General Category > Unofficial F/A-18 Acceleration Pack board

Collimated HUD

(1/6) > >>

crim3:
I'm having a great time with the F-18. The only thing that I'm missing is a collimated HUD (I run FSX in stereoscopic). That would complete my experience. I can't avoid thinking almost all the time how cool would be not to see the HUD doubled when looking outside through him, specially at landings.

Is there anything that could be done unofficialy to do that? Any editing, any file patch or replacement? Is not a problem if the HUD simbology can be seen outside the HUD when moving the point of view, I read that you initially were going to do a collimated HUD but that problem stopped you from do it.

virtuali:
Collimated HUD was planned but, it requires some support from Simconnect that is actually missing.

We can read the default eye position (that one that resets itself when pressing ctrl+space), and the eye position as modified by the head latency wobbling, but we miss the actual eye position when moving it, like for example with a Trackir.

Without that info, it's not possible to really collimate the display, without having to resort to an half-backed solution like we did in the Cloud9 Phantom, were we simply had a *very* big gunsight placed ahead the airplane and flying with it, giving the illusion of a projection, but with other issues, like for example the gunsight not being 3d clipped by the hud glass so, if you moved your head laterally in the Phantom, the gunsight would eventually appear floating outside, giving away the trick.

Collimated hud is also much easier with 2d panels, but since we don't have one in the f/a-18...

We might consider it for our next airplane to be out next year. Since it will be published by ourselves, we should have more freedom about deadlines and features and of course using unofficial and/or dirty hacks to get the info we miss from Simconnect in other ways.

wambulance:
what is a Collimated HUD??

virtuali:
Have a look here:

http://www.rockwellcollins.com/products/cs/at/avionics-systems/head-up-displays/system-overview/hud-basics/index.html

On top of being focused to infinity, in a simulation we have to add additional calculations to have the outside world conformal to the HUD informations. For example, the HUD waterline should always be aligned to the real horizon. In real world, this is done with optics and everything is then calibrated to the normal human field of vision and to a typical height ( I think the pilot has to be seated a look at a specific point in the cockpit to calibrate the HUD to his own height).

In the sim, we have also changing conditions not found in the real world, like the ability to change the field of view with the zoom command, and that complicates things.

We tried to do that in the F/A-18 but, unfortunately, due both to timing constraints and to information missing via Simconnect (we can't read the actual eye position, only the default eye position) and with the increased difficulty of a varying FOV, a proper collimated HUD didn't make it into the final product.

Intrepid:

--- Quote from: virtuali on March 26, 2008, 02:40:38 am ---Have a look here:

http://www.rockwellcollins.com/products/cs/at/avionics-systems/head-up-displays/system-overview/hud-basics/index.html

WOW that was a lot of info , thanks for the link,it cleared up a few misconceptions
Randy
--- End quote ---

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page