Is there anything they can tell us about the ongoing process of refactoring the ship MFDs?

Right now the MFDs are small, scaled down, and not readable. Previously they used to have what they called "support screens" which were screens with minimal information on them, with a font size that made the information more legible. They're looking to have a system where by default, the MFDs will be in this minimised configuration where they only show the information that you really need to know, and they do so in a way that's readable without focusing on the display. However, when you then focus on the display, they want it to contextually change to something more in-depth, which can work because now the MFD has more screen-space to show readable information. Zane adds that the cool thing about the UI tech he's helping to develop, is that they're taking cues from web development (which is also his background so he knows a lot about it) where there's a thing called "responsive design". This is where you can have a rule set up so that, if there's a box in their UI that goes beyond a certain point, it then shrinks down, and you can have different styles applied to that, and conditionally so depending on the size of the box. As such they're leveraging that to help with the reformulation of the UI on screens, and it could also be helpful when they potentially implement customisation of HUDs/UIs as a tool to manage and maintain it. Right now in-game they have different sized screens, where each size has its own binary file, meaning that if they want to change one then they have to go into each binary file and make a change. But if they can maintain just one UI, which then has different style rules applied to it, then that makes it much easier to maintain. So changing one thing would then make that change for each different manufacturer, and every kind of configuration. Simon adds that regarding the actual process right now, they're looking through the designs that already exist in-game and working closely with the vehicles team to figure out what they want to show on the screens, to plan out what's going to be in all of the MFDs, so that they can then redesign each screen to achieve its maximum potential based upon what information needs to be shown. After that, the UI tech will eventually reach a point where the screen's are redesigned and the tech's ready to be put into the game.