I think the HUD needs to be rethought. Here's what I think.
First off, we need a shift light on the tach somewhere. It should come on at different points for different cars, so the recommended shift RPM needs to be set in the .car file. The shift RPM is not always the same as the redline...
The current guages are a little inflexible now that we have many cars. Some cars have a max RPM that doesn't end on a multiple of 100, and it's hard to tell where the max RPM is in this case. Also, some cars go far faster than the speedometer will display. I think that a good way to work around this would be for each car to have its own textures for speedometer and tachometer, and corresponding needles. The .car file will need to have a field telling the rotation of the needles at rest and the maximum degrees of tach needle rotation. It will also need the max rotation of the speedo needle, as well as the maximum speed displayed on the speedo.
In addition to this and the no HUD option, I think we should add a new HUD option that draws a simpler display with much smaller textures. I'm thinking we need a horizontal bar plus a text percentage for the fuel meter on the left, to the right of this, a horizontal bar with text displaying RPM for the tach. To the right of the RPM meter will be empty space where the mouse input sliders go, and then something indicating the current gear, and on the far right will be the speed (just text) plus speed units. So to draw it in text it might look like this (imagine that the [ ] is a black bar and ( ) is a colored bar on top of this):
Code:
[( 95% fuel ) ] [( 4785 RPM ) ] 2nd gear 55 MPH
I think it's possible to have a HUD like this that is faster than the one we have now. We could even add yet another HUD option that is the same as this one but with only text.
I may end up coding this stuff eventually, just thought I'd post this so I don't forget the ideas, to see what others think, and perhaps to entice someone else to write it before I get around to it.
