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HUD visibility in thick cloud.

Roy Holmes

Roy Holmes

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To give the appearance/effects of collimation, it is usual for the display polygon for a HUD to be some distance in front of the airplane model.

I have noticed that where this distance is more than about 20 metres the display can be considerably reduced in contrast or even become invisible when heavy thick cloud is penetrated. I assume this is because the visibility is at or below 20 metres.

Has anyone else noticed this and if so is there a fix?

Roy
 
If you have access to the source file, you cand play with the material settings, namely the alpha z value and thus tell FSX to render the HUD in front of the clouds. Mind the HUD glass material though, which might require the same tweak to be drawn in front of the "projected" image.
 
Heretic said:
thus tell FSX to render the HUD in front of the clouds
Click to expand...
Not sure about that. The HUD has to be rendered on the polygon which is situated at a distance such that pilot head movement of say one inch up causes a parallax error of only one inch at the distance to the polygon.
The very small parallax error is needed for true conformal symbol presentation. Any significant parallax will create weapon aiming errors on the ground.
However the HUD can be seen when taxying even when the polygon is subterranean. So that facility exists, but does not work with cloud.
I suppose that the fog could be suppressed where there are symbols.
In the real world the collimation is done at the projection optics and there is no issue. In thick cloud and in formation it is often the case you can see the nearest parts of your lead's wing but not the fuselage. Having the same effect in the sim is realistic.
But it is no fun when you enter cloud flying on the HUD and the display disappears.
Roy
 
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