I'd want more than color schemes, I think every race should have distinct visual aesthetic.

The design aesthetic differences between the racial ships in EVE is one of the better parts in the game. A color or a logo doesn't really do it justice. I'd expect lines/borders, map, placement, visual representation of things like armor/shields/ammo, reticules, and charge indication to all be different between the races. I also think you should be able to choose which race's display you have independently mind you, because it seems reasonable enough that you can load up your racial OS on whatever you use.

I'd expect the racial vehicle HUDs to be somewhat custom as well. This is four empires developing operating systems for vehicles/suits prior to ever meeting the other races. You wouldn't expect the sort of crossover/copying that you see between macs/linux/windows because these were developed in a vacuum relatively speaking. Any sorts of concessions to shared technology now would likely not completely override the existing aesthetics and racial conventions.

There's references to Amarr ships being extensions of their religion, you could imagine a reverence and baroque beauty to it. You can imagine a Apple sort of aesthetic with the slick Gallente school of thought. Caldari would seemingly have a soulless corporate functionality to it. Minmatar have that independent spirit, like they're like an emulator developed by indy hackers with odd handles.

I want a dynamic FOV and a functional transparency option for the HUD.

The narrow FOV and cluttered screen are immersion breaking in my opinion.

There already is a transparency option

There already is a transparency option

Love it - thanks KAGEHOSHI! I'll be passing this on to the relevant teams :)

While I completely agree (I did make the original racial HUDs thread), this thread is just for practical changes.

Of course, I just like to mention expanding the scope of what "racial" HUDs means in comparison to just color changes or adding logos (which is very superficial).

To be more specific, I see an Amarr HUD as stylistically a cross between something you might see as an RPG UI and an illuminated manuscript with an emphasis on Amarr colors/gold. Perhaps even shades of the Rapture design style, and obviously not as cluttered as an actual illuminated manuscript.

The Gallente I see as being a space-age extension of a Mac-like UI, where you'd have next to no hard edges/corners, lots of round/beveled icons, and the Gallente-green would be the "least" of the UI. Almost a liquid-theme.

The Caldari aesthetic I see as being the closest to sort of an old terminal interface. All the bells and whistles of the employee-side of a POS terminal. In that sense, the Caldari UI elements of a HUD would be closest to the current HUD. All the glitz and presentation of early 1980s computer hardware. The current HUD is already mostly Caldari Blue even...

The Minmatar "hacker" aesthetic would be inspire by the sort of cobbled together presentation of hacks, etc. The idea being you could almost get an Anonymous/iPhone-jailbreak/Pirate sort of vibe from things. There's a lot of variance inside this space, but the assemblages of characters, hacker call-outs, juvenile elements, mosaics, and esoteric character elements would gel well with a deep red/brown Minmatar color-set as well.


At any rate, a more "practical" request would be the ability to independently toggle UI elements on and off. Part of this would go to the 100% transparency (or higher than we already have), but as a user-friendly matter it would be nice to be able to independently select as many UI features as you want to see. This already exists in many games where XML-sets for the UI can be individually reshaped, relocated, and toggled on/off altogether. A person can opt for more information on their screen to the detriment of visibility or peripheral awareness, or have an extremely pared down UI where just their ammo or objectives or the kill feed or... whatever is shown.

Some degree of color customization for friend foe (if not interface) is also a good idea for color-blindness reasons. A person with visual issues right now would likely have problems with the squad/team differences. Given an option to shift to patterns instead of colors helps that segment of the population.

**stuff**

Originally used by the adolescent hacker group The 'Fendahlian Collective' to break pass high tech security firmware, these script packs contain intricate code which modify the inherent behavior of certain modules by directly inserting commands into the firmware. The applications of such technology was not lost on the major players and the kids who invented it now head their own research divisions.

**** lots of stuff ****
Without doing any radical shift in layout, or getting into immersion stuff like HUD-wobble (which should have never been removed), this is what I believe is important for improving the HUD.

The great and mighty CCP Saberwing flew to me from the heavens with his saber-sharp wings, and he has beseeched me, the glorious emperor god-king KAGEHOSHI, with a scroll with five-hundred-fourteen golden seals (Twitter message) asking me to compile a list of important HUD stuff. In the past I have made this thread (Improving the HUD) full of ways to improve the HUD, but here I shall extract only the most important functional stuff only, as well as some new ones I have come across on the forums.


[Map/minimap]

East, West, and South on the minimap. Very important.

Grids on the map/minimap to make calling out locations more effective, similar to how the maps have grids in the map feedback section (example). Your current coordinates should be very easy to tell on the minimap. If possible, the target readout when aiming should also list the coordinates as well.

Building outlines shown on the minimap. This is very important information to know.

[Team/squad]

Who's talking indicator: A speaker icon along with the name of the person talking should pop up when someone on your team or squad is talking. Also the icon should float over their characters heads so you can visually see who is talking.

Squad list: A list of your squadmates right on the HUD. Should include sqad status indicators:

-Their current suit under their names (to quickly visually identify them)
-Squad leader indicator (duh)
-Shield and armor bar to easily tell who needs help, etc.
-Mortally wounded indicators (name highlighted in red)
-Inside a vehicle indicators (little car symbol)
-Clone terminated/respawning indicators (name is grey, or crossbones symbol)

Total squad WP below the list so you can tell how close to getting a strike your squad is.

An indicator for strikes that stays on the screen until the is used. Sometimes the notifications aren't noticed in the heat of battle, so having them last until the strike is used (or are no longer available).

[Equipment]

Support equipment icons: Its useful to know who is carrying a nanohive, repair tool, and nanite injector, even when you don't currently need those things. It can be very important to know what your teammates can and can't do for you.

Low ammo icon: those who carry nanohives should see a special icon over those with low ammo to indicate the need for nanohives.

Have the equipment that you or your squadmates deployed appear as a green to know which ones are yours or your squad's.

Some sort of notification of when your equipment has been destroyed.

[Weapon]

A different crosshair to indicate when a weapon is done charging, right now its hard to tell when for example a forge gun is fully charged because the charge gauge is all the way down inside the ammo meter; I shouldn't have to take my eyes of the target to check if fully charged. This would not be needed if all weapons had a distinctive sound, animation, and/or visual effect synchronized with charge completetion to queue the user. This one isn't really that important since you can just get use to it, but I think it would be good for usability.

The grenades-carried indicator on your HUD should display different symbols for the various grenade types, or some text to tell you what your type of grenades are.

[Other]

We need an indicator to know when we are being repaired by a repair tool. This is very important for teamwork; you don't want a guy you're repairing to run off from you because he doesn't know you were repairing him. This is a must, we had it before a while ago, but it was removed (thought its removal was a bug, but maybe it isn't).

I noticed right now that messages about whether you are scanned, hacking taking place, and others occupy the same place, and only one can be displayed; if an enemy starts hacking a CRU, I will no longer get information about whether or not I have been scanned. It might be good idea to just stack these messages, and even the squad order, RDV, and strike messages to the right where the kill-tracker currently is, and move the kill-tracker thing lower on the screen to make room (inspired by this).

-Upper right corner may be able to display squad orders, if you have been scanned, pending RDV requests, what is being hacked, etc.
-Lower right corner will show who kills who.



Without doing any radical shift in layout, or getting into immersion stuff like HUD-wobble (which should have never been removed), this is what I believe is important for improving the HUD. Behold the mighty list! marvel at how I typed things!
Seriously wish I could have just typed all this directly on twitter with one big direct message, I hate character limits.