Laurence Grayson with a tutorial showing how to create an active ball compass in After Effects recreating the look of a dashboard flight instrument. Check out the tutorial for Creating a Realistic Ball Compass in After Effects Tutorial here.
Here’s how to use the standard toolkit in After Effects to create a fairly realistic flight instrument. Easy to customise and keyframe for your own needs. You can also download the After Effects CS5 project file for it from here.
NOTE: It has already been pointed out to me that the ball compass isn’t really used in airplane instrumentation – it’s more of a boat thing. Which is why I’ve added an attitude indicator / artificial horizon to the project file.