He uses Blender and asked me what is used for measurement (feet or meters), how to export to Orbiter 3D format etc.
Metric, like everything else in Orbiter.
There are (at least) 2 such plugins, just search in the forum.
I showed him Orbiter (and SSV), he saw that the flight deck was "old" (low poly/textures) and he offers his help to make a beautiful flight deck for SSV.
The next question he had, I guess the difficult one, are there plans for the Space Shuttle Flightdeck ?
Yes, there are plans.
The much simpler "external vc", visible when looking into a window in the external view, is already much better around the windows and has the panels with a "less wrong" size/position. I had to "kick" that forward as it needed to fit the new external mesh, but left the internal/main vc mesh pretty much as it was due to other priorities.
I've also done some work in a branch to add some functionality to the crew module (add/stow seats, install/stow COAS, better vs positions, etc), that morphed into a middeck rework... which stalled due to other priorities.
Recently, I make the MDU frames a bit better, so I could have a MDU power knob that worked properly, and that will show up in v2.0.
So, the current plan is to get the display internals working a bit more like the real thing, to allow a MCDS flight deck to work (implementing those mechanical displays, tapes and CRTs would need the correct data format coming from the GPCs). This is being worked for v2.0, and is a BIG chunk of work.
After that, the massive rework of the flight deck mesh could begin, MEDS and MCDS at the same time. This is probably the best solution, so more data is available to figure out the dimensions of the forward panels: e.g., panel F7 must fit 3 CRTs in MCDS and 5 MDUs in MEDS. The switches of panels F6 and F8 also shifted around, so that is more info to allow a better choice of sizes for switches, talkbacks, etc, which then are used all over the place, thus helping everywhere. IMO, due to the lack of information, the best solution is to make all the panels at the same time, so all the switches, talkbacks, etc, all have the same size everywhere, instead of ending up with panels with smaller switches or wrong switch layout, or having the restart everything half-way, because something doesn't fit.
BTW: all panel diagrams I've seen are not what ended up in the vehicles: there are small differences that don't help when trying to fit them together.
If that wasn't enough, lighting needs to be given some consideration. It would be a shame to need to rework the all textures to handle lighting later on. I think this is a theme that is still "in flux", with work still going on in D3D9, plus some things that were done in (the apparently dead) Skybolt graphics client.
TL;DR, a new flight deck is on this side of the horizon, but not here yet. Maybe the middeck is currently something more realistic (and the astronauts keep demanding a toilet
).
Looking at picture 1, a thing I'd definitely take now is a landing gear update.
