That's roguelazer's shot. I just put it behind my design. You can see it for yourself in the screenshots section of his site.

So, from your comments, may I presume that you all would prefer a visor style approach to the HUD?

http://www.roguelazer.com/HUDs/Vendetta-New-HUD-1.gif

-That is excellent. Great work. It even accounts for features that haven't been implemented yet. The only problem I see is how to switch between tabs. We would need a hotkey display button. Maybe left cmd for the left hand tabs and right cmd for the right hand. But that's an excellent HUD.

"So, from your comments, may I presume that you all would prefer a visor style approach to the HUD?"
-I personally would. I feel like if it were technologically feasible, most cockpits would be designed in the "visor style." A conventional cockpit design just takes up too much of your field of view.

I agree with Magus--Simondearsley's is excellent. The only thing remaining to do would be to fuse the left and right radars with the other panels on the left and right. Adding a colored hue to the background of the targeting radar (grey, green, purple, red) would be a good idea as well...

Yes, that one is very nice, buuuuut I think it would be better if the 'target' screen is separated.. finding out who your target is should go quite instant ofcourse... but you could of course also do that if you press 'x' or 'g' it automagicly switches to 'target'

Here's a new version of my HUD with a bunch of simondearsley's ideas shamelessly stolen ;)

http://sheean.dse.nl/vendettahud2.jpg

I have an idea for the HUD: with all these things, you could access some functions by mouse. It would look a bit like this:

http://sheean.dse.nl/vendettahud2-mousemenu.jpg

If you hold the middle-mouse button (or a modifier key and a mouse button at the same time), you see that screen. If you move the mouse to a key and let loose of the mouse button it activates. If you stop holding the middle-mouse button while not over anything the window will dissapear. Also if you drag the mouse out of the menu the menu will dissapear.

I like simon's. it fits more seamlessly with our current design and is much more along what I had in mind for my own designs...

Menus are useless in a spaceship. Have you ever played MS Flight Simulator 2000/2002? In Mouse Mode, flying was impossible because you'd need to fly, then go down to fiddle with the radio or something, then pull the mouse back up and keep yourself from crashing. It's just not feasable.

And the 6 valks was SC's idea (way back in the day). But, I was one of the valks so once he had his shot, I made us rearrange a little and took my own shot.

Menus are not useless when they either change on their own from tab to tab, or keys are assigned to switch tabs.

Yes I've played a couple of flight sims from time to time (including that one.)

There would be a special modifier key (the middlemousebutton in this case) which you can use to switch between 'fly' mode and 'menu' mode.. simple. If you had a joystick, you could use one button to switch to 'menu' mode and then just go left/right or up/down to scroll trough the menu. But the menu should just go away if you let loose of the key, so if you're flying and [insert your favorite pirate] suddenly comes turboing at you, you don't have to press the 'esc' key or move the mouse to the 'close' button while in panic.

You could also make it so that you'd have to press a special modifier key, then the menu would come up and you can use the F2 and F3 keys to scroll trough the menu, and F4 would be like 'enter'. This way you can quickly change your weapons set-up while doing a barrel-roll for example.

Also, thinking about flight sims.... wouldn't it be more realistic if you could see the ¨cockpit¨ you're in. Now if you turn around, or look down you just see space.. but it should be that you'd see your spaceship, play just about any flightsim and you'll see what I mean (unless your spaceship would be one big glass-ship, which it isn't.) Making it so that you'd actually see your space ship (or only a limited amount of looking back etc is allowed) could give some ship advantages, and of course make the game a whole lot more 'realistic'.

For example: the valk pilot CAN'T look down, unless he moves his ship down, the maud pilot can...

Actually I was more referring to simon's hud than yours sheean... yours is just a bit too... bright.

The devs already said no seeing the cockpit. They want it like it is, except with more stuff.

"wouldn't it be more realistic if you could see the ¨cockpit¨ you're in."
-If you could design a cockpit that worked like a HUD instead of a cockpit, wouldn't you? If technology allowed it, I'm sure we would. It's much more reasonable. If you want to look somehwere without changing motion, go into physics mode. I don't know what you're talking about Mauds being able to mouselook and Valks not.

