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Guest ridgell

conditional string question ... and hud color advice.

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Guest ridgell

%(@speed)%!03d!%______________________%(@alt)%!03d!i would like to change the string above; the right displays (A:RADIO HEIGHT, meter), the macro gives it the number and qualifies that the attitude is within gimble limits <30 degrees pitch & bank. out of gimble,off, or broken returns a zero '0'. rather than display zeros i would like xxx displayed( in the fashion of a mirage hud) ok the can of worms....in a hud useing bitmaps and vectors, what is the best color. (subjective answer) best as in real looking green, but with the least artifacts and distortions. i was useing adjustable colors...but it has come to my attention that this particular hud had no color adjustment ability brightness or otherwise. what is the best font?

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Or try %(@alt s1 1 >= )%{if}%(l1)%!03d!%{else}XXXXX%{end}


Paul EGLD

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Guest jprintz

> >....in a hud useing bitmaps and vectors,>what is the best color. (subjective answer) >>best as in real looking green, but with the least artifacts>and distortions. i was useing adjustable colors...but it has>come to my attention that this particular hud had no color>adjustment ability brightness or otherwise. >>what is the best font?>If you're confined to using only 1 color on the HUD, then the best I have found is a medium green, such as #009900 (000 153 000). I did a lot of testing on this very issue, with tons of greens on the screen at once, and IMO the best single all-purpose HUD color, for different times of day, different terrains, different seasons, etc., is that one. I personally prefer the pure "full throttle" green for most situations, but pure green just doesn't work well at times. BTW, I've been told that the real HUD's use this pure, full green (000 255 000)... which makes perfect sense, since HUD's were born as monochromatic green displays. But the real ones have brightness and contrast knobs, too, which makes a big difference in how they actually appear....As to fonts, my favorites for general use are glassga, arial, and tahoma. It just depends on the size of the text or look and feel you're after.Good luck!

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Guest ridgell

j printz ? are you the scott printz whoes huds i have studied, then i will take your advice as gospel :)! at first glance it seems a bit dark, but it makes sense that the dark would be more artifact free, the only light color that i can do that with is white on a 2 color (1 bit) bit map. before i recolor every bit map i wanted to ilicet a highly probable solution. question... i talked with you here a couple years ago, i think i accedently insulted your code ( hornet hud) but i loved the hud. i like the viper hud even more! i searched all of your posts and read one where you were in a scale discusion with a rather sanctamonious gentlement who proclamed there was one and only one acceptable scale for a hud/cockpit in flight sim. SIZE_X=8191 SIZE_Y=6143 ! that to using anything else was spitting in the face of microsoft and taking a dump on the grave of pathagorous. it would seem while unconviced of his case in the post...you came to agree when you made the viper hud. but we seem to have arived at a different scale per degree and i was wondering how? you code using; i prefer type shiftsperhaps a radian vs a degree person thing ? 1.570795 (rad) is 90' which divides out to 21.82 pixels/degree from that old post; 1) The horizontal displayed scenery arc is 0.8 radians 2) The vertical displayed scenery arc is 0.6 radians WHICH IN DEGREES IS; 45.836624 DEGREES 1024 PIXELS = 22.34 pixels/degree 34.37747 DEGREES 768 PIXELS = 22.34 pixels/degreewhich is what i use...am i wrong? ... is the difference in truncated decimals to the right?and this is a first generation hud...circa 1971. previous huds if you could call them that were lead sights only aka the F4 phantom. i was useing 3 colors...run by a brightness/contrast knob, but was told by someone who knows that this plane had no hud color adjstment. the weakness of bitmaps is that meant code sections came in triplicuts, and i am glad to be rid of 2/3s of it. but now a lot depends on the one color being the best one. nother hud question..what is the little cathode looking device aimed at the hud glass on the old huds...( i do not know what it is so i cant name it) on the mig 21 it is on the right side of the hud and nearly obscures the glass from the pilots veiw. in your 'hud only' picture for the hornet hud you represented it as an ill defined bump at the base of the hud. it is clearly visable in the actual hud pictures of a hornet hud included in your download.. in the pictures it is afixed to the base of the hud midline...like a lipstick case laying on its side pointing at the hud glass....what is the thing??? what does it do ? the only mechanical drawings of huds i can find on the net are new huds and apparently what ever the device is, it does not need to be between the pilot and the hud glass now so newer huds dont have it. it looks like a projector of some kind...i thought i might help with collomation but from what i have read.. the collomator uses the main lens that points vertically from the hud box. perhaps a gun recticle that is seperate from the main hud projector???? if you know, i would surely like to know. anyway...thanks for the color sugestions...the advice will be used!

