General Question Colors

[Dimkin]

Hey all!
I have a bit of funny question:
Just so happens that I'm a bit color blind... I'm having hard time to see the colors on orbit MDF while having my plane and target plane at the same time. I do see hard color differencies though. The question is: where can I change the target color plane to blue or maybe red...?

Thanks in advance!

 

[TSPenguin]

You can't.
This is a known issue and will hopefully be resolved in the next version.

 

[Dimkin]

Any idea when it will be released?

 

[willy88]

I think a solution would be to have the MFD colours universally changeable, so you could change the colour scheme of every MFD at once. Yellow and green really aren't that far apart in the colour spectrum.

 

[RisingFury]

Any idea when it will be released?

Tuesday.

:lol:
Sorry, just couldn't resist.




Nobody really knows. Martin doesn't always have time to work on Orbiter and prefers not to set a release date and work under pressure.

You can get the latest public beta here:
http://orbitervis.wiki.sourceforge.net/OrbiterPublicBeta

But I don't think the color schemes are high on the priority list, unfortunately.

 

[Dimkin]

Tuesday.

:lol:
Sorry, just couldn't resist.

:rofl: Well, I hope it will be soon

 

[tblaxland]

There is an open source version of Orbit MFD by cjp here:
[ame="http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=3609"]Free Orbit MFD 1.1[/ame]

Perhaps you can play with that. If you do make changes and you want to release them, it would be worth talking about it with cjp so that we don't start having many forks floating around.

 

[blane]

Colors is a good topic anyway. Fortunately I am not color blind but I have some issues as well.

For instance, I love how you can choose to adjust the HUD color in the XR series. I always change it to a dull red, which is perfect (for me). The bright green is too obstrusive in space and gives me eye cancer in earth atmosphere.

It would be great if this could be adjusted per default. Another problem: The basic game information text is yellow .. this is no good in atmosphere either, hardly to read. Any way of changing that?

Uh and don't get mne wrong: Orbiter is great and I thank Martin and all of the community for providing such a great platform. The color issues are really minor compared to that, but I just wanted to address my points