Wiki / HUD

HUD

The heads-up display is diegetic - the instruments read the ship's real state - and contextual: elements surface while their situation is live and settle back when it passes, so a quiet cruise has a quiet screen without you managing it.

Screenshot assets/wiki-hud.png The full HUD in flight: velocity sphere, speed + mode chips, the keybind icon dock, a lock reticle and the corner target inset, ideally lightly annotated.

What is on screen, and when

The HUD is CONTEXTUAL: it shows you what the situation calls for and gets out of the way when it does not. Idle cruise keeps a quiet screen - the velocity sphere, your speed, the dock's few live verbs, the always-on ship markers and the status bar - and everything else arrives with its moment.

The situations and what each brings up: an engaged autopilot adds the mode chip and (for GOTO and ORBIT) the destination marker, and grows the speed chip; a combat lock adds the red reticle with its DST/CLS readout and the target viewfinder, and inverts the dock's RADAR chip; a travel lock with no combat lock brings up the target viewfinder on its own; hot weapons raise the ammo gauges and put up a railgun's bore sight; a locked docking target in range puts up the docking sight; Cinematic clears the whole contextual HUD.

Show explanation

Autopilot burn - the mode chip comes up, the speed chip grows (it is the number you are flying by), and the dock lights the maneuver you are flying. GOTO and ORBIT also put the destination marker and its readout up; STOP flies without one - there is no destination to mark. GOTO and STOP also draw the predicted path, and GOTO a dim guide to its target.
Combat lock - the red reticle, its DST/CLS readout and the target viewfinder come up, and the RADAR chip inverts because the lock is the thing you would change.
Travel lock - with no combat lock held, the target viewfinder shows your travel target with its name, range and closing speed.
Weapons hot - the ammo gauges appear on your weapons and the lock readout grows. Weapons are hot while you hold them raised or hold a combat lock. In normal flight the gauges stay off, also with a travel lock. With the trigger down the reticle pulses. A hull carrying a railgun draws its bore sight.
Low ammo or reloading - while the gauges are up, a nearly-dry group (a quarter magazine or less) pulses amber and an active reload pulses its incoming batch. Neither brings the gauges up in normal flight.
A posted objective - a chip carrying the objective itself pops into the stack at the top of the screen the moment it posts, like a chat notification, and then keeps a slow breath. The chip is a notification: it leaves once you have read it - after a dwell, or the moment you open the interface. The one exception is the Take a job chip of a new world: it stays up, with the interface key and INTERFACE under it, until your first accepted job.
An incoming transmission - the comms card fades in with a soft blip while the earlier transcript stays still.

Grave / tilde (or the gamepad Select button) toggles the whole display between two levels:

On - the contextual HUD above.
Cinematic - a clean screen for captures and quiet flying. Clean, not empty: see the two deliberate exceptions below.

There is no third "minimal" level any more: showing everything all the time is what made a manual detail dial useful, and the contextual rules do that job continuously instead.

Every widget still declares its kind - Instrument (velocity sphere, flight chips, autopilot marker, maneuver instruments, lock crosshairs, allegiance markers), Chrome (the keybind dock, verb cues, the component-lock panel, edge indicators, objective markers, the target inset) or Status (the fps/version bar) - and all of them clear at Cinematic.

Two surfaces carry no kind at all, and so the toggle does not reach them: a cutscene's title card, and its SKIP prompt. Both belong to a scene rather than to your instruments. Hiding the way out of a scene that is still playing would be worse than the clean frame is worth, so a capture taken during a cutscene keeps them.

Flight readouts

The flight instruments sit around the ship, not in a status bar:

