A selection of readouts & displays for HUD modding

[DaveK]

The bottom part of your HUD can be easily modded by creating a file called affichage.jpg around 3200 x 800 pixels and putting it into the HUD folder in your main EM folder. Note that it must be a jpg file not a png! You can put more or less anything you want into it (including piccies of your partner to garner brownie points ) - this package is displays/instruments/readouts plus a couple of blank background instruments you can customise.

This is my present version of my HUD display showing the effect of affichage.jpg. The position and shield info is shown dynamically - but that's another mod!



The following example shows where you need to position your extra graphics to prevent them being ‘erased’ by the game’s own dynamic displays. I suggest that you create your own affichage or look through the many HUD mods for a starter - you’ll get a much better base resolution!



You can of course create the display/instrument graphics from scratch, but I found it easier to use images available from the internet. More often than not a cool looking display was only a small part of the downloaded image. So to save you time, let you experiment or inspire you to create your own, I cut out around 90 images. The originals are available from SeeJay's website, along with a pdf thumbnail file so you can see whether it's worth the 90M main file download.

Note: The thumbnails are reduced to low res, 200 pixels (high or wide) images. The originals are all 200dpi - png files and of different sizes (only affichage needs to be a jpg!) and will give a much better result

To use the files just resize/reshape and/or crop and/or recolour them in a graphics programme. There are some examples where I've recoloured a display or even parts of a display just to see the effect and how easy it is to do!

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[Marvin]

This works for which cockpit? (Btw, the link to SeeJay's website says that the zipped file is in .png format.)

[DaveK]

This works for which cockpit? (Btw, the link to SeeJay's website says that the zipped file is in .png format.)

The images can be inserted into the affichage file and so it works for any HUD mod that accepts it which I know is EMII and I think covers EMI as well. Not sure about AA

The files in the zipped package are .png to preserve their quality. Just modify and merge them into the affichage background image and then save the finished product as affichage.jpg. For some reason, affichage.png doesn't work!

Personally I use a photo programme to alter the images (colourise/brightness/contrast/cropping etc) and merge them in a vector programme (easier to resize and reshape and keep the layers separate, and export them out of the vector programme as a jpg file with 100% quality.

Hope this clarifies things

[PaulB]

That's cool and what might also be cool if it were possible, and it probably need a better computer than I got because I'm sure it would add more to the cpu overhead, is if one of those could be used to show a Rear View. Might be too small, not sure, but still might be useful.

[CS-ACI-]

Hello,

That's cool and what might also be cool if it were possible, and it probably need a better computer than I got because I'm sure it would add more to the cpu overhead, is if one of those could be used to show a Rear View. Might be too small, not sure, but still might be useful.

If it was not too much of an overhead, what would be nice is all the "out of window" views, even selectable. An option on wide screen displays possibly. Lower detail resolution than main screen but more than Radar.

Steve

[DaveK]

Hello,

That's cool and what might also be cool if it were possible, and it probably need a better computer than I got because I'm sure it would add more to the cpu overhead, is if one of those could be used to show a Rear View. Might be too small, not sure, but still might be useful.

If it was not too much of an overhead, what would be nice is all the "out of window" views, even selectable. An option on wide screen displays possibly. Lower detail resolution than main screen but more than Radar.

Steve

The dynamic displays are already in the mods and they just repeat the four shield %'s showing F, R, B and L at N, E, S and W points; the contents of your cargo bays (but as the id number not name); the sector and in-sector coordinates. You can only control where they appear on the screen (and their size by moving then closer or further away), not their layout. The mod uses the hudtext.dat file.

Showing a rear view (though it would have to be tiny!) is a whole other issue! At the moment its not even possible to use animated files (GIFs) to make the displays 'move'. To allow GIFs would be a major coding job - in return for just a bit of eye candy

The images I've provided (the only contribution I've made is to recolour a few) are just intended to save players time hunting the web for suitable images or creating their own.