HUDs or Cockpits

[Cmdr Wyvern]

Rhar, I'm feeling the love!

Glad you like it, Caracal. I've always encouraged personal tweaking my oxps to taste, it's a good way to learn how to make oxps.

Now you're cooking pirate ass with gas. Go get 'em, tiger.

[Corny]

I know it makes more sense in the Ooniverse to have HUDs - after all, you don't have a glass to look through in space - and 2D cockpits wouldn't look realistic enough but... but... I want cockpiiiits

[Yodeebe]

Maybe time for a new funky office chair, and a bit of wood/metal work on your desk?

or else, buy a scrap car, chuck it in the back garden, black the windows out.......

shove a washing machine in the back that starts spin cycle when you hit the 'I'

[Cody]

... if only I could ‘opaque’ the scanner.

And behold, the genie did pop out of the bottle, and made Rolling Thunder’s Fighter Hud become opaque!
And El Viejo saw that it was good… ‘Oh frabjous day, Callooh! Callay! He chortled in his joy’.

[Corny]

I did this some time ago, too, but doesn't it block the text a bit?
I can't remember exactly, I mainly use the Deepspace HUD or Killer Wolf's HUD...

[Cody]

but doesn't it block the text a bit?

No problem with Fighter Hud... no text blocked at all.

[Ganelon]

I use the older MKI FighterHud, and the only place I can recall seeing it block text is just a few pixels of the "Load Previous Commander (Y/N)?", which is further down the screen than most messages go. I've never noted it to be a problem in gameplay.

[Cody]

I never miss a chance to post a pic… as you can see, no problems with text. That’s why huds that spread around the screen need to be transparent or switchable. But huds or cockpits or instrument panels… all a matter of personal taste.
More importantly, it’s a good opportunity to plug the Background Set oxp, by Svengali and P. A. Groove.



This oxp really enhances the game.

[Ganelon]

http://i96.photobucket.com/albums/l186/ ... 1281969211

If you look close at the text in question, you can see what I'm talking about. The little clips that hold up the "glass pane" on this panel just partially cover a few of the letters. As you can see by the spinning ship, I have the panel itself set to full opaque, but the "glass pane" and the tops of its little "clips" are partially transparent so the "glass pane" can function. So, in my case, they don't interfere anyway.

But both you and I, El Viejo, are using somewhat customised and tweaked versions of the Fighterhud. The original "stock" version covers those parts of the letters as well, but since the default is transparent, it shouldn't be a problem for most folks, and it's such a small bit anyway.

It is possible to combine sections that are opaque with sections that have any degree of transparency by tinkering with the image file itself and the .plist settings. It's a bit of a pain in the butt, but it can be done.

Now if Fighterhud was taken a step further, to use switchable options so that maybe it could show different panels for the fore/aft/port/starboard views, it could give an even better "cockpit". Well, the aft view might be more of a "tailgunner station", that could be optimised for aft weapon use. It would also be possible to also have a panel that was more minimal (showing fuel and missiles) for shopping when docked, but I usually think of the docked info as being something I'm accessing while docked and displaying on the main viewscreen of the ship than something I walk out to see, so that's not as much of a concern to me personally.

But with the switchable options, there are some other fun possibilities. Some of the switchable HUDs have different screens for green/yellow/red/ and even damaged status. With Fighterhud, there could be different switches up and down and different panel lights on for the different statuses, maybe a light source change on the .png to a red light for "battle stations!", and of course there's a lot of potential for "damaged" views with a cockpit with graphic detail like this one.

All those possibilities aside, though, it's a great OXP even right out of the box, and to date it is my favourite.

[CaptKev]

Now if Fighterhud was taken a step further, to use switchable options so that maybe it could show different panels for the fore/aft/port/starboard views

It's on my to-do list.

[Cody]

Cool!

[Pluisje]

... Note also, that unless you can show light changes on the cockpit as the ship changes position, it will generally look like a cardboard overlay. A 2D cockpit will simply not be enough.

+1, also because of the lighting and the view obstruction

Your points are fair, but I just figured out a way to have a lighted cockpit. It's does require adding sub-entities to your ship of choice though. It's a tiny structure modelled around your viewpoint. In the example I just made a couple of triangular beams. The sub-entity is untextured at the moment, but a generic metallic should go a long way. I hope to someday finish an OXP, perhaps one based on this idea..

[maik]

Nice proof of concept! Now all this needs is integration with the instrument panels.

[Killer Wolf]

i thought about this idea but reckoned it would be too fiddly for the actual ship model : actual scale cockpits would be tiny, so it would be better not to have them on the ship but have them genned up when you launch.

the realtime lighting isn't really an issue for me, as mostly i think of cockpits as being a sealed/armoured cabin, not a glass bubble as modern fighters : the view out is a hidef monitor showing camera feeds.

[Ganelon]

If there was an instrument panel and/or cockpit, it might still show changes as the light source on even a high definition monitor moves.

I also usually assume that while there may still be cockpits of a sort, they wouldn't likely be exposed on the surface of the ship and made of transparent material. Sudden flashes of intense light from explosions and lasers could blind the pilot. One lucky shot that hits the canopy could end the fight by killing the pilot with almost no damage done to the ship. It'd make more sense to have the pilot well inside, behind plenty of metal.

Some ships might use a transparent window or canopy, though. Racers, for example, where every ounce of mass may count against their acceleration and manoeuvrability. Some larger ships might also opt to have a transparent viewport or blister or "windshield", but have heavy metal armour that would slide down over it at the first sign of danger as they switched over to inside displays when "battle stations" are called.

Some people might have fun with the notion of surface mounted transparent "canopy", though. It's a neat idea, and it'll be cool to see how it develops.