Velocity sphere - an orbiting cone and shaded sphere driven by your linear velocity; white and blue in manual flight, cyan when the autopilot is flying, violet while you hold RCS fine adjust (the violet wins over the cyan). A yellow variant shows the local gravity pull, hidden in flat space.
Shell size - both spheres are drawn around your LIVE hull: the white one stands 5 m outside the furthest point your sections reach from your centre of mass, and the yellow one 6 m outside that. Fly a patrol picket and they hug it; fly a larger line warship and they grow to enclose it. Lose the sections that were reaching furthest and they settle back in over about a fifth of a second, so a hull coming apart is never left standing through its own instruments.
Speed and mode chips - a speed readout (m/s, meters per second; see the glossary) beside the sphere, and a mode chip reading AP GOTO - BURN (verb and phase: STOP/GOTO/ORBIT/MATCH and ALIGN/BURN/HOLD) only while the autopilot is engaged, NEUTRAL while you are docked and your ship does not fly the pair, or HELM FAULT while the game cannot measure your docked pair and neither ship flies it. Both park just outside the outer shell, so they move out with the hull instead of landing on it. In a small or scaled window the chips move together to stay on screen and clear of the target inset: below it, above it or to its left.
RCS magazine - ten violet pips one row under the speed chip, one per tenth of the RCS magazine left. Every start hull holds 300 m/s; each authored section above 65 adds 5 m/s. Losing a section in combat does not change the capacity. The row shows while RCS is pushing, while you hold RCS input, and until a used magazine is full again.
ORBIT ring and radius spoke - while you hold an orbit, a world-space ring marks the orbit plane and a thin spoke runs from the well to your ship with the current radius.
Predicted path, GOTO guide and flip gate - while GOTO or STOP flies, a thin cyan line runs ahead of your ship along the path the autopilot will fly. The game finds it by flying the autopilot's own controls ahead of your ship for up to 30 seconds, with the pull of the dominant gravity well, so the line can curve - and, on a GOTO routing around a rock or planetoid, bend around the bodies the forecast saw sitting in the way when it started: it is the route the computer will actually fly, not a plain straight-line guess. It stops where the leg ends or 30 seconds out, whichever comes first. GOTO adds a dim straight guide from the end of that curve to where the target is now, so a long leg still points at its target. The guide is still not a forecast: it only points at the target, and it never bends. It shows as soon as GOTO engages, from your ship, before the first forecast is ready. A ring and a FLIP <n>s countdown stand on the curve where the brake flip starts - the FINAL leg's own flip; swinging wide of a body on the way there never spends it. They go once you reach the flip or the brake starts. On a GOTO they stay gone for the rest of that order, even if the autopilot plans a new flip; a new GOTO, also to the same target, shows them again. The curve hides while the target changes course or spin or a gravity well moves, and while you are docked; the guide stays. It returns with a new forecast once the target holds its new course. Both clear when the autopilot lets go.
Keybind dock - a row of icon chips along the bottom of the screen, one FIXED SLOT per main flight verb: STOP, GOTO, ORBIT, CANCEL, RADAR, RCS and DOCK. A verb you cannot press right now draws dark in its slot, so no chip moves when another comes or goes. HELM (H) shows only while you are docked, to the right of the row; it always reads HELM. ] and [ step the component lock (the wheel too, weapons raised); the dock has no chip for it. Docked to a pair you do not fly, the mode chip reads NEUTRAL, HELM is lit, and the verbs it would give back stay on the dock, dark; while you hold the helm the HELM chip is inverted. While the game cannot measure the pair (HELM FAULT) or a living station holds the helm (STATION HELM), the HELM chip stays dark and the mode chip says why, unless you hold the helm and can still hand it back; the blocked verbs stay dark until that ends. A verb your ship does not have stays dark. Each chip shows the real KEYCAP for the key that drives it plus the verb word, in full phosphor - or inverted while that verb is what the ship is doing (an engaged ORBIT stays inverted even though you can no longer start one). The keycaps follow your hands: after a gamepad button or a stick push the row draws the gamepad buttons, and after a key or a mouse button it draws the keys again. A verb with no gamepad binding keeps its key. While you hold the RCS key (Shift) the RCS chip is inverted and the STOP chip reads MATCH, because X is then the MATCH chord; it is dark when MATCH would refuse (no travel lock, no RCS, an empty magazine). The chip names what the key does now: with Shift up it reads STOP, also while a MATCH flies, because plain X then brakes and replaces the match; it is inverted only while its own word flies, so MATCH inverts while a match flies and Shift is held. A chip pulses gold when a scenario wants you to use it, dimmer on a chip that has not lit up yet - that is how a tutorial points at a key before you can press it. The anchored verb cues are the same chip parked on the thing you would act on - the ORBIT keycap on a gravity well, the GOTO keycap on your aim lock.
HUD notice - a one-line amber box above the dock, its left edge on the screen midline, clear of the comms panel. A station's dock refusal (<NAME> REFUSES DOCKING, <NAME> DOCK OCCUPIED) posts here once, holds for four seconds of game time (it pauses with the game), then fades, with one interface cue. A held job whose work is done posts JOB-1 done: hand in at STN-1 the moment it is done, naming the poster by its chart code and no credits: the reward is paid at the hand-in. A refused or cut-short MATCH posts why, such as MATCH: NO TARGET or MATCH: RCS EMPTY. A DOCK press that does nothing posts why, such as DOCK: NO LOCK or DOCK: TOO FAR (see Docking). One slot, no queue: a new line replaces the one showing. The notice holds its place: a GOTO or ORBIT cue under it moves aside until the notice ends.

