Release Elite Cougar MFD Cockpit Display - game changing new companion app

Bionic Bytes

Bionic Bytes
Do you want to bring your Elite Dangerous cockpit to life!

Full details are now available at Elite Dangerous Cougar Display
Discord channel: https://discord.gg/5KCc3tH

With a pair of Thrustmaster Cougar MFD's and two 8" LCD monitors, I can take Elite's instrumentation to the next level by rendering real-time cockpit displays in stunning 3D.
Weather you're in combat, launching an SRV or exploring deep space, the extended cockpit dynamically updates according to the current game status and displays realistic and valuable information back to the player.

Forget plastic printed inserts! This is the real thing! This software renders beautifully animated icons which dynamically respond to the Cougar's button presses as well as other scene animations. Note: You can use touch screen tablets, or a second monitor if you like - the use of MFD Cougars is optional!

This is just a small summary of the features (there are a lot more):

Odyssey Support

Simulated Space Radio Chatter
  • Enhances supercruise trips with background simulated chatter.
  • Voices synthesised and passed through multiple audio filters to make the sounds more "authentic" and suitable for that classic NASA chatter.
  • Other ambient sounds intermix with the chatter and pan around your speakers.
  • Included - NASA's Apollo 11 Moon landing transcript
  • A simple, fully customisable script / "langauage"

POI / Navigation Heading Assistant
  • Enhances supercruise trips with background simulated chatter.
  • Use the user interface and set your own logitude and latitude settings
  • Fully automatic calculation of the heading (once you approach the target planet)
  • An optional, overlay window can be position ontop of Elite Dangerous

Ship Loadout / Modules Info
  • Visually locate each module in your ship
  • View ship blueprint
  • View engineering info on each module
Route Plotter
  • Plot routes from your mission list
  • Manual route plotting - create your own waypoints
  • Plot routes using neutron star boosts

Galaxy Map
  • Plot routes on an in-built galaxy map
  • Rotate, pan and zoom the plotted route
  • System names copied to clipboard for easy entry into Elite
  • Seamless transition into an Orrey view

Orrery
  • Beautifully rendered and animated view of the systems you have discovered
  • Use the UI to quickly discover and visualise/filter the different kinds of planets
    • Terraformed states
    • Atmosphere types
    • Atmosphere composition
    • Composition type (Metallic/Rocky/Icy)
  • Integrated into the Galaxy Map
  • Visualise the orbit shapes, planet rotations, orbits, types and compositions

Customisable Cockpit Displays

  • Cougar users can use the rocker switches to change aspects of the display dynamically
  • Almost zero configuration. A single click of the mouse is all that is needed
  • Runs minimised in the system tray.
  • Simply click on the icon to bring up the menus to reconfigure settings, position windows, etc.

Text to Speech Synthesis

  • Brings Elite Dangerous to life by making NPCs ‘talk’.
  • Multiple pirates (up to 5 simultaneously) are given different (user defined) voices for automatic speech synthesis.
  • Assign a unique synthetic voice as an assistant to your Elite COVAS voice.
  • Assign a unique synthetic voice to use used by system authorities / police.

Visual and Audio Information Announcements

  • Performs cargo limpet checks when undocking:
    • Prospector and cargo limpet controller
    • Recon and repair limpets
    • Hatch breaker limpets
  • Crew member check for ships with SLF fighter hangar
  • Conflict Zone warning
  • Anarchy system warning
  • High security system warning
  • Compromised nav beacon announcement
  • Hazardous Resource Extraction Site announcement
  • High value targets announced – see piracy
  • Hot Target announcements – see mercenary
  • Low fuel level warningsv
  • Docking rejection warnings, including the reason for refusal
  • Notoriety level warnings
  • Criminal activity warnings
  • Capital ship presence

Visual Aids

  • Landing pad docking assistant
  • Mining assistant – information on prospected asteroids
  • Docking assistant – information on available services
  • Target ship assistant – shield/hull health, legal status, Cmdr name, human player indicator
  • Notification of impending (NPC) interdiction
  • Notification of remaining jumps to final destination
  • Notice board with the 10 most recent announcements

Fleet Carrier Support

  • Audio and visual warning of impending decommission
  • Tracking of carrier finances
  • Tracking of carrier crew/roles

