How would you create an interactive Virtual Cockpit Car Display

Development Programming & Scripting UI
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1

Hi everyone!

So for a test project we’re lookin into creating a virtual cockpit display for a car like this one:

displaymedia.ashx_.jpg

In the end it should have at leas the basic functionality like displaying the current speed, current fuel level, engine heat, etc.
All of that should be controlled from an external tool, so I guess we’ll need to write a plugin that allows an external tool to send data into the engine and to affect the actual display elements, but I’ll leave that up to the programmers. :smiley:

But how could I set something like this up to have a framework that actually works like that? Since Flash integration had to make way for UMG I thought about using that, but I’m not sure how you’d have to set it up that it actually fits in there.
I also thought about setting it up as a material, but how should that even work?

So yeah, I’m completely at a loss on how to actually set something like this up and got higher ups breathing down my neck, expecting me to come up with something. And everyone tells me how easy this could be done in Unity, but I want to convince them that the Unreal Engine is the better tool.

So, yeah if anyone has any ideas. I’d be glad to get some input!

2

I did pretty much that with a material and a canvas texture, using the hud class to draw text, and textures on the canvas ; then feeding that canvas to a material. See below. It’s very manual work, you’re basically left with DrawText() and DrawTexture().

Obviously you can’t do any complex widget like sliders etc without reinventing everything. Slate/UMG is the right way to do these, but apparently you can’t use that and apply the result to a 3D mesh.

3

the real pilots call them “clock-shop” because of a very good reason.

4

Okay I actually didn’t even knew this. I’ll look into it. Thanks!