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Guest phlerp

HUDs

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Guest phlerp

Is there going to be any support for making HUDs more than what is available in FS2004?There is a few attempts of making HUDs for FS2004 but though fun to play around with, unfortunately they all fell through on a few importants issues. HUDs differs from other gauges in some very important ways. First, they are normally fixed to the exterior (outside world) rather than some index internally of the gauge. For instance the velocity vector should point to the direction I'm going related to the outside world, the horizon line should always be "glued" to the horizon in the outside world no matter how I manouver. This requires that the HUD scales correctly whan zooming the outside world, and moves correctly when moving the head. Second, good framerates are more important in a HUD than any other gauge. Since the symbols in the HUD moves with the outside world it is very apparent if the HUD has a bad framerate compared to the rest of the sim. This is unfortunately the case with FS2004 where gauges have rather low framerates (as I recall it, it has something to do with the old DOS clock which is limiting gauges to 18 fps)It is possible to make a HUD in XML using vector painting but that is far from the best solution as it gives you nowhere near the needed speed and you are rather limited in what you can do compared to doing it in C++. However in C++ you can't make a HUD with vector painting since GDI++ don't support transparent backgrounds. That leav us with the only option to make the HUD with prepainted images as with normal analogue gauges, but you can't scale those to fit different zoom levels and there is some transformations of HUD symbologies you can't do that way.As HUDs become more common in civilian aircrafts this should be something MS probably should put some effort into. I realize that it might be a bit too late to implement in FSX if it isn't already. But is this something you've thought about, and will we see it in FSX or some later version of FS?

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Guest phlerp

So there is no one else interested in this? Or is it that most posters here are users rather than designers and thus aren't really understanding the limitations of the currentability to make HUDs for MSFS? Or am I dead on and no one has anything to add? Some comments would be apreciated.

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Guest twsimfan

This is just my guess but since the 737 will be a 800 model MS may well include a HUD for it.I'm also hoping that the Cessnas will have a much needed upgrade. And though this may well be too much to hope for I hope that the 172 will retain it's standard Cessna look and the 182 will be upgraded to a Garmin 1000 cockpit. Hoping doesn't cost anything... right? :-lol(PS - I'm greedy... how about having a 737-800 and a upgraded 737-300? ;))

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Guest phlerp

The question is not if MS will provide a HUD for the stock aircrafts but rather if they will provide any means to create accurate HUDs. As it is now there is several HUDs made for MSFS for military as well as civilian aircrafts. But due to limitations in the way gauges work in FS2004 none of these are very good. In fact they all suffer from such problems (some of them mentioned in my first post) that I don't find them interesting to use. I've tried doing a HUD in FS2004 myself and know were the drawbacks are. The only way to get a decent HUD into FSX is if MS provide the means. I've worked with real HUDs (that is, worked with the hardware and software rather than just used them) and the HUDs I've seen for FS2004 are quite useless. As gauges they work ok, but where it matters they aren't really doing their job. And it is mostly not because those who made them didn't know how to do it but rather that it is impossible with the current ersion of MSFS.

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Guest

HUDs are not standard for 737-800s and never have been. They're a special option required only be very few customers that required a modified type certificate to allow them to be used at all.Given that FS is a CIVILIAN simulator and HUDs are over 95% military (with the few civilian models being derivatives of that technology) I see no reason for Microsoft spending a lot of time to make them possible within the SDK.I'd rather they spend that time on things that are useful to the majority of customers, things like weather engine, flight dynamics (pretty good already but there's always room for improvement), etc.

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Guest phlerp

>Given that FS is a CIVILIAN simulator and HUDs are over 95%>military (with the few civilian models being derivatives of>that technology) I see no reason for Microsoft spending a lot>of time to make them possible within the SDK.That is not entirely true. FS is a simulator under civilian forms. But there has been several military planes even among the stock aircrafts over the years (for instance I think the F-20 was included in FS4, and for a long time we also had the Sopwith Camel). But apart from that there are very many 3rd part planes that is military, of course without the possability to shoot, dropping bombs and other stuff that we don't see in FS.I'm not arguing that FS should become a military sim (even though I wouldn't complain), but with 95% of all HUDs in military planes as you say (would like to know the source to that numer) there is still the civilian 5%. HUDs are a part of civilian cockpit equiment and we will only see more use of it in the future. And what about all the military planes that people fly in FS under the civilian restrictions the sim has? Should they all be ignored?I spend most of my time in FS flying a few very well modeled military planes. I can't say I mourne the lack of weaponry in the sim though it would be fun to be able to fire a weapon occasionally. I do the things most of us do in FS, I take off, I navigate and I land. It is in these situations a HUD would be very handy. And it would be a welcome aid in any aircraft,civilian or military.The thing is that I wouldn't say it is an easy thing to fix (I know tdragger, there are no easy features in such a complex project). But I'm not asking for something specific to make HUDs. What I ask for would be applicable to any gauges. I'd like to see an increased framerate for gauges (prefereably I would like to be able to at least define one gauge to have the same framerate as the rest of the sim). I'd like to define a gauge to be scaled accordnigly when the sim is zoomed. And finally, and I know that this might be like asking for the moon, I'd like to get a D3D object to work with for vector gauges rather than the DC we get now. GDI++ is not really good to make really fast and complex gauges.

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