Screenshot assets/wiki-hud-shell.png Both shells around a 360 m development stress hull: the blue velocity sphere enclosing the whole hull, the yellow gravity sphere outside it, and the speed chip parked off the outer edge.

Locks and reticles

Locks are slot-coloured: a white crosshair is your travel (nav) lock, a red reticle is your combat lock. The combat reticle carries a readout beside it - on its right, or on its left when the target inset or the screen edge takes the right side - with range to the target (DST), closing speed (CLS), the seconds until your soonest lit torpedo reaches the lock (TTI, only while one is closing on it) and a health bar (measured against the hull the target was BUILT with, so it falls as you take sections off and never refills) - plus a focus meter that fills as a fine-lock dwell accumulates. Lock an asteroid and the bar is simply absent: a rock has no health to draw, and how much of it is left is something you read off the rock itself. While you hold the radar gesture a hollow box shows, coloured by the slot it will land in; a white ring fills clockwise around the target while the lock-on dwell charges, and vanishes with a cue the instant the lock snaps (sweep off before it fills to cancel). Clearing a lock pops a brief "unlatch" ghost. See Targeting & radar.

Bore sight

A hull carrying a railgun has one more instrument, because nothing else on the screen says where a hull is pointing: a thin sight line in the slug's own steel blue, out of the muzzle and ending exactly where the slug would end, with a ring on every section that shot would destroy. It is up whenever your weapons are hot, thickens as a charge runs, and stays up dimmed through the reload so the twelve seconds can be spent aiming.

Screenshot assets/wiki-section-railgun-sight.png The sight line out of the muzzle onto a gunship, with the kill ring at the face the slug would enter.

Docking sight

A hull carrying a docking port gets an instrument of its own once it locks a ship that has one too. Inside 80 m of face gap the sight draws three things in the world: a flat cross over each of the two port faces, a line between them, and a tick on that line for every cell of capture distance still to cross. Fly it in that order - square the two crosses up, stand the line perpendicular to them, then close the gap until the ticks run out.

It is a two-colour readout, and each half answers one question. The crosses turn green when the two ports are facing each other closely enough; the line and its ticks turn green when both the gap and the closing speed are inside the envelope. Cyan means not yet. Three green and the DOCK chip lights.

Nothing on it flies for you, and the roll is not drawn at all - the ports are cylinders, so any twist docks, and lining one up is your business. The sight is up only while you are locked, in range, carrying the verb, and not already docked.

Screenshot assets/wiki-hud-docking-sight.png The two port crosses and the ticked line between them on a final approach.

Pickup sight and canister tags

A hull carrying a cargo intake draws a pickup sight for a canister within 200 m of your ship, with no lock needed: a cross on the intake's face and a line to the canister. A travel-locked canister in range takes the line first; otherwise the canister nearest an intake does. Stand the line perpendicular to the cross, then close the gap. The sight goes with the canister when the intake takes all of it, and stays on a canister with items your hold had no room for.

Within 100 m, each canister carries an amber tag that reads what it holds, such as 4 Hull plate, or Mixed cargo for more than one item, with its total mass under it.

