6 replies to this topic

[Chesko]

(cross-posted from the General board, was told it would be more suitable here!)

Hi, all. I'm a hobby programmer / modder / hardware guy. One of my dreams would be to build a cockpit for use in games like MWO, flight sims, and the like.

One of the keys to supporting this is being able to access certain user interface information from outside the application. For instance: warning lights, lock on indicators, ammo counts for the player, etc. This information could be used by:

• Simulation / Cockpit builders (for instance, to drive a small hardware LCD display to show available ammo)
  
• G15 / G19 programmers, for building custom keyboard LCD applications (something else I have experience with)
  
• Other software programmers that want to build custom "helper" applications for display on a separate monitor

This accessible information should of course not be information that would give an inordinate advantage to the player, or be information that they could not ordinarily access via conventional means. It simply enables hobbyists such as myself to do things far beyond the developers are capable of supporting, WITHOUT hacking the executable or looking into your runtime memory to look for variables.




If this information were accessible via COM ports or some other suitable channel, that would be a wonderful gift to all hobby developers and system builders. And as anyone who plays PC games can attest, the mod-ability of a game is a very good indicator to its longivity. Enabling the simple access of this information for external display would be awesome.

Thanks for reading.

[NaCly]

I have to say I support this as well.

Just a few weeks ago i visited Texas Comicon in San Antonio and they had the guys from Mechcorp they had Sim Pods with additional HUD elements i could touch, with the Green screens with your and your locked targets damage outputs. only thing they could have done to make it feel better is to make them shake and tilt. I had not played MechWarrior in more than 5years and this experience is what brought me to this lovely form and informed me of MWO.

PS: i still got it, was like clubbing baby seals

[Urban UK]

+1 for this

would love an Ipad app aswell, they would have to be careful what information is sent out though, ie not extremely accurate position information, or we would see about a million aimbot programs

[NaCly]

No the kind of data being asked for here is for the most part just detailed HUD outputs. Anyway aim bots i have seen ether go in to the game program and read the x,y,z values of your targets head and point you to look at it, just tell the program the person your looking at received a head shot. The aim bots ones you have to look out for use pixel coloring info to adjust the aim. but i digress.

Just having real time exportable Values for HUD elements Would a great boon to the Player side of the simulation experience. Just cleaning up my HUD and making some elements on a secondary display would give you less distractions under high stress situations. At the start of the Information Age fighter jet cockpits got jammed packed with all the new gizmos, doodads and whatyamacallits and it was actually impeding the fighter pilots ability to keep full situation awareness because of information overload. I would imagine that every one has their own level of nonessential information tolerance so the ability to customize the HUD elements is a must.

[Chesko]

Well, the special Razer controller (with the touchscreen interface) that's being prototyped is going to need to be able to access some of this data. Hopefully that means that the developer will be implementing some of this, or we can simply piggyback on the data that would ordinarily be received by this special controller.

[Exilyth]

I second this suggestion. Being able to interface directly with an api gives you much more freedom in the creation of custom control and display devices.

[DruidArena]

YES! This is exactly what I was hoping to find, but the DEVs seem silent about this. Any word on their end?

I was planning on salvaging scrap military vehicles to really get the feel of a mech. Not to mention I've got some buddies who want to work on AVRs for the old tech and even clear glass PCB touch sensor controls! Won't do any good if we can't get this though.