sonar HUD DEMO (boxed)

Demo blurb
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It's a fully working sonar HUD, it's not time restricted, you can even continue to use it as is if it suits your needs.

However, I have limited some of the functions. This is meant to be a taster for the real thing, after all.

So while it does work, it's a shadow of the real thing.

Specifically, the changes I've made to the demo are as follows:-

a) It's not modifiable, therefore you can't add/remove hexes to suit your needs.

b) It's stuck at 5 rows of hexes, the fully featured one has 7 full rows and 6 out of 8 hexes on an 8th row.

c) You can't change the radius/resolution it uses, it's set at 8m resolution which gives a 32m radius.

d) You can't change the period between scans, it's set at 0.5 seconds.

However, you *can* change the keel depth and warning depth settings so that you can see the HUD working for your specific boat's draught (or draft for you Leftpondians).

Some great places to see the HUD working in action are:-

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/de%20Ruyter/102/102/23 - some nice ridges

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Tromp/197/126/23 - a little atoll

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Glirm/39/192/23 - a sand bank

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Chopsaw/114/3/23 - a channel heading north

Full blurb
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I made this HUD to help me steer clear of areas of water that might cause me to run aground while out sailing.

The hexagons it uses are mesh, but I imagine that most sailors can see mesh nowadays.

It has a simple presentation as I wanted to avoid cluttering up the screen, all the more room to watch the world go by! So all you'll get to see are a collection of small hexagons, and a small hovering text display next to it to tell you other things that you'll need to know.

The HUD itself is made of an inverted more-or-less triangle of hexagons. They form a 60 degree arc. In use, the hexagons will change colour indicating the depth of water ahead of you. Your position is marked by the single hexagon at the bottom of the triangle. The hexagons above it describe the arc ahead of you.

Simply touch the HUD to activate it, where it will start working straight away with the default settings. Touching it again will deactivate it. While it is active, it will scan the area ahead of you in a 60 degree arc and display the usable water depth by means of colours on the hexagons.

Chat commands are used to change the radius/resolution, the dangerous water/keel depth (red hexes), shallow water depth (yellow hexes) and scan period.

Modding
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I've made the HUD with a view to keeping it flexible for people that are comfortable fiddling with things and dismantling/tweaking them.

If you want more or less hexes, simply link/unlink them. Be sure to set the name and description correctly, the HUD uses that to determine where in the world that hexagon should be sampling. Modding is discussed in much more detail in the manual :)

Caveats
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Due to circumstances beyond my control, this sonar HUD will only be accurate when in mouselook or sat on an object. As it is intended to be used while sat on a boat, this should never be a problem. But please be aware if you're going to use it while swimming or flying about as a lone avatar it might not be 100% accurate. If you're really after an excuse, here's the line from the wiki page:-

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/LlGetObjectDetails

OBJECT_ROT will return an accurate facing for Avatars seated or in mouselook, but only a rough direction otherwise.

But as I said, you'll be sat on a boat, so it shouldn't be a problem :)

Important! The HUD will scan in the direction that your agent is facing (rather than your avatar, they're distinct entities). If you find that it's not scanning where you think it should be, then you're not facing in the right direction. This *will* be, without exception, because the thing you're sitting on has rotated you for some reason, more than likely to accommodate an animation. So if you want to be assured that it's facing the same way your boat is facing, be sure to be at the helm!

See item in Second Life