Hmm.. well I wasn't refering to celkan's post (damn, we need those tree-like structures in the forum..), and yes it's a bit too bright.. but now atleast you see what's going on ;)

What I like about Sheean's:

- Sector map at an angle, sectors farther away grow dimmer, while your sector glows.
- Instant target analysis shows target's alignment/affiliation in the background (grey, red, blue, gold, purple).
- Vector bars
- Little list on the bottom left showing what is active/disabled on the radar.

What I like about Simondearsley's:

Tabbed bars (Group/Target/Mssn)

What I don't like about either: Both have group chat separated from sector chat. Maybe they should be, if both are busy, however, sometimes it will be confusing to know who said what first. Maybe put them together with the option of separating them?

They are a bit too crowded for me.

he wasn't referring to mouselook, he was referring to the shape of the cockpit and the visibility experienced by the pilot

Maud: Big bubble, can see up and down, but not much on sides
Valk: dooda thingy, sees sides and up well, no veiw of down

I like all of the designs. GREAT JOB!!!!!!, when you get the chance, can you all (all: people who resigned the HUD) send me e-mails of your pics of your hud designs plz?

at
ahdinh1@hotmail.com

thxs

Thanks for the feedback. The intention was for it to be like the MFDs in a modern fighter. You would have two keys mapped to flick through the pages, and maybe another set for various functions inside them... Keeps everything nice and clean that way. What you really want in a HUD is only what you need, especially in a dogfight where you need to see everything clearly.

The idea for the split chat windows is kinda derived from the multi-log feature. You could split the chat window into many different (or only one) windows. It just makes things clearer. If you are trying to organise a raid or flag cap, sometimes the team chat or group chat gets lost in the global chat. This is a way of cleaning it up...

I was also thinking about adding a kind of music tab, kinda like having an ipod bolted onto the HUD...

I think with a mouse driven control system, something like Unreals system would work. You have an action key which activates the mouse and brings up a small menu when held down. This may get a little annoying in a fight tho...

Unreal had a mouse system? Never noticed it... only played ut2003 tough, maybe it's in the single player one or something?

SL: I think mine look a bit more crowded because it's a 'bit' brighter, it doesn't really take up much more space.

Whoa.. I LOVE that hud of yours, Sheean. It's great, except there's a little too many modules to have a good view of what's outside.

Devs: Have a look at the 3dish sector view.. would be quite easy to implement, wouldn't it?

Well, I took a few minutes to hobble together my own style of HUD. Looked like crap cause it was the first time I've ever used that particular SVG system, but...

Basic idea is this, at the center of the display, at about 25% alpha, are three quarter-circles, speed at the top, health on left, energy on right. If you target something with health, your health/energy would slide smoothly and there would be four quarter-circles, the bottom-most being target health.

Anyone with a SVG-capable display program can look at the examples I have created:
http://www.marginsoftware.com/vendetta/HUD-2.svg

Or, if you just want to see without playing:
http://www.marginsoftware.com/vendetta/HUD-2.png

My problem with most HUDs are that they are far too cluttered. Good use of alpha-blending can help to alleviate this. For example, having the radar as a small sphere with it's location user-controlled, and having "HUD Saves" with hotkeys to switch between them can be useful.

I prefer a sphere to two flat fore/aft displays. In the end, sectors should be organized in 3D... after all, the rest of the game is 3D, no? Thus, a pop-up 3D representation of the wormhole network would be handy. (This is an area where multiple crew on a large space-ship would be useful... one to dodge fire and the other to plot a course...)

Many more comments have been added to the SVG/PNG, so have a gander? (It's 1024xSomething Rediculous... but small in KB.)

Last comment: Smooth transitions as things hide/show are important (and easy to do if the HUD system is SVG-based ;) as both Apple and the creators of Minority Report know full well. It just plain looks sweet.