One of the big selling points of Star Citizen has been the immersion factor. We can kind of see it already with the HUD being actually rendered inside the ships and helmets. What are some challenges you've faced or compromises you've had to make while trying to make the mechanics have diegetic (in-universe) interfaces?asked by Haiku_knives

So this is where we actually went to one of the developers to kinda get their feedback on this particular question. We went to our UI guru, Zane Bien, and here's what he had to say:In-universe projected interfaces, while extremely immersive, are also affected by a multitude of game and environmental variables, which is many cases might negatively impact accessibility. For instance, if the seat is positioned just a bit too high, too low, too near, or if the field of view is too low, vital information may be lost as a result of being clipped off the edges of the player's screen. If the instrumentation is too small or too distant then readability can become hindered, too big and it can be come overly intrusive on the viewport. These are just a few of the factors we actively take into consideration when modelling the screen and instrumentation layout in the ship cockpits, ensuring that the interface remains accessible to you as pilot, while still allowing the flexibility for compelling diversification and style across ship manufacturers.So again, that information comes from Zane Bien...

Damn, he's eloquent.

Seriously! But it also brings to light how much detail we try to look at the UI on every perspective, that if we want to make-... Let me rephrase that. The difficulty of creating HUDs for each one of our ships has to take all of these factors into consideration.

You know, it's like you're designing an actual ship. It would be so much easier if we just did a screen-space HUD, bloody screen for damage, and call it a day... It would kinda suck, but it would be so much easier!

But given that each spaceship has its own unique style of cockpit, you gotta give Zane much props for being able to come up with a unique HUD for each one of these ships while keep the perspective of how close the player is to the screen, how close they are to the HUD, how close they are to the helmet and so forth.

Yeah. No I think that Mike Northeast and him spent a tremendous amount of time going back and forth on, what is all the pertinent information? How do we catalog it? Where do we put it in the player's viewspace? What viewspace are they most likely looking at most of the time?

And how much real estate each thing takes up... if it's gonna be distracting... what are players most likely to reach for in the cockpit? ... That's a lot of stuff to think of.

Yeah!