How should I create a cockpit view?

Development Programming & Scripting UI
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1

Hello,

Has anyone done a cockpit style view in UE4? Think static 2d image overlayed on the HUD like an old multiplayer flight sim might be.

Does one place the camera near the cockpit region and hide the model? How would one accomplish this?

Thanks for the help all.

2

As I am mainly an artist im finding it really hard to imagine that doing a 2d cockpit would ever look good. You could easiely just model the thing out and concider it a place to add most of the details since the cockpit will often be in focus.

3

Visceral, sorry if I said 2d - that isn’t quite what I was implying. Please see this screenshot from a modern flight sim (IL-2).

Basically, how does one show a view such as this, without showing the model assigned to the player? In the example below you can look left, right, pan around and there is no model to be seen; therefore, I assume the model is being hidden. How can I do this in UE4?

http://img185.imageshack.us/img185/2074/il2stu011gs5.jpg

4

Ah so you want a hud. Yeah sure then you would be fine just hiding the model or in the case of flightsims just placing the camera just infront of the plane.

Here is a basic video showing how you can setup a hud using blueprint.


It might be really apparent but instead of having all hud elements in a large picture that stretches all over the screen make several small ones and place them where they need to go.

5

If you are using a Blueprint to serve the player craft, with a mesh as a component there are two settings that can help.

Under Rendering, expand the extra options and there will be two checkboxes - ‘Owner No See’ and ‘Only Owner See’.

It sounds like you want to place the camera element in the cockpit then hide the plane with Owner No See.

I have my vehicle as a mesh (including the body of the pilot) plus another mesh for the head. All meshes are visible to everyone but the head is set to Owner No See. This means I can stick the camera where the head is and not worry about any polygons getting in the way.

I also have some polygonal HUD elements that are set to Owner Only See. This way there isn’t any weird floating dials that other players can see.

I"ll probably replace a lot of those in a HUD Blueprint though, and only leave the crosshair I guess. None of the dials actually work yet!

6

Thanks to both of you for your input, exactly what I was looking for - particularly the owner see/no see explanation above.

Appreciated!