The SIM Dashboard Community Designs Thread

Alright folks, the new dashboards are ready to go!

Let's start with the second generation GT3 cars:

Porsche 911 992 GT3 R for AMS2 Page 1/3


Porsche 911 992 GT3 R for AMS2 Page 2/3


Porsche 911 992 GT3 R for AMS2 Page3/3


First we have the Porsche 992 GT3. The design and functionality of this dash is very similar to the 992 GT3 Cup mod I covered some time ago, so I used that one as a base. In fact, I decided to stick with the overall design philosophy of the mod car, so this dashboard is not 100% true to the in-game GT3 R. Because of this, my design has three pages rather than two and displays tire data on a dedicated page rather than in a tiny widget at the bottom at all times.

It still works beautifully though, and has lots of features - after all, each page has over 70 (!) widgets!


Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo for AMS2 Page 1/2


Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo for AMS2 Page 2/2


Next up, the Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo! Interestingly, while the design is very similar to the first generation of this car, this one only has two pages. It also appears to be closer to the real car as far as I can tell, whereas the older car in AMS2 took more liberty with its dashboard (not that I mind, I love it!). The older non-Evo version of the car still retains its old display, so you can choose between the two if you want to. (My GT4 version of the car is also closer to the real car, but it only has one page.)

Oh, and this time around I was a little lazy, so I didn't actually use a screenshot of the new car as base for the background. It is slightly different, iirc, but I liked this one so you're stuck with it for now.


BMW M4 GT3 for AMS2 Page 1/2


BMW M4 GT3 for AMS2 Page 2/2


Ah, the M4 GT3! Such a great dashboard and the Bimmer drives beautifully, too, from what I remember.

This dash actually has a few novelties. Most importantly, the LEDs are realized via flat 2D widgets and placed behind the dashboard image rather than using the more realistically looking LED widgets. This was done so I could accurately replicate the behavior of the RPM LEDs. By using two different layers of LEDs I can use the normal color progression and then turn the entire LED bar blue once a certain RPM threshold is hit. And this way I can also use different colors for when pit limiter mode is enabled.

The authentic widget does have a pit limiter and color change feature, but its functionality is still somewhat limited. For instance, once the maximum RPM threshold is reached, the entire bar immediately switches color and into flashing mode. Flashing can be delayed by up to 1500 milliseconds, but the color change can not. However, the cars in AMS2 that have this sort of behavior only change their color after a moment, or when an even higher RPM level is hit. This dashboard now properly replicates that behavior, and I hope you don't mind the trade-off of having a less "bright" appearing LED bar.

There is one other thing I noticed based on the preview screenshot, so I may have to fix a little issue and publish an update, but I'm not sure right now. Will have to check this later. Either way, this was a monster to work on, with 110+ widgets per page!


Last but not least:

McLaren 720S GT3 Page 1/3


McLaren 720S GT3 Page 2/3


McLaren 720S GT3 Page 3/3


And finally the McLaren 720S GT received an update as well!

From what I can tell the Evo uses the exact same dash in AMS2, so I decided to have another look at the original dash again. There was one long-standing issue with the side LEDs that drove me crazy; these were, in fact, misaligned due to a mistake I made in Photoshop. This has now been fixed, and I also decided to "beautify" the LEDs with what I have learned since then. AFAIK this was the first car where I used the technique of dashboard image cutouts for LEDs. Similar to the BMW M4 GT3, the RPM LEDs also behave similarly as described above, and the pit limiter indication has been moved to the sides.

That being said, I think I made this dash when the car in AMS2 still had only one display page, so I took the liberty and came up with a layout that I thought made sense at the time. It is not 100% true to the car in AMS2, but the overall functionality is similar (in fact, I think there are even more features in my dash).


That's it for the GT3 Gen 2 cars so far. My next post will cover the LMDh class...

 

I'll post the LMDh dashboards in the order I made them:

Cadillac V-Series.R LMDh for AMS2


Ah, the Cadillac. I may mostly be a Porsche man when it comes to LeMans, but the Caddy is easily the favorite out of the bunch. Even though all of them have 8-cylinder engines, that big American V8 is just... *chef's kiss*

Aside from that, it just handles the best by far, and with a few setup tweaks it's an absolute beast!

