Hud color and F2 views

[sobe]

I find it very hard to read the HUD with my slightly washed out color monitor.  In the F16 and F18 I was able to make the HUD numbers and symbols black and that has worked perfectly.  However, I cannot seem to be able to do that in the F14.  Any help would be appreciated. 

When I go to the F2 views, in all other modules, the F2 view can be manipulated with the mouse.  For some reason, I cannot seem to do so in the F14.  Is this a bug or user error somehow?

[Czar]

1 hour ago, sobe said:

When I go to the F2 views, in all other modules, the F2 view can be manipulated with the mouse.  For some reason, I cannot seem to do so in the F14.  Is this a bug or user error somehow?

Strange but I've read in another thread someone else having the same issue with the Tomcat. I never did have it, but double middle mouse click will get your mouse to move the camera or switch to mouse interaction mode. Same on the cockpit, double middle mouse click will cycle between mouse look and mouse cockpit interaction. That's hardcoded.

Another keybind is available to do the same, but I forgotten which one was on the Tomcat by default. LCTRL+C perhaps?

1 hour ago, sobe said:

find it very hard to read the HUD with my slightly washed out color monitor.  In the F16 and F18 I was able to make the HUD numbers and symbols black and that has worked perfectly.  However, I cannot seem to be able to do that in the F14.  Any help would be appreciated. 

The F-14 from HB uses a proprietary/different HUD code, same as the one in the Viggen, so maybe that's what's keeping modding the HUD colors from being possible.
Monitor with IPS or VA screen could come in handy in an upgrade maybe?

Best of luck out there. Fair skies.

[sobe]

Czar

Thanks for the reply.  As to the F2 views, double clicking the middle mouse button did produce the mouse cursor but I could not move the plane around.

As to the color issue, I was able to change the Viggen hud to black, but the coding is very different from the F14 and was no help. 

[Zabuzard]

Regarding the HUD color, you essentially "just" have to understand the code in order to edit it. Let me give you a hand (Im doing this from mobile, so I couldnt test it, but it should work )

Stuff that is dynamically rendered on in DCS is called an "indicator", they are defined in lua (accessible to you), the entry point is always in:
DCS/Mods/aircraft/NameOfTheAircraft/Cockpit/device_init.lua.

We can find the HUDs indicator for the Tomcat for example here:


That then also leads you to the file DCS calls when this indicator is to be started, its init file in Scripts/HeadsUpDisplay/Indicator/init.lua.
In that file you can find the "page setup", which corresponds to the sub-lua files in the same folder that DCS uses to render the individual pages of the indicator:

The page of interest here is HUD_MAIN.
Scroll up 10 lines and you can see the definition and which lua file is responsible for HUD_MAIN, its Scripts/HeadUpDisplay/Indicator/indication_page.lua.

Thats the lua containing all the elements that are drawn on the HUD (the actual logic that plays these elements is in C++, not lua. Those are called "controllers").

Anyways, if you scroll a bit through that file you will see that all elements on the HUD use the material HUD_MAT:


Materials are what defines the look and feel of these elements, including the color.
Now you need to find the place where HUD_MAT is defined. If you scroll all the way up to the start of the file, you can see it including a lua file called materials.lua.
So lets visit that file and check:


HUD_MAT uses the color HUD_GREEN. Where is that defined? At the beginning of materials.lua, so scroll up aaaand:


Edit that to your liking and it should hopefully work (the format is red, green, blue, alpha/opacity)
(Btw, for indicator changes its enough to reload the mission, no need to restart DCS, just LCTRL+R or was it LSHIFT+R, sth like that)

Cheers

[draconus]

7 hours ago, Zabuzard said:

Regarding the HUD color, you essentially "just" have to understand the code in order to edit it. Let me give you a hand (Im doing this from mobile, so I couldnt test it, but it should work )

Stuff that is dynamically rendered on in DCS is called an "indicator", they are defined in lua (accessible to you), the entry point is always in:
DCS/Mods/aircraft/NameOfTheAircraft/Cockpit/device_init.lua.

We can find the HUDs indicator for the Tomcat for example here:


That then also leads you to the file DCS calls when this indicator is to be started, its init file in Scripts/HeadsUpDisplay/Indicator/init.lua.
In that file you can find the "page setup", which corresponds to the sub-lua files in the same folder that DCS uses to render the individual pages of the indicator:

The page of interest here is HUD_MAIN.
Scroll up 10 lines and you can see the definition and which lua file is responsible for HUD_MAIN, its Scripts/HeadUpDisplay/Indicator/indication_page.lua.

