It will be a great thing if any major manufacter have a different cockpit/Hud design.
DIFFERENT COCKPIT DESIGN
- Thread starter Samurai83ITA
- Start date
All the ships have different cockpit designs. What do you actually want?
A different hub design, not all the same. Maybe different color. And different design. I explain: for core dynamics maybe have a Blu color, a square radar, system orizzontal bar and not vertical, ship holo in the left,.... A different design so for each manufacter...
I know what you mean. But there's also a number of good things to be said about a default user interface. In case of doubt, look at the pilots federation design document HNDWVIUM-12345 and see that they regulate how the HUD on all ships should look like.
Outside of that: yes, it would give a bit more flair to some ships. But it would also add a lot of extra coding and maintenance effort. Considering some other parts of the game, which still could use a lot of work, i would not want FD to put many work hours into this.
Outside of that: yes, it would give a bit more flair to some ships. But it would also add a lot of extra coding and maintenance effort. Considering some other parts of the game, which still could use a lot of work, i would not want FD to put many work hours into this.
It seems like a very cool idea, but I also think its a bit unrealistic development wise, that would take quite a long time to do, first of all
yup
One's pimp the other utilitarian
Alliance would have shamrocks of course.
edit: and change Krait to Craic
As long as functions / binds remain the same then there could be no great issues in use. Type-rating for the different manufacturer's ships is a no-no for me, I have enough of that in flight simulators.
I've suggested previously that this could be accomplished without breaking Pilots Federation requirements by simply drawing each part of the HUD differently, or with a different art style, whilst retaining all existing functionality. Then you could have styles specific to manufacturer, ship series, and super power.
At the same time, the ability to change HUD colours from the ship menus without affecting character portraits and radar icon colours should be implemented alongside such a change.
At the same time, the ability to change HUD colours from the ship menus without affecting character portraits and radar icon colours should be implemented alongside such a change.
Yea. Even if color changes would be in the item store, i'd still welcome that.
FDEV states they programmed the PC version to use config files. The hud color is set in the config. I play on PS4 but the console doesn't use an editable config file like the PC does.
Overall, I agree with your premise. It would have been better, imo, to include the hud color with the ship data and allow customization through the interface. But, I also observed that they use a module to change engine color. This indicated that the modules are the method to customize a ship.
The hud, however, might not be a part of the ship's data structures. It might be a separate thing altogether. That it's color is set by a config file indicates that the hud might be a separate design structure from the ship.
To fix it the way you suggest, the hud needs to be reprogrammed as a part of the ship if it isn't. If it already is, then it needs to be editable through the ship's control panels or the livery.
FDEV said they were open to a solution for the lack of an editable config file on the PS4. I don't have any real idea how their code works but if the hud color will ever be customizable then it has to be in game somehow. Can each ship have a "config file" that is read when it is loaded. Then add a control to the ship panel to adjust the hud color? If the hud is a separate thing, can it be rebooted with out restarting the game?
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How to store this info is fully up to FD. We could just as well have HUD color on the livery and then have it on the right hand panel in the modules. There's nothing to prevent that.
Point in case: engine colors and weapon colors also were not there from launch. They were added in 2016 or so, so years after launch. The problem is not how to store the data on the ship. The problem is that the HUD itself is not flexible enough. I mean, there's three values in the config file and they influence -everything-. From the radar over the shields and hull display, heat, side panels up to the color of faces in the station menu. So you modify the config file to have a nice, clean and eye-calming color. But friendlies now are a blueish red on the radar, while enemies are a redish blue. And NPC faces in stations look like they rolled through the makeup box for the Adams Family.
The actual work is there: seperate all these aspects. Have different settings (means: more entries in the config file) for seperate parts of the HUD. So you could change the color of many elements, while keeping the red/orange/green of the radar intact and have the NPC seem to be at least in the color range of human skin.
And as our console friends can't modify their config files, other means would be helpful. In come the HUD colors from the item store. It would work around the config file problem, would be available to everybody and would even make FD some money, turning this small upgrade into a rather lucrative one.
I have suggested something like this before.
The default we have, is the mandatory design that Pilots Federation has mandated.
So every new ship we buy, came with this set as default.
But then we have the ship manufacturers own take on the layout, so we get that installed as well as an option. So if buy a Gutamaya ship, like an Imperial Eagle, we get a second option for Gutamaya's vision of their layout on this ship.
But what if you have a Lakon ship, but would like to use the Gutamaya design? Here we could add some tasks etc, to complete for Gutamaya, to unlock their design to be installed on ANY ship you own.
