Cockpits, HUDs and other displays

[hiran]

Maybe I should have a look at configuring all the 12 HUDs which I never do...

Please forgive the OT, but... 12? Nope! still not enough. I struggle to manage with 10, and can't understand how I managed before MFDs.

When oh! when, will we be able to serve up ALL our MFDs over http so we can open them in html frames across whatever browser capable devices we have, in order to reclaim breadth of front view!

I have a heap of old androids and laptops GAGGING to be used as Oolite MFD slaves.

Interesting thought. Currently Oolite consists of one single window. If you have more than one screen (be it on the same or a different computer) that space remains unused.

I think there was someone who described how to add an additional screen to Oolite. How did he do that? And what information would it display? How much should that be customizable? What latency on the data would be acceptable?

Would something like this be appreciable?

[MrFlibble]

Maybe I should have a look at configuring all the 12 HUDs which I never do...

Please forgive the OT, but... 12? Nope! still not enough. I struggle to manage with 10, and can't understand how I managed before MFDs.

When oh! when, will we be able to serve up ALL our MFDs over http so we can open them in html frames across whatever browser capable devices we have, in order to reclaim breadth of front view!

I have a heap of old androids and laptops GAGGING to be used as Oolite MFD slaves.

Interesting thought. Currently Oolite consists of one single window. If you have more than one screen (be it on the same or a different computer) that space remains unused.

I think there was someone who described how to add an additional screen to Oolite. How did he do that? And what information would it display? How much should that be customizable? What latency on the data would be acceptable?

Would something like this be appreciable?

Nice!!

If it's good enough for a flight-sim... https://wiki.flightgear.org/Howto:Creat ... instrument

[hiran]

Interesting thought. Currently Oolite consists of one single window. If you have more than one screen (be it on the same or a different computer) that space remains unused.

I think there was someone who described how to add an additional screen to Oolite. How did he do that? And what information would it display? How much should that be customizable? What latency on the data would be acceptable?

Would something like this be appreciable?

Nice!!

If it's good enough for a flight-sim... https://wiki.flightgear.org/Howto:Creat ... instrument

...and we have this as a recurring topic. Here's a thread, and how someone created a whole cockpit...
viewtopic.php?p=261668#p261668

The webpanel is based on magick inside FlightGear. It contains an http server that will serve the necessary data to the browser. While it is customizable the effort and knowledge required look similar to me as creating a new cockpit for Oolite. But we are not in shape of adding the webserver.

Hence I am thinking of something else:
Do not modify Oolite core but use existing interfaces. The only one we have is the Debug Interface. To keep traffic low we'd just use it to retrieve metrics from the game. These metrics need to be rendered by another tool. And we do not yet have the web component covered. I'd like this to be easily customizable.

I know Grafana can show gauges, dials, graphs - all sorts of metrics in an easy to customize way. All we need to do is feed the data. I do not know whether there is a more efficient way, but Grafana can so efficiently display data from Prometheus that I'd even consider using that inbetween.

So here's the complete picture:



The setup looks complex yet we could well describe how to get there.

[Cholmondely]

one_armed_man made it for his son.

There is some rather sardonic commentary on Timer's Roolite BB which discusses some of this (Presti70's efforts if I recall). I read it some years ago when Google Translate was more useful.

[hiran]

one_armed_man made it for his son.

There is some rather sardonic commentary on Timer's Roolite BB which discusses some of this. I read it some years ago when Google Translate was more useful.

And Maik came even closer to the request for multiple displays by using NodeRed: viewtopic.php?p=274423#p274423
Yay, that seems a hit in the search engine:

https://github.com/maikschulz/oolite-mqtt-bridge

It is similar to my picture with the exporter and then uses some MQTT broker instead of Prometheus, finally NodeRed to customize an render the data.
What I like is he created an OXP to push interesting data out the debug interface whereas I feared the exporter would have to poll data. Definitely more efficient.

[Cholmondely]

Definitely more efficient.

Might Maik's solution work on a Mac? He started off with an AppleMac, but I have a feeling that he moved away to another operating system.

[hiran]

Definitely more efficient.

Might Maik's solution work on a Mac? He started off with an AppleMac, but I have a feeling that he moved away to another operating system.

It should work on a Mac. The challenge is to make Oolite connect to a Debug Console - not the internal one. That's where we failed last time.

[hiran]

So I am playing a bit with Maik's OXP and it communicates the ship speed nicely.

Remain the questions:
- what data we ultimately want to have avaialble? (Maik was only experimenting with the ship speed)
- where/how shall it get displayed?

[Cholmondely]

So I am playing a bit with Maik's OXP and it communicates the ship speed nicely.

Remain the questions:
- what data we ultimately want to have availble? (Maik was only experimenting with the ship speed)
- where/how shall it get displayed?

I'd rather like to have some of the MFDs displayed separately. And some HUD elements.

HUD elements: the missile identifier from the Chupacabra HUD (but listing all the missiles) - this could also be Phkb's Missile Summary (which lists your missiles on your F5 screen).

