myself and other users that may not know.

Skicrave, what are color channels? And the .bmp's have black background, can MS Paint with a black background be used as a color channel? Thanks

I made mine on a Macintosh with a program called GraphicConverter. It identified the original daycar.bmp as ARGB (alpha, red, green, blue). The 'black' is not black, it's the alpha/transparency "colour"... so you can't just use black, you do have to use an actual alpha/transparency layer.

yea yeah i know... but i got a buddy of mine to do it for me...

I made mine on a Macintosh with a program called GraphicConverter. It identified the original daycar.bmp as ARGB (alpha, red, green, blue). The 'black' is not black, it's the alpha/transparency "colour"... so you can't just use black, you do have to use an actual alpha/transparency layer.

Correct, those BMPs that look like they're on a black background actually just have an Alpha mask around them. If you just put it on a black background you'll actually have a black background behind the image.

If you use Photoshop, you can see the channels palate in the lower right corner of my screen shots above, along with what is happening in the Alpha channel.

yea yeah i know... but i got a buddy of mine to do it for me...

So in the 34 minutes since you posted you were able to get someone to make one for you?

Man I wish I could delete posts...

This is why we need an F Series Moderator lol. Anyways anybody know anything about Promotion? I'm a 3D map user and I'd love to have my car on there

No kidding, especially now that we're really starting to turn out some mods, it would be nice to be able to keep everything clean. I sent JasonH an email, so hopefully he'll get back to me.

I looked around a little bit online, but my main machines are all Macs, and it looks like it is a PC only program.

skicrave, have you tried using your custom icon in 3d mode? I think that all that happens in 3d mode is you get the icon sort of forshortened, and the 'ghost' / shadow appearing below it. It doesn't actually have to rotate around or anything, or does it? From the pictures I've seen in 3d mode, the icon looks like it's really only squashed vertically to simulate it being tilted.

Switching to 3D mode reverts to the red arrow. The reason I believe it is an animation controlled through daycar.spr is because depending on the perspective, the shape of it changes. In 3D mode you can change the pitch and yaw (for lack of better terms) so that you're higher or lower on the horizon. Which each change, the arrow changes to appear more squashed, or more elongated.

Switching to 3D mode reverts to the red arrow. The reason I believe it is an animation controlled through daycar.spr is because depending on the perspective, the shape of it changes. In 3D mode you can change the pitch and yaw (for lack of better terms) so that you're higher or lower on the horizon. Which each change, the arrow changes to appear more squashed, or more elongated.

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?

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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??

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.