But enough about the awesome driving characteristics of this car - we're here for the dashboards!

Even though the RPM LED bar in AMS2 has the same behavior as the M4 and 720S, I decided to stick to a more traditional approach here. But since the entire bar immediately turns blue on reaching max RPM, I changed the color progression - otherwise you'd never see a single red light!

What I really like about this design is how it manages to display the essentials on a single page. In fact, I was surprised to see that none of the LMDh cars has more than one page. Well, technically, the Porsche does - as it has a second page that disables any warning overlays (i.e. engine temperature warning).

As a side note, I finally managed to get the cutout-style LEDs to look very similar to the "real" ones thanks to some fiddling in Photoshop. At least when they are turned off. (Since these are for slipping and locking tires, you should hopefully not see these lights flashing on too much... Depending on your driving style, that is.)


BMW M Hybrid V8 LMDh for AMS2


One thing I noticed about the BMW is that the design philosophy is similar to its recent GT3 brother. Overall this dash is very straightforward and provides you with most of the information you could wish for - except tire and brake temps, for some reason.

By the way, I used a photo of the real steering wheel as reference, which is why the logo looks different than it does in AMS2.

Porsche 963 LMDh for AMS2


The Porsche 963 also shares a common design philosophy with its GT3 sibling. Here I decided to stick with the in-game design, so tire data is displayed in the center bottom.


One more thing needs to be said about the side LEDs: While each of the LMDh has these, they are typically not mounted to the steering wheel but somewhere to the sides of the cockpit. In order to unify the design process and make it easier I decided to add them to the side of the LCD. They also work beautifully - for intensity of tire slip and lock (per wheel) and as flag lights. Took some trial and error and a lot of extra work, but I am satisfied with how they work right now.


As always, let me know if you enjoy these designs and feel free to add any feedback or suggestions you might have!

 

Today I noticed two small issues with the BMW dashboards, so I uploaded an updated version of each one.

But there's no need to wait for the updates to become available and re-download as you can easily fix these two errors yourself:

For the BMW M Hybrid V8, the "ERS" label in the lower right corner was missing. Just copy one of the other text widgets, move it into the appropriate place and set the text to "ERS".

Both pages of the M4 GT3 feature a "tire compound" widget in the bottom center of the screen. The font I used was too large (40) for longer entries such as "Medium Tire", so you can fix it yourself by decreasing the font size to 30. If you are only using this dashboard for the M4 GT3 you won't even have to do this, as the car doesn't support the medium compound anyway.

Just thought I'd let y'all know.

 

Amazing work but i am struggling with the dashes, on my device and even when i use the studio editor on the PC all your designs do not fit my screen, they all seem to be a bit too large and to the right. how do i centre these designs?, i have used other designs on the simdash page without these issues. the attached photo is a snip from dash studio and this is exactly how it comes up on my android device as well?

 

What resolution and aspect ratio does your device have? Most of my dashboards were designed on a Samsung Galaxy 2 Tab 10.1 with a screen resolution of 1280x800 (16:10).

Usually SIM Dashboard should at the very least center them, IIRC, so it's weird that the dashes are top-left aligned rather than centered by default. You can, however, change the scaling mode in the options. In the menu bar on the top, there should be an option called "screen adjustment" or "scaling adjustment" or something similar. When you select that option a window opens where you can select from different modes, such as "centered", "stretch to fit", "fit to screen (keep ratio)", etc.

Despite the 16:10 ratio of my designs most of them should fit a 16:9 screen just fine even when using the option that cuts off the top and bottom edges, as I try to keep these areas free of widgets (with a few exceptions where I really needed to make use of that space). Otherwise, fit to screen (ratio) (or whatever it's actually called) should work, it'll just give you small black bars on the sides on a 16:9 (or wider) device.

Let me know if that solves your issue! Unfortunately I don't have too many different devices to test my dashboards on, though I could use one of my phones to see how a 16:9 device deals with them. Didn't have any issues in the past, though.


EDIT: Almost forgot... I have no idea why the PC Studio app doesn't center the design. I think it is hardcoded to show a 16:9 screen space by default, which would explain stuff cut off on the top and bottom, but I don't see how it could misalign the dash horizontally... Very odd.