Allegiance markers

A small filled triangle floats above every ship in view, pointing down at the hull and coloured by how it stands to YOU: green for your allies (your AI wingmen included), red for hostiles, grey for neutral bystanders. Your own ship shows none - you know where you are. The triangle tracks each ship and hides when it leaves the screen (pointing at off-screen ships is the edge indicators' job); a ship re-aligned mid-scenario flips its marker on the spot, and so does an armed Neutral ship answering your fire - red while it is hitting back at you, grey again once it lets go, even though its side never changed. It reads at a glance so a mixed brawl - wingmen and enemies tangled together - stays legible. See Factions.

Target viewfinder

The corner inset renders a live, magnified 3D view of your locked target through a second (offscreen) camera. Your combat lock owns it; with no combat lock it shows your travel lock, and neither lock changes. Its frame glows hot-red while your weapons are hot and steel while safe, with corner ticks that appear only when hot. A caption names the target over its range (DST) and closing speed (CLS, positive while closing); a generated asteroid is named by its kind, as Rock asteroid. A combat target adds its relation or NEUTRALIZED in its relation colour; a travel target stays steel. Bodies that cannot be scoped (nav beacons) show a NO-SIGNAL panel instead, and a combat beacon keeps that panel even when your travel target could be framed. When a framed combat target is destroyed the inset freezes the final pose for about two seconds - a kill cam - then shows your travel target or closes. The fine-locked section glows in both the inset and the main view.

Comms and objectives

Scenarios talk to you through a comms stack: broad story cards with a distinct speaker header above larger message text. Each card is drawn in its own accent colour, so you know what kind of voice it is before you read a word. They rise from the bottom-left like a chat transcript. A newly posted objective arrives in the objective stack at the top of the screen - a column of larger amber chips, newest on top. Both are notifications, not standing lists: each leaves once it has been read, so a quiet cockpit stays quiet.

Show explanation

One colour carries the whole card: the frame around it, the speaker header, the placeholder portrait, and the words themselves lifted toward white so the message stays the brightest thing on it. The dark backing and the way a card fades are the same on every line, so the only thing that ever changes is the voice.

Almost everything you hear is the traffic your shift is paid to answer, and that is the HUD's own blue - the colour a line is drawn in when it says nothing else. A line that is NOT that says so in colour: an amber band you merely overheard, a green voice in the cabin beside you, a corporate net in its house colours. Nothing is looked up and nothing is registered, so a scenario or a mod invents as many voices as it has colours.

Several comms cards can stay visible at once; newest sits at the bottom, older lines push upward and fade. Each card has a large speaker icon slot, using authored scenario art when supplied and a cockpit placeholder otherwise - Basic Training gives Range Control its own green CRT portrait, and a mod ships as many faces as it has voices. A card fades in with a soft blip and leaves by timeout or explicit dismiss. A burst larger than the visible stack waits its turn in order; a backlog longer than the panel could ever show (two dozen lines) drops its oldest waiting cue rather than queueing a line that would come up after the scene it belongs to.

An objective chip carries the objective itself behind a diamond; it pops the moment its objective posts and then breathes quietly, and it is read either after its dwell or the instant you open the interface. The one exception is the Take a job chip of a new world, which stays up until your first accepted job. For the standing list, type objectives in the command shell (or log for the combined comms and objective history); in flight, the larger gold objective markers, diamonds and edge chevrons on the targets themselves are the lasting "go here" cue. A completed objective chimes and its chip goes with it. Everything clears with the scenario rather than lingering over the menu.

The interface

Press Tab (or click the right stick on a gamepad) to open the interface: a full-screen panel with Map, Ship, Inventory and Jobs panes, plus Station while you are docked at a living station, that pauses the game and frees the cursor. M (or Y on a gamepad) steps to the next pane; Tab or Esc closes it and resumes flight. A posted objective's chip carries a TAB cue while it is up - the in-flight reminder that the interface is there.

The interface has its own page: the map and GOTO, the ship's sections and their repair and rebind actions. Press ; for the command shell, which prints the flight log and answers objectives.

The screen substrate

Every projected element - lock brackets, edge arrows, objective markers - rides one shared system that anchors a UI node to a world point or entity, sizes it by fixed pixels or apparent (on-screen) size, and either hides off-screen targets or clamps them to the viewport edge with an arrow pointing back to them.