Thats the lua containing all the elements that are drawn on the HUD (the actual logic that plays these elements is in C++, not lua. Those are called "controllers").

Anyways, if you scroll a bit through that file you will see that all elements on the HUD use the material HUD_MAT:


Materials are what defines the look and feel of these elements, including the color.
Now you need to find the place where HUD_MAT is defined. If you scroll all the way up to the start of the file, you can see it including a lua file called materials.lua.
So lets visit that file and check:


HUD_MAT uses the color HUD_GREEN. Where is that defined? At the beginning of materials.lua, so scroll up aaaand:


Edit that to your liking and it should hopefully work (the format is red, green, blue, alpha/opacity)
(Btw, for indicator changes its enough to reload the mission, no need to restart DCS, just LCTRL+R or was it LSHIFT+R, sth like that)

Cheers

Cool and nice of you but I wish it'd gone into some bug fixing instead.

[Zabuzard]

Cool and nice of you but I wish it'd gone into some bug fixing instead.

Im gonna take that as a joke because anything else sounds silly to me.

[Czar]

12 hours ago, sobe said:

Thanks for the reply.  As to the F2 views, double clicking the middle mouse button did produce the mouse cursor but I could not move the plane around.

Check at Options -> Controls -> F-14 pilot section -> Axis Commands (on the drop down menu next to it) -> Camera Horizontal/Vertical View, see if the mouse axis are properly bound. Mouse_X for Horizontal and _Y for vertical.

[sobe]

Czar

One problem solved and one to go.  It was the mouse issue.  The axis commands for the mouse were blank.  Don't know why but added the axis commands and now all is good.

Later I will attempt to understand and try the color suggestions above.  This may be beyond my pay grade, but I will give it a try.  

[Zabuzard]

Czar
One problem solved and one to go.  It was the mouse issue.  The axis commands for the mouse were blank.  Don't know why but added the axis commands and now all is good.
Later I will attempt to understand and try the color suggestions above.  This may be beyond my pay grade, but I will give it a try.  

It sounds more scary than it actually is, the tldr is to open the file
DCS/Mods/aircraft/F-14/Cockpit/materials.lua in a text editor and edit line 5 that says HUD_GREEN. Just give it different numbers at the end and it changes the color, that's all.

I just tried to additionally explain how it all works and how to find these things, so you can do it for any aircraft in DCS regardless of how the module devs decided to code it.

[sobe]

Zabuzard

Thanks for your help, but I could not do it correctly.  Below is the first few lines of materials.lua that I changed to black.  When I loaded the F14, there were just a few pieces of the plane that appeared and no cockpit or HUD.  

[MY ATTEMPTED CHANGES BELOW]

materials["HUD_BLACK"] = {10,10,10,,255}
materials["HUD_BLACK_GLOW_C"] = {10,10,10,15} -- tune alpha to adjust collimated glow brightness
materials["HUD_BLACK_GLOW_NC"] = {10,10,10,2} -- tune alpha to adjust non-collimated glow brightness

[FROM THE GAME FILE]

--materials["HUD_GREEN"] = {36,221,36,255}
--materials["HUD_GREEN_GLOW_C"] = {36,221,36,15} -- tune alpha to adjust collimated glow brightness
--materials["HUD_GREEN_GLOW_NC"] = {36,221,36,2} -- tune alpha to adjust non-collimated glow brightness

[SECOND ATTEMPT]

materials["HUD_BLACK"] = {10,10,10,,255}
--materials["HUD_BLACK_GLOW_C"] = {10,10,10,15} -- tune alpha to adjust collimated glow brightness
--materials["HUD_BLACK_GLOW_NC"] = {10,10,10,2} -- tune alpha to adjust non-collimated glow brightness

On the second attempt, everything showed up, but the HUD was a nice shade of GREEN.  

Edited 10 hours ago by sobe

[Zabuzard]

Dont rename it, only change the numbers. Your first line also has a comma too much.

Id suggest to grab the original file and start touching a single line only, just change one of the numbers at the end of the line :)

The code still looks for the material named HUD_GREEN, so when you rename it it wont find it anymore and hence crash. It needs to retain the name (or alternatively you would need to rename all usages of HUD_GREEN in the hud files).
The numbers are what make the color, not the name. The name doesnt really play a role for the color, so it can just stay as HUD_GREEN.

[sobe]

Zabuzard

I tried 3 different changes.  First I only changed the first line numbers.  Second, I marked out the 2nd and 3rd lines.  Finally, I put back the 2nd and 3rd lines but only changed the numbers to 10,10,10,x.  In all cases, black did not appear in the HUD

Again thanks for trying to help me.  .