And once the ship manufacturers, have come out with their alternative designs, we have a bunch of other EGO's out there that want to put their mark on things, yes, the Powerplay, more specific their various powers in Powerplay.
So take Zemina Torval, she could have have layout that is optimized for mining, giving how she have created the mining lance powerplay weapon.
Then we have the Alliance, Federation, and Imperials, same here, their layout is added to their ships, and can be unlocked for all ships.
Then we another group of EGO's, the engineers, of course these cannot avoid getting into having their layouts!
So that gives us something like
1x Pilots Federation default layout
6x Ship manufacturers
11x Powers from Powerplay
3x Super Powers.
24x Engineers
Total of 45 HUD layouts, that FDev can mess around with.
I am not saying any of these must make sense etc, I would more expect some of these to even be rubbish, or even strange looking for some of us, but these are more to promote the person, manufacturer etc. Using specific colours, layout etc, to match. Some might be good for specific tasks, like the example with Mining and Zemina Torval.
I can see expanded use of some of these presents information that are not available in the normal Pilots Federation HUD, like a smuggler HUD, that gives extra info regarding of how "visible" you are, would have been great to have before Nightvision came and ruined this anyway.
So our onboard computers have place for 3 layouts.
1. Hard locked to the Pilots federation layout, as mandated.
2. Optional, normally have the manufacturers layout
3. Optional, normally have the Alliance (Alliance * ships), Federation (Federal * ships ) or Imperial (Imperial * ship) layout for respective Super Power ship. On all other this is empty by default.
2 and 3 you can change to any unlocked layout that you have available at any outfitting.
Outside outfitting, you can change between the stored layouts you have.
So you will ALWAYS have access to the default layout that we all are familiar with, and you are always going to be able to change to this layout.
The default we have, is the mandatory design that Pilots Federation has mandated.
So every new ship we buy, came with this set as default.
But then we have the ship manufacturers own take on the layout, so we get that installed as well as an option. So if buy a Gutamaya ship, like an Imperial Eagle, we get a second option for Gutamaya's vision of their layout on this ship.
But what if you have a Lakon ship, but would like to use the Gutamaya design? Here we could add some tasks etc, to complete for Gutamaya, to unlock their design to be installed on ANY ship you own.
And once the ship manufacturers, have come out with their alternative designs, we have a bunch of other EGO's out there that want to put their mark on things, yes, the Powerplay, more specific their various powers in Powerplay.
So take Zemina Torval, she could have have layout that is optimized for mining, giving how she have created the mining lance powerplay weapon.
Then we have the Alliance, Federation, and Imperials, same here, their layout is added to their ships, and can be unlocked for all ships.
Then we another group of EGO's, the engineers, of course these cannot avoid getting into having their layouts!
So that gives us something like
1x Pilots Federation default layout
6x Ship manufacturers
11x Powers from Powerplay
3x Super Powers.
24x Engineers
Total of 45 HUD layouts, that FDev can mess around with.
I am not saying any of these must make sense etc, I would more expect some of these to even be rubbish, or even strange looking for some of us, but these are more to promote the person, manufacturer etc. Using specific colours, layout etc, to match. Some might be good for specific tasks, like the example with Mining and Zemina Torval.
I can see expanded use of some of these presents information that are not available in the normal Pilots Federation HUD, like a smuggler HUD, that gives extra info regarding of how "visible" you are, would have been great to have before Nightvision came and ruined this anyway.
So our onboard computers have place for 3 layouts.
1. Hard locked to the Pilots federation layout, as mandated.
2. Optional, normally have the manufacturers layout
3. Optional, normally have the Alliance (Alliance * ships), Federation (Federal * ships ) or Imperial (Imperial * ship) layout for respective Super Power ship. On all other this is empty by default.
2 and 3 you can change to any unlocked layout that you have available at any outfitting.
Outside outfitting, you can change between the stored layouts you have.
So you will ALWAYS have access to the default layout that we all are familiar with, and you are always going to be able to change to this layout.
So true. But we can all dream that FDev have unlimited time, skill and resources to do all of this without making the game bad....and then I know reality checks in smacks me on the head with all conflicting stuff... realising I am happy I am not the one in charge of all of this...
I'd like to dream that way still, but I've been following this company for too long now and I think I'm starting to read a pattern...
Knowing that they always engage new ressources in new franchises (which is great, don't get me wrong), leads me to believe that ED is simply a money machine to finance other projects, projects that are more relevant in the current time and market.
EDIT : Just a gut feeling, no actual backing on that. I'll have my answer in 2020 I guess