 

I have an 10 inch samsung and a 8 inch samsung and they are both identical to the picture i showed, so strange

 

Have been able to find the screen adjustment option? I have usually been able to fix alignment and scaling issues of downloaded designs when I used that in the past.

One thing I find odd based on your screenshot is that the static image widget is positioned and scaled correctly, but all other functional widgets are not. But if I remember correctly that was one of the main reasons I started using the custom image widget in the first place, as the background image widget would have similar issues as the other ones, which could mess with their relative positioning if scale and aspect ratio had to be adjusted.

Still, I'm unsure why the widgets are offset to the right rather than vertically. Do you happen to know the resolution of your devices?

 

I found the screen adjustment options and no matter what i choose it does not center correctly
tablet 1 8 inch Samsung active 3 1920 x 1200 16:10 aspect
tablet 2 10 inch galaxy tab A 1920 x 1200 16:10 aspect.
tried your formula trainer one and it fits perfectly at 16:10 so does your mclaren mp4/8
tried 3 or 4 other authors designs and no issues, all of your latest gt3 and lmdh cars are off centre for me

 

Hmm, that is very odd as I didn't change anything about the creation process of these new dashboards... Did you try the Porsche 992 GT3 R as well? Please let me know if that one works for you. If it doesn't, could you download the GT3 Cup 992 instead and see if that one works?
Porsche 911 GT3 Cup 992 Page 1/3

The only thing that has changed about the process was that I was using a different browser from before (LibreWolf, whereas I previously used Firefox or Pale Moon) while I was editing these dashboards in the Studio app.

Also, in order to get these dashboards into working condition, could you check if one of the scaling options gives you the proper scaling? If only the absolute screen position of the widgets is off while their size and position relative to one another is correct, you can select all of the affected widgets in SIM Dashboard Studio (granted, it's a tedious task as you have to select them individually by ctrl-clicking, IIRC) and then move them using the arrow keys. Hitting the arrow keys moves them by one pixel, whereas holding shift while you do that moves them one entire grid size (32 pixels, AFAIK). At least that could do it as a workaround for now.


Last but not least, what really irks me about this is that your tablet has the exact same aspect ratio as mine does, so you shouldn't even need to use any of the screen adjustment options. In fact, I'm not even sure the app should offer these if the aspect ratio is identical (but maybe it doesn't do that for mine because they were designed on the same device).

Anyhow, does your tablet by any chance have a top or bottom menu bar that blocks part of the screen? In case of my old Galaxy Tab a part of the screen is usually blocked by a bar at the bottom (plus the red SIM Dashboard one at the top), which forces the app to squeeze the design vertically to 16:9 (iirc), messing with the aspect ratio of my designs. In order to fix this I have to double tap the screen to enable fullscreen mode. Not sure if your tablet has a similar quirk...? Although that shouldn't matter considering other designs work just fine.

I'll try to do some research and see if I can figure out what's going wrong. My best bet is that something about my browser throws SIM Dashboard off when editing these designs, not sure what, how or why, but that seems most likely...

 

992 GT3 is no good for me, any on page 10 are no good, the 911GT3 is fine.

I really do not think it's my tablet as every single design i have tried work perfectly except the ones on page 10.

Also the most important thing is it looks wrong in the designer page, the designer page looks exactly like it does on both tablets?

I am in no desperate rush, i have modified my mclaren dash to give me all the data i need for now, i was missing the ERS info

 

FYI i am running 3.16 version of simdash which is the latest, i believe it looked the same on 3.15 as well but not quite sure when i updated the app

 

Thanks a lot for the feedback. This is especially interesting because I literally built the 992 GT3 R on top of the 992 GT3 Cup dashboard, overwriting my local version of the design instead of copying it.

My interpretation of this is that the issue happens while editing the design, not creating it from scratch.

Agreed, and it wouldn't make sense anyway, since all other designs work fine on your device.

Looking on the bright side I have been able to replicate the issue on my end using a Samsung Galaxy A6 phone (which has a really strange aspect ratio of 18.5:9). And just like you said, no matter which screen setup option I select, the widgets are off in terms of size and placement. So far I haven't been able to find an easy fix, but I may have found a solution - fingers crossed.