MFDs:
Astrogatory
Advanced System Data MFD - provides information about the system you are in for the Strangers World suite of oxp's
Galactic Almanac MFD Unit - displays information about the system you are in.
Navigation MFD shows details of your hyperdrive status, the systems you are in and wish to jump to, etc.
Navigation Beacons MFD displays a list of beacons discoverable on your ASC
Range Finder MFD shows you .oxp scan results for escape capsules, black boxes, asteroids, ships, communication relays and cargo pods.
Station Dock Control allows you to see scheduled departures/arrivals at an orbital station.
Star System Lane Indicator MFD allows you to see if you are on a Star System Lane.
System Waypoints MFD indicates the location of your system waypoints
Telescope tells you what is visible in your viewscreens.
Waypoint Here MFD - the location of your waypoints can be displayed on this MFD

Combat
Damage Report MFD lists what is damaged (more information available when docked).
Fighters MFD - shows the status of your fighters - and governs their activities
Trophy Log MFD displays your last 10 kills
Warrant Scanner displays bounty on target in an MFD

Communication
BroadcastComms MFD enables you to communicate with local ships
CommsLogMFD keeps a long record of previous (non-Broadcast Comms) messages which you can scroll through.

Informational
Ship's Library OXP comes with the Ship's Manual loaded. There are 5 other books you can add.
Technical Reference Library displays information about a targeted ship
Useful MFDs gives 2: a general information and a cargo-list.
The Galactic Almanac MFD Unit provides information on all stars, planets, moons gas giants and any ships and stations which are transmitting ID Beacons whilst you are in flight.

Mercantile
Market Inquirer tells you the in-system published prices for the Oolite commodities (ie at major orbital stations and cruise ships).
Manifest MFD lists the contents of your cargo hold
Manifest Scanner lists the contents of other cargo holds!

Managerial
EscortDeck MFD - shows the status of your escort ships - and governs their activities
Primeable Equipment MFD allows you to use a MFD to select your Primeable Equipment. Very useful if you have a large selection!

[phkb]

It appears you essentially want all mfds taken off the main screen and onto something else!

[Cholmondely]

It appears you essentially want all mfds taken off the main screen and onto something else!

Not the combat ones. But, yes. I'd love to see the equivalent of an astrogation console, a trade console, and an engineering console, etc.

[hiran]

It appears you essentially want all mfds taken off the main screen and onto something else!

Not the combat ones. But, yes. I'd love to see the equivalent of an astrogation console, a trade console, and an engineering console, etc.

Makes sense. Imagine you build a multi screen setup. One big screen (maybe a projector) displays the Oolite window (fromt/aft/left/right). And smaller screens in front of that become your dashboard. Here I'd like as much as possible to be taken off the main screen.

I doubt with the setup I suggested the latency would be good enough for usable displays. But for the MQTT/node-red architecture I was impressed on the quickly responding data.

So there are two limiting factors:
- How quickly to get the data out of Oolite
- Find MQTT clients that can render the data quickly enough

@cholmondely Could we group the items from your above list into a matrix? Rows would be by topic (e.g. combat), the columns would be expected update speed (subsecond, second, or bigger intervals)

@phkb Would it be possible to reuse the rendering code of Oolite and place it in a new binary that reads MQTT data?

[Cholmondely]

There is another possible issue, Hiran. Interaction.

One can interact with the Market Inquirer MFD to select which commodity is shown, for example. And ditto for a number of the others such as the Ship's Library MFD (choose page/chapter) and the Communications MFD (choose most recent/choose those from previous launch...).

Unsure to what extent this queers the pitch.



And yet another: There is now a lot of information only accessible via the docked F4 menu.

With the Ship's Library, it would be much better to be able to see the illustrations in the Ship's Manual (although they're based on the vanilla HUD), replicating what is visible via the Docked F4 menu (rather than what is seen via the MFD).

And Phkb's GalCop Galactic Registry (searchable database of the current galaxy)



And another possible: Separate files

To see either one of Clym Angus's (static) Vector Maps - or Phkb's Oolite Galaxy Maps (static - so don't show Lave oxp's update of the TL from 5 to 8, or Stranger's Mining Worlds, or the changes to G2 from Ionics etc.). So this might be better done with Phkb's GalCop Galactic Registry which is dynamic, reacting to OXPs which tweak the systems.

[hiran]

There is another possible issue, Hiran. Interaction.

One can interact with the Market Inquirer MFD to select which commodity is shown, for example. And ditto for a number of the others such as the Ship's Library MFD (choose page/chapter) and the Communications MFD (choose most recent/choose those from previous launch...).

Unsure to what extent this queers the pitch.

It does not at all. While I am right now just looking at transporting information from Oolite to somewhere else, the same technology can be used to transport it back.

And yet another: There is now a lot of information only accessible via the docked F4 menu.

With the Ship's Library, it would be much better to be able to see the illustrations in the Ship's Manual (although they're based on the vanilla HUD), replicating what is visible via the Docked F4 menu (rather than what is seen via the MFD).

Just because Oolite will display some information when docked it does not mean other displays would have to do the same. As long as the information exists we can create displays. Might be questionable though how meaningful that is.

And another possible: Separate files
To see either one of Clym Angus's (static) Vector Maps - or Phkb's Oolite Galaxy Maps (static - so don't show Lave oxp's update of the TL from 5 to 8, or Stranger's Mining Worlds, or the changes to G2 from Ionics etc.). So this might be better done with Phkb's GalCop Galactic Registry which is dynamic, reacting to OXPs which tweak the systems.

While I am not sure how to handle this, it is likely you are looking at special cases now.
Let's take Maik's idea one step further. He was expermenting with a setup that would transmit just a couple of items for external display.
As soon as we got that plus something running we know more, we see more problems and we can think of how to overcome them.

[hiran]

I can reproduce Maik's experiments.
I have an extra window that shows speed, alert status and comms messages.

Still need to make it easier to assemble. Looks complex for the technically challenged...
And I am concerned about speed if we want to have more data for external display.