Wishing for a "non-rendered" area that can still work with HUDS and windows.

[Waondering]

I have a monitor with a lot of real-estate. It would be a really good feature to limit the port render-size and choose the position. The rest of the window area can be put to use for HUDs and other windows. That way for example you could move the chat window so it doesn't cover the game scene.

I can make an example picture if anyone would like to see what I mean.

[Chic Aeon]

You can do that by making a simple graphic with a transparent area on where you want the "game play" to be seen. Then attach it as a hud. This was fairly popular maybe five years ago. So an easy fix for you.

[Whirly Fizzle]

You mean like this? :smileywink:

[Drew Bhalti]

Whirly!  any progress on this?  I had the test viewer, bit buggy, but loved it.  so now that you bring it up.  I'm drooling agian

[Waondering]

Yes! that can work too!!. but can it work for huds?

[Waondering]

Thanks for the suggestion... however that only creates a mask over the rendered area... not very efficient for high-rez monitors. I'm on a laptop and limiting the rendered size is also part of the goal.

[Nalates Urriah]

Moving panels or HUD's outside the viewer frame is currently not possible, AFIAK. It is a feature people have asked for for years. The Lab and Third Party Developers have looked at what would be required. It seems it is too much work as the old technology SL started with while great for its day, lead to a design that is hard to convert to a newer style interface.

 

[Madelaine McMasters]

HUDs are not viewer UI elements. They're actually in-world objects that are attached to the screen. So, even if the Firestorm team does finally make DUI work, I doubt it would affect HUDs, unless they're able to sequester the drawing enviroment for the HUD. And that poses problems for HUD elements that are expected to operate in the visual field, like a gunsight.

[Waondering]

That is why I'm recommending they keep it inside the viewer, but simply allow the rendered area to be reduced and poised within the viewer window. Then huds and windows should still be movable throughout the entire window.

[Whirly Fizzle]

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Drew Bhalti wrote:

Whirly!  any progress on this?  I had the test viewer, bit buggy, but loved it.  so now that you bring it up.  I'm drooling agian

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Afraid not.

The test Firestorm DUI viewer is still available here: http://downloads.firestormviewer.org/windows/Phoenix-FirestormOS-aprilalpha-4-6-1-40484_Setup.exe (be aware it's really just a proof of concept to show it can be done and it's buggy).

The code diff can be downloaded here for any devs that want to work on this feature: http://downloads.firestormviewer.org/beta/DUI.diff.gz

Further info: http://www.firestormviewer.org/the-real-joke-dui-is-no-joke/

 

[Whirly Fizzle]

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Waondering wrote:

Yes! that can work too!!. but can it work for huds?

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The Firestorm DUI viewer will only allow you to move viewer floaters outside of the viewer window. It doesn't work for HUDs.