HUD Instruments - move to other screens/machines?

[bookofthefuture]

First up a thanks to the developers. I'm a long time privateer/freelancer/elite lover who is delighted to have found an active community of others. Not only do you guys share my enjoyment of these games, you actually have the coding skills to create a new one. Sadly I flunked the coding part of my degree, but I'm enjoying your work so far.

Brown-nosing aside, there's feature I'd like to see. It may be excessively complex to implement, and it may be considered unimportant next to more pressing concerns, but wanted to float the idea and get some feedback.

On some earth-bound flight-sims, I understand you can run separate screens for different instruments, rather than have everything in the HUD. My limited research says this requires separate PCs with their own graphics cards connected over a network to the main machine running the game. I'm guessing that the main machine outputs data to various ports, and separate applications on the networked PCs collect this information and display it graphically. In the more simple options this might just mean sending damage info between machines. Comms, targeting, and navigation would - I guess - be progressive more difficult in that order.

Now it might be pretty environmentally unfriendly, but I think this would be very cool. I'm considering committing myself to one of the ultimate geek endeavours and building a gaming cockpit with Vega Strike in mind. Would anyone else be interested in the idea of being able to have separate screens for targeting, navigation and comms?

[loki1950]

Welcome bookofthefuture glad you like as you assumed that feature would be not trivial to implement would need an almost complete rewrite of the rendering pipeline which is actually on the road map but as switch to OGRE 3d for our rendering back-end so maybe one of the devs on that project might take an interest if it doesn't complicate the code too much as most players would most likely not be able to use it.

Enjoy the Choice

[bookofthefuture]

Thanks Loki. I thought as much. Would be great to see it become at least possible as the move to OGRE develops. In the mean time I'll be knocking up a console to make the various commands a little more accessible than they are on a keyboard. And maybe some pedals...

[Darkmage]

this is definately a good idea. I too have been looking into cockpit building and I agree that definable instruments would be an awesome addition.

[loki1950]

There is a new member who is actually in the process of building this check this thread for the details http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/forum ... hp?t=11761

Enjoy the Choice

[scienceguy8]

I hate to resurrect what may be a dead thread, but I have something to contribute. Perhaps we should add a function to VS that sends and receives info across a serial port? There is a microcontroller called the Arduino that can be made to communicate with a PC using a serial connection through its USB cable. Just make it so that VS is capable of serial communication, document how information is sent, received, and interpreted, and maybe provide a few basic Sketches (Arduino-speak for programs). I guarantee you that in a month or two someone will have made a basic cockpit with LCD screens to tell the pilot the status of various devices on his/her ship, LEDs that light up to convey important info (ready to jump, hostile lock, etc.), and buttons and switches that can perform important functions (weapon select, eject, communications, etc.). I have always wanted a single toggle switch mapped to each gun and missile so I could select which I wanted to fire quickly.

The only question is what information to send and accept from the Arduino? Joystick functions would probably not need to be sent to the computer across the serial link. If someone wanted a custom joystick they could just take apart and modify a USB one. Same would probably go for pedals and throttle.

[Ares]

On some earth-bound flight-sims, I understand you can run separate screens for different instruments, rather than have everything in the HUD. My limited research says this requires separate PCs with their own graphics cards connected over a network to the main machine running the game. I'm guessing that the main machine outputs data to various ports, and separate applications on the networked PCs collect this information and display it graphically. In the more simple options this might just mean sending damage info between machines. Comms, targeting, and navigation would - I guess - be progressive more difficult in that order.

I have X-plane and have experimented with this a bit, but it's not something i really cared about too much as the info overlays usually give plenty of info.
It isn't quite that complicated though based on my understanding, as long as your vid card has two monitor outputs i belive it's possible with one PC.