Will player HUDs continue to be attached to helmets? [The asker remembers an old lore post that said something about mobiGlas being connected to contact lens displays.]

So we actually have, I want to say five or seven different layers. So one of the layers is basically when you don't have your helmet on, you just wake up, and that would be considered contact lens. And so you'll see a different HUD layout associated with that. Another HUD layout would be when you put on a helmet, and then that contact lens goes away or the information is adjusted accordingly. Another thing would be when you actually get into a ship and how the visor brings up different things, in particular your target information. And then from there, it'd be any other casting, or when we talk about mobiGlas or those types of things, those would be kind of another layer. So from our standpoint, we are actually doing passes on this right now, saying, okay, what is relevant? And in particular, what is relevant from an FPS standpoint, as well as when you're sitting down in a ship, what is relevant associated with that? So, for example, we have what we consider widgets, and we're working on cleaning that stuff so it moves in and out. But for example, if you're sitting there in a ship and you get shot, you don't know that you're getting damaged. There's no health associated with that besides just the effects of you bleeding out. Versus if you take your helmet off right now, you have to do chat via mobiGlas, which we're fixing, by the way. So that would be on all the time. And then if you think about going into third-person camera and stuff like that, any HUD associated with that, then that's entirely [another layer].

So if I understand you correctly, it almost kind of sounds like the way Bluetooth devices pair with each other. When you wake up, there will be some level of HUD available to you on your contact lens, or implants, whatever. So your player character without a helmet will have some aspect of HUD. And then when you put the helmet on, that pairs with either the contact lens or the implant, and then they go, okay, well, we don't need this on this level. This is here on this level.

Yeah, and then it also depends on the type of helmet you put on. So, for example, if it's a combat helmet, then that would give you information on, let's say, your weapons. Versus if it's an explorer helmet, maybe it gives you information on temperature or atmosphere or things that would be relevant towards that career. So that's the way that we'd be kind of, I don't want to say hard theming these, but that's in essence kind of what it is. It's pushing these things towards being combat or utilitarian.

And then when you get in your ship, because some ships have hard displays, some ships have holographic displays, it pairs there too. So now you've got three levels of potential UI and it's got to balance.

That's the difficult part. So, I mean, right now, Simon and Rich and I think John Crew, John Dudley are going through saying, okay, we just bring up all the HUD, we bring up FPS, we bring up ship, and then we overlay it and we make sure that everything kind of has a safe zone and a safe spot and place to live. And then from there, you start talking about manufacturers, you start talking about how these things need to come in and out and what's important, what's really important to us and even to the players.

It's cool that the UI work applies to every aspect of Star Citizen. I'm trying to think if there's any aspect of Star Citizen that the UI team doesn't have to have some input in.

And I guess from my standpoint, we have everything implemented right now and it's not sexy. It's what we consider functional. And from a UX standpoint, a lot of times it's clunky as well. And part of that is just the iteration. And then from there, now we're going through and fixing things. And that to me is where we can actually start making it sexy. We can see, okay, we tried this on the MFDs. It didn't work. It's very hard to read, very hard to use. You've got to zoom in on something. It doesn't give you the pertinent information, what you need right then and there. So it's us looking at the MFDs saying, okay, how can we fix these? Or even basically the information that's your ship versus the target ship. When you're scanning, what is the relevant information there? So it's us working through those and just cleaning all that stuff up.

I'm thinking about the interesting outlier scenarios, like when you're panicked and rushed to get into your ship and you don't have a helmet on, where the MFDs that are in the ship suddenly become way more important because you don't have the helmet aspects.

I mean, again, from a Connie standpoint, we want you basically sitting in a normal flight suit or something like that, versus everybody in a big bulky armored suit sitting in a Connie.