Piracy / Mercenary Game play additions

  • Ships equipped with cargo manifest scanners – visual and audio indication of ships with high value
  • cargo (this feature is currently waiting for Frontier to address a missing event in the Journal logs)
  • Targets with a bounty are highlighted and announced
  • Entry into High security systems is announced
  • Missing SLF pilot check and announcement

Bounty Hunting Game play additions

  • Record and search for systems with Compromised Navigation Beacons (CNB) and Hazardous Resource Extraction sites (HAZ Res)

Mining Game play addition
Ships equipped for mining:
  • Limpet check reminder upon undocking
  • Tracks minerals refined (per session)
  • Tracks current limpet count (per session)
  • Display of the cargo total, remaining limpets and material refined
  • Mining assistant – information on prospected asteroids

Exploration Enhancement

  • Graphical effect for planetary landings
  • Automatic switching to suitable consoles when in Analysis mode
  • Automatic screenshot to PNG converter, including renaming the files
  • Commander’s Log – a complete application in itself (see next section). Captures a log of strange and
  • interesting systems encountered on your journey.
  • Automatic console switching
  • Automatic switching of console roles in response to the game play occurring at the time.
    • Launch a fighter and the SLF and weapons consoles become active; switch to the SRV and the buggy console becomes active.
    • Automatic and seamless switch over to supercruise and exploration consoles

Simplified Configuration

  • One – click automatic key binding and synchronisation between Elite and EDCD application.With
  • once click, all the key bindings required by this application are brought over to Elite by replacing
  • unused bindings, or as a fall-back, secondary keyboard bindings.

Customisable COVAS Assistant Voices

  • Select your preferred Windows TTS voice to accompany COVAS.
  • Select other voices for system authority vessels and select/deselect voices for use by NPCs.
  • Built-in utility included for voice selection and testing.
  • Methods available for the possible expansion of available voices for all users of Windows 10! See the
  • separate guide on this topic.


Flexible Screen Layouts

  • Position the output windows on any monitor
  • Re-size the windows and even create margins so that the rendered output matches the dimensions of the secondary monitors.
  • Switch roles between the consoles.

Adjustables:
  • Plenty of tweakable settings to adjust colours and layout positioning and element sizing.
  • Add / remove icons, rebind keys, show or hide labels
signature.jpg
 
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Para Handy

Para Handy
This is different from this how?

In-Development - StatusDisplay - status.json / journal display and surface navigation assistant.

With the inclusion of status.json as an addition to the player journal data offered by the game in 3.0, I started development of an application to display that data and, given that positional information is included when in proximity to a landable body, allow the player to set destination...
forums.frontier.co.uk forums.frontier.co.uk

EDIT: just to be clear, I am not criticising, just asking.
 
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Bionic Bytes

Bionic Bytes
Para Handy said:
This is different from this how?

In-Development - StatusDisplay - status.json / journal display and surface navigation assistant.

With the inclusion of status.json as an addition to the player journal data offered by the game in 3.0, I started development of an application to display that data and, given that positional information is included when in proximity to a landable body, allow the player to set destination...
forums.frontier.co.uk forums.frontier.co.uk

EDIT: just to be clear, I am not criticising, just asking.
Click to expand...
I suppose it's a bit like saying a graphical adventure game (popular in the last 80s) is just the same as the text turn-by-turn adventure games. In my view they are completely different. In this case the presentation of the information and the way its delivered is the key.
Time will tell I suppose.
 

Para Handy

Para Handy
Bionic Bytes said:
I suppose it's a bit like saying a graphical adventure game (popular in the last 80s) is just the same as the text turn-by-turn adventure games. In my view they are completely different. In this case the presentation of the information and the way its delivered is the key.
Time will tell I suppose.
Click to expand...

I was rather expecting information and screenshots etc since "The concept prototype has already been developed and shown to be working" - never mind - good luck with your thing.
 

Bionic Bytes

Bionic Bytes
Para Handy said:
I was rather expecting information and screenshots etc since "The concept prototype has already been developed and shown to be working" - never mind - good luck with your thing.
Click to expand...
It's in alpha stage where all the pieces of the puzzle are coming together, but the graphics are not yet in a state to be shown. Maybe in a few weeks I'll post up some progress images.
 

