Sludge,
Hey it’s Capt. I wanted to send you some HUD pics as you requested on the forum. These are from my buddy from high school who currently is flying the super hornet for the royal maces. Hope some of these work.
<pics snipped out>
OK this last one is from FSX 
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Wow, that's very helpful. Thanks for taking the time! The last one is especially impressive (heheh).
So, I know that we're all busy people, and just so that no one is wasting their time, I'll try to share exactly what I'll ultimately need.
A little conceptual background first: as you can perceive from things like properly collimated FSX HUD's, or from that nice Spanish Air Force vid link that Sludge posted, or from other sources, the HUD symbology is best viewed (and only even completely visible) when the pilot's eyes are in a certain place in the cockpit. This ideal, 3-dimensional viewing area that we want the pilots eyes to be within is usually referred to as the "eyebox." For the A and C Hornets, my educated guess is that its eyebox is something like a shoebox in shape, but probably only around 5" on its longest side. I don't know precisely.
Nailing down the distance between 1) the center of that eyebox, and 2) the HUD glass that the symbology is displayed upon, is important. (+/- is fine; we don't need it THAT precisely.) And the glass is a bit slanted, too, so let's say we're talking about the theoretically best point on the HUD glass for the waterline to overlay, the position on it that would give a "best," full, centered view of all the nice green squiggly stuff. (This area on the glass is a bit below center, IIRC.)
Oh, and
the dimensions of the real HUD glass would be nice too. I swear I have those somewhere, but can't find 'em right now.
So, what would really save some time, and could avoid a lot of back-and-forth, semi-guesswork between me, the model editor, and whomever is testing, is to know some of these things about the real aircraft in a little more detail. Again, plus or minus. (And I did try, but couldn't find anything in the NATOPS I have.) Anyone who might have insight into that, it would be great if you could send it to me at the e-mail address that Sludge gave up above!
That's what I need for the *REAL* aircraft.
For the FSX *MODEL*, we need the in-sim corollaries to the above. This would be the
distance between the model's default eyepoint (0,0,0) and the model's HUD glass surface. And I mean the visually depicted surface, regardless of what the HUD gauge is actually displayed on. Also, less important, but nice, would be to have the model's HUD glass dimensions. (Again, the visual depiction of the glass is what's important.)
I guess only FSDreamTeam has that model data?
That's it, really. Having some of that info would speed some things up. And if we can't get it, then I'll do my best to try to deduce it from what we DO have.
But all of that is the basis of the request for really good pics of the real cockpit. Profile pics, from the seat and up to the front of the glass, are especially helpful.Oh, and BTW, some of this may sound like unnecessarily trivial detail, but I promise it's not!
Thanks all,
Scott
P.S. -- now that collimation is in play, I must make some pretty fundamental modifications to the gauge itself. But... no problem! I have ways to do this pretty quickly. But even if it takes a week longer, I think you'll all like the difference you're going to see. ;-)