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Guest jprintz

Hi ridgell. Yeah, I'm the one who did that F-16 HUD for FS9. Fun stuff. The best and most recent HUD was the F/A-18 HUD for FSX, from a few months ago. The FS9 ones did not work in FSX (the shifts and rotates work differently somehow, and the ladder and flight path marker got screwed up), so I thought I should do a new one for FSX. I definitely think it's better, in a thousand little ways, than the old Hornet HUD. As to size, scale, field of view, etc... neat topic. One thing that I learned (the hard way!) is that FS9 actually displays more than that .8 by .6 radians in a fullscreen, zoom 1.00 window. It's closer to .82 by .62 (the exact values I forget), but the few percent difference over that .8 x .6 radian FOV can be significant, especially in a HUD that's trying to at least simulate collimation.And of course, all of this is complicated by the fact that FSX (thankfully) changed the default field of view. It is now smaller (and, I believe, better), so that FSX's zoom 1.00 is equal to something close to zoom 1.40 in FS9. That discussion you mentioned from long ago was about exactly this. I prefer FSX's FOV, since the number of degrees it displays on screen is closer to the FOV that the average simmer's monitor actually occupies... which means better and more realistic perception of height, depth, and distance. (Though, yes, at the expense of peripheral vision... but it's a wonderful tradeoff, IMO.) I guess my point is that the number of pixels per degree for zoom 1 in each sim is different. The numbers I came up with were something like 1960 pixels per (pi/2) radians in FS9, and 2750 pixels per (pi/2) radians in FSX. And yeah, your scale statement I'm sure accomplishes the same thing as doing it the long way. Much neater! I just had so many things hanging off of and nested within the ladder and velocity vector elements, that I liked to see those precise pixel values there as a reference. BTW, Microsoft is going to be including an F/A-18 in their upcoming expansion pack, and it will be interesting to see how they did their HUD. What I mean, really, is that I can't wait to see if they implemented a method for designing a TRULY collimated HUD, one that shifts and scales according the user's zoom setting and eyepoint shifts. I don't think there's been a way to do this so far, since (AFAIK) there's no way to read the eyepont variables, but it really would be nice to see the possibility of providing true collimation. HUD's are the primary flight instrument for most military jets, and are quickly becoming so for commercial jets, too, so there should be a way to make them work properly, by keeping that HUD horizon pinned, the ladder and flight path marker properly scaled, etc....Also, someone who used to post in here was doing an F/A-18 that looks FANTASTIC. I cannot wait to get my hands on it. The HUD, especially, looks fantastic! http://www.vrsimulations.com/product_FA18E.htmHave you (or anyone) found a way to do a vector drawing pitch ladder that *doesn't* eat up way too many FPS? I was doing what I've pasted in below every 5 degrees, then shifting and rotating at the very end, but it was WAY too much of a performance hog. A shame, since the vector drawings do look more crisp!//---- +5 degrees //---- end +5 degreesetc, etc....Take care,Scott

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Guest ridgell

if i were going to do a vector line ladder i would only do 2X the hud veiw area and work it the same as the large bit maps...reusing the sections over and over.the trick would be to match up the text string. i have never been able to move a text string with the kind of precision we are talking about above. just display the closest ladder value if you are making up you own layout. but if you are trying to replicate an actual hud.... things get harder. you did not answer the other question, *assuming your expertise* about the function of the UNKNOWN COMPONENT on the F-18 & other HUDs.

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Hi!Have you tried the Formatted text option, I was trying to rotate and shift my HUD

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