Bionic Bytes

Bionic Bytes
I'm making steady progress although summer hols, weddings and other events seem to have taken over recently.
Meanwhile I've added speech synthesis and multiple worker threads to avoid any chance of stutter and researched how to trick Windows into making all the available voices available to the app. Could be quite interesting.
I'll post again with another update when I get a chance.
 

Bionic Bytes

Bionic Bytes
I've integrated my uber effects framework shader into the engine now so that the displays have some nice interesting effects happening either during or as a result of Elite interaction. Fixed an issue reading from the Journal files. Previously I had been testing against my own Journal simulator which never highlighted any issues at all. Just shows what real-world testing throws up! Next up is the writing of a notice board like section so that game events are rendered to a nice display in the centre of the console
 

Bionic Bytes

Bionic Bytes
Still plagued by the occasional file lock on the journals. Most of the time I run a journal simulator utility that I wrote rather than relying upon in-game events to test with. Seems I needed to re-write the event saving part so that it's more file sharing friendly.

Also still having issues with the UTC time conversions. The switching between UTC and local time seems ... unreliable, sometimes working flawlessly then suddenly not working. I've been using the Windows API to access 'file system times' and this seems to be the root cause. Switching over to a new code base with proper actual timezone logic seems to have finally resolved the issue, but it seems odd that I had to go to such lengths. Why does Elite write files in UTC time in the first place? Within the game itself there are places where UTC time is shown and other places where the time is local - you only have to look at mission times and comms messages to see this in effect.

On the positive side, the implementation of the notice board has gone pretty well. Up to 10 simultaneous messages can be displayed, each having their own set of associated timers and animation. This is per MFD.

Now just need to workout what to do when more messages are to be displayed than the board maximum (unlikely, but we still have to code that up).......
 

Clicker

Clicker
He’s excited and sharing his enthusiasm.

I know how that goes.

Only potential problem is building something up in people’s minds only to get lukewarm reception at actual launch.

I hope you do well BB and it turns out exactly how YOU want it.

Clicker
 

Bionic Bytes

Bionic Bytes
Hoodathunk said:
I'm trying to understand why you're posting with nothing to show.
Click to expand...
This isn’t a plug-in or a set of scripts. It’s a fully fledged 3D game engine and as such some aspects aren’t ready for public viewing because to see them when they don’t look too nice would ruin some of the shine and may put off some people. Assets take time to produce and even longer to polish. On top of that the GLSL shaders need to be checked for a diverse set of hardware differences on PC.
However, in my opinion it’s wise to raise awareness of the app ahead of time so that it gets a decent reception on launch due to some awareness by the community.
 
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mearmortal

mearmortal
Whatever you do you'll either have to provide a full list of build instuction and materials for the 8" displays, and ensure there are suficiant quantities for people to purchase, or, have them prebuilt for buying. If we cant get the displays running the coding wont be of much use.
 

Bionic Bytes

Bionic Bytes
mearmortal said:
Whatever you do you'll either have to provide a full list of build instuction and materials for the 8" displays, and ensure there are suficiant quantities for people to purchase, or, have them prebuilt for buying. If we cant get the displays running the coding wont be of much use.
Click to expand...
The 8” displays are off the shelf pre-built units available by searching amazon and the like.
Don’t worry I’ll provide some recommendations based on my research!
 

Hoodathunk

H
mearmortal said:
Whatever you do you'll either have to provide a full list of build instuction and materials for the 8" displays, and ensure there are suficiant quantities for people to purchase, or, have them prebuilt for buying. If we cant get the displays running the coding wont be of much use.
Click to expand...

Pretty sure he doesn't "have to provide" or "ensure" anything.
 

mearmortal

mearmortal
PingHansen said:
I fully agree with that.

That "Bionic Bytes" is kind enough to share his developments with us, does not entitle anyone to anything. If "Bionic Bytes" succeeds, then I will be happy for him. If he chooses to share the finer details, then I will be most interested - if not, then I will still be happy for him.
Click to expand...

The only concern I have with sharing a software build is poeple are more likely to use it, expecially if they are non technical, if all the parts to make it work are off the shelf ready to go. I wish him all the best of luck with his project, and look forward to the end result as I already have the MFD's in use, and would be looking to use displays with them at some point.
 
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