VBGamer

I am working on a project which attempts to use Microsoft Flight Simulator 2000 as a micro-simulator environment for the US Air Force's primary trainer, the Cessna T-37 Tweet. http://www.uptpilot.dyn.dhs.org/tweet/help/T37tweet.jpg I found an easy way to interface to FS2000 so that I can use Visual Basic to make 100% accurate panels. I have a basic understanding of how I can program a panel. Basically, many components will be bitmaps that are transparent in some places, and bitmaps being rotated. I've been reading up DirectX and it seems that I can do everything I want with Sprite graphics. However, I have a few questions. Please refer to this illustration to better understand the questions... http://www.uptpilot.dyn.dhs.org/tweet/help/how_gauges_are_made.jpg 1) how can I overlap sprites in a specific order? For example, an altitude gauge would need to have a sprite of a needle on top of a sprite of the face of the gauge. I can foresee some instruments being made out of about 10 sprites overlapping with transparency and rotation. 2) how can I rotate sprites? Take again the example of an altitude gauge. The needle would need to be spin 360 degrees, but I can't really create 360 separate frames! I need a simple routine that would let me specify an X,Y coordinate on the original needle bitmap, followed by a degree to rotate it at. 3) can portions of the sprite be clickable so I can attach code to it? I would appreciate *any* help. I'm not a real developer, but I have been doing things with Visual Basic over the past 8 years (err since it came out). So I should have a decent programming foundation. You can see screenshots of my current project at: http://uptpilot.dyn.dhs.org/tweet Thank you for your time, Hernan uptpilot@hotmail.com