I did just upload an update to the Cadillac V-Series.R dash, since I've had to fix the inactive LED color anyway. While I was at it I also replicated the pit limiter behavior of the AMS2 car - that is, brake temps are shown when the limiter is active, but otherwise remain hidden.

Can you check the page for the Cadillac dash again tomorrow? The update should be available by then. You can then re-download the dash and see if this fixed it. (I made these changes using Firefox and then saved the design one more time using the android app to generate the preview image. Hopefully this fixes whatever caused the weird scaling behavior.)

This is super weird.
I'm used to Studio and android app being somewhat out of sync and showing things differently, but to have the same kind of strange behavior on both at the same time... I've never seen this before. Not sure what to make of it to be honest.

Glad to hear it. Still, I'd like to get to the bottom of this sooner rather than later. After all, what good is sharing these designs if they don't work for anyone but me?

 

Okay, so I have good news and bad news:

The good news is that the update for the Cadillac V-Series.R has already been published:

Cadillac V-Series.R LMDh for AMS2



The bad news is that, based on a quick test on my phone, the scaling and positioning issues still persist.

To be honest I'm not sure how I could fix this myself, as I don't even know what exactly the cause is. Looks like I'll have to shoot Stryder-IT another email tomorrow... And while I'm at it I'll give him my growing wishlist for new and improved features as well.

 

If you've been following my work for a while you probably know I have made two different dashboards for the McLaren 720S GT3 in the past: A single-page design that was based on the dash we had in AMS2 at the time, and then a multi-page dash that was inspired by real world footage as well as other sims such as ACC.

Unfortunately, neither of these is fully accurate to the in-game dash anymore. So I made a third one, this time specifically for the Evo version of the car. The catch? It's not matching the in-game dash... yet. That's all I'm going to say for now.
Oh gosh I really hope I won't get into trouble for this. o_o

McLaren 720S GT3 Evo for AMS2 Page 1/3


McLaren 720S GT3 Evo for AMS2 Page 2/3


McLaren 720S GT3 Evo for AMS2 Page 3/3


First off, I decided to change the fonts to something that more closely resembles the style of the real car. Sadly there is no font available in SIM Dashboard that comes as close to the real font as I would like, so it still looks a bit different.

Secondly, the LEDs are *really* funky. I kid you not! The RPM bar, for instance, uses 5 different colors overall - 4 just for the regular RPM progression (green->yellow->orange->red), a fifth color (blue) for when you are getting close to max RPM, and a mix of red and blue - first solid, then flashing - when you get to max RPM. Last but not least the bar lights up all green when the pit speed limiter is engaged. Additionally, the LCD background changes to green as well, and the side LEDs (wheel spin/lock and flags) turn bright blue.

As for the information, it seems to be quite close to the real car (though I have yet to see footage of the second and third pages), with a few adjustments according to the data we actually get in AMS2, i.e. there is no battery voltage and such. Either way, this is a *really* cool design, IMHO. While I haven't tried it yet it should also work pretty well for other sims such as ACC, though there may be differences in data and layout.


Before I forget, I received an update to the SIM Dashboard server app yesterday, though the Android app remains unchanged. While I can't confirm it yet, I hope there was a silent hotfix for the scaling issue... But only time will tell. I'll let you all know once I know more - keeping my fingers crossed!

 

@Tony Binelli Good news! I just tried the new McLaren dashboards on my phone and they scale correctly now! Additionally, it appears the M4 GT and AMG GT3 Evo scale correctly as well. You will have to re-download them from within the app, by the way.

The 992 GT3 and the LMDh are still off, however. But I suspect that there was indeed a hotfix for the SIM Dashboard server app, which means that editing and re-uploading them should - hopefully - fix the issue. I will try to do that in the next few days. Please let me know of any other dashboards that do not scale correctly and I will attempt to fix them as well.

 

Here's a minor news update:

I just uploaded an update for the Dallara IR18 2023 dash (mod), as well as updates for all three LMDh cars. Please note that the LMDh designs have been uploaded as new dashboards, because I also decided to change the RPM LED behavior - and I also wanted to make sure the scaling fix would work. (Unfortunately I could not confirm this myself yet, as the LMDh dashboards are too complex for local sharing.)

All of these should hopefully be available tomorrow. As usual I'll post them here ASAP.


As for the Porsche 992 GT3 R: It's next on my list, but I didn't manage to get it done, so you'll have to wait a bit longer for the fix.

 

I'm afraid I have bad news today.
The attempted fix for the scaling didn't work. What's even worse, the update even broke the Dallara IR18 scaling as well, which I believe was working fine prior to the update.

I honestly have no idea what's causing this, and as such I don't know how to fix it, either. While I was hoping that there was a hotfix to the SIM Dashboard server app that would fix or prevent the issue while editing dashboards in the browser, it seems that wasn't the case.

Right now I don't even know if I want to continue making or updating dashboards if it stays like this. I can somehow deal with my old and unstable android device, but if the scaling completely breaks for everyone else, what's the point?

In case anyone's still interested, here are the new dashboards as well as the update to the Dallara:

Cadillac V-Series.R LMDh (version 2.0)


BMW M Hybrid V8 (version 2.0)


Porsche 963 LMDh (version 2.0)


Dallara IR18 2023 Mod for AMS2


First off, A WORD OF WARNING:
If you have epilepsy or are otherwise hypersensitive to rapidly flashing lights, you may want to edit the Porsche 963 Dashboard.
While the RPM LEDs of the LMDh cars are very similar, the Porsche 963 is the only one out of the bunch that actually features rapidly flashing LEDs when you are about to hit the rev limiter. And when I say rapid, I mean rapid - the delay is set to 50ms, which is the minimum in SIM Dashboard and the closest I could get to the in-game LEDs. So if you think there is any risk this high frequency of flashing could cause you problems, be sure to delete the topmost RPM LED layer (or set the frequency to something higher like 200ms).

Other than that, the LMDh dashboards remain almost exactly the same; it's just the LED visuals and behavior that is more authentic now.


Regarding the Dallara IR18, when I fired up the latest version of the mod car I realized the wheel dash had been changed from earlier versions, so I decided to update it as well. It now features the same RPM LED style as the LMDh cars to more closely emulate their correct behavior. In addition the side LEDs now combine flag functionality with front and rear locking indicators. Front wheel lock is indicated by green lights starting from the top going to the bottom with increasing intensity; rear locking is indicated in blue starting from the bottom and going to the top. (Rear locking also has higher priority in case of an overlap because it can lead to instability instead of understeer and thus the risk should be minimized via brake balance.)


That's it for now, folks. Until I can figure out what's actually going on with the scaling I am holding back on any attempts to 'fix' the 992 GT3 R, as there's really no point right now. Sorry!

 

Hey everyone! It's been a while since I posted anything new. This is definitely not for a lack of possible dashboards to recreate, especially with the influx of new high-quality mods for AMS2. I do, however, have to admit that the dashboard scaling issue on different devices has put quite a dent in my motivation. As of now I am not sure if it has been fixed (never received a reply from the developer which is highly unusual, so I am not sure if my mails even got through), but am not getting my hopes up yet.

With that being said, the recent update to AMS2 brought an overhauled F-Ultimate Gen 2 car - complete with a new model, skins and completely redone cockpit. Can't say that I was originally too thrilled about the idea of basically throwing away the entire FUG2 as it was, but here we are.

While I did not initially like the new wheel display of the updated car, I will admit that it eventually grew on me while I was working on its SIM Dashboard representation. I liked the original F-Ultimate Gen 2 dash because it obviously took inspiration from the Ferrari F1-75 whose design I really like. The updated car instead seems to draw inspiration from the likes of Mercedes (or a mix between different cars), which I find to be less visually pleasing. On the up side, the F-Ultimate 2019 car now features the "old" Gen 2 display, which is vastly superior to the old Gen 1 LCD!

So today present to you the updated F-Ultimate Gen 2 2024 car:
Formula Ultimate Gen 2 2024 for AMS2


Due to the large amount of differences between this one and the old design I basically had to re-do everything from scratch. This caused me a fair amount of frustration, especially since staring at the screen of my tablet is extremely tiresome on my eyes these days, even when I am mostly editing everything on the studio app in my computer's browser.

Once I got close to completion I really started to appreciate the dash, though. The functionality is essentially identically with the car in AMS2, save for very minor differences:

1. The dashboard displays two decimals instead of one, because I think it makes much more sense that way
2. The "DRS Available" LED (blue light) does not turn off when DRS (two green lights) is actually engaged. I don't know how I could achieve this in SIM Dashboard, but perhaps it is possible.
3. There is no "State of Charge" percentage display as this widget is still not available for AMS2 for some reason.

Those are the only differences I can think of. Other than those, the two are identical and I'm pretty damn proud of that. Though I will probably release a hotfix for this one, as the screenshot tells me the DRS bars may not overlap properly on all devices. If you want to do this yourself, it should be an easy fix by the way (just duplicate one of the DRS bars, pull it down to the same layer as the others and adjust their vertical position accordingly).

Last but not least I'll still have to check if the scaling issue has been solved yet. It might not even be an issue for this design though, as it has a ratio of 16:9 since I based it off of the old FUG2 dash with the same aspect ratio.

Who knows, if this has actually been fixed I might be tempted to tackle some mod cars in the future? Somehow I gotta bridge the time until new Reiza cars arrive.

 

As promised, here is the update to the F-Ultimate Gen 2 2024 dashboard:

Formula Ultimate Gen 2 2024 for AMS2


While this should - hopefully - fix the lines appearing between parts of the ERS bar (still visible in the preview!), I am not sure this is entirely possible to avoid; it appears that overlapping won't completely get rid of this effect as the edges of the individual bars appear soft rather than hard, creating some sort of dark "shadow" around them.

The only other change I made was using a different font for the PIT LIMITER pop-up, as well as increasing the size to better fit the in-game car.


On a side note, I tested this design on one of my phones, and it seems the misalignment issues when scaling on a different device are no longer as bad as they used to be. After setting the scaling mode to "keep aspect ratio - centered" only one single widget was out of alignment, which was the left flag triple LED widget. Keep in mind, however, that this design has an internal aspect ratio of 16:9, whereas most of my scratch-made dashboards use a ratio of 16:10. I would greatly appreciate it if any of you who use some of my designs could report back if you are seeing any changes in scaling behavior on your devices after re-downloading any of my designs.

 

It's time for an update, folks! I had planned to post this yesterday but forgot about it... Oops!

Despite the quiet in this thread I have been working on new content behind the scenes... Pretty much covering the cars that'll be part of 1.6 (or at least the ones that are available in Beta so far). That's all I am going to say, though.

While working on new dashboards I decided I wasn't really happy with the appearance of my "fake" LEDs (which are actually cut out from the dashboard image layered on top of flat LED widgets), so I did some further tweaks in Photoshop until I was happy with the look. In order to have some continuity among my more recent designs I used the opportunity to update the LMDh dashboards; coincidentally, some of these had a few minor changes in AMS2 that I wanted to reflect in the dash as well (most notably the crazy RPM LED behavior of the BMW M Hybrid V8 - see real life onboard footage if you don't know what I'm talking about). Additionally, the BMW has also seen the addition of a second page so you can finally switch between tire pressures and temps (temperatures weren't available before).

In case you are wondering why the three flag LEDs on each side now use the same style as the RPM and slip/lock lights, this is because in some of these cars the flag lights also serve as pit limiter indicator; implementing this functionality was not possible with the old flag light widget. This is off the top of my head, but I think it is the Porsche where I actually employed some artistic freedom with regards to these lights, as one pair now indicates if the pit speed limiter is active while another pair indicates that you are currently in the pit lane (so better not turn off the PSL until those lights go out!).

Here are the results - and please let me know what you think of the new LED style; I personally think the lights look better, more plastic and somewhat brighter than they did before.

Cadillac V-Series.R LMDh (version 2.0)


Porsche 963 LMDh (version 2.0)


BMW M Hybrid V8 (version 2.0)


BMW M Hybrid V8 (v2) Page 2


Last but not least, there will probably be an avalanche (relatively speaking) of new dashboards once 1.6 goes public... That is, of course, if my ancient tablet survives until then (and actually lets me upload those designs without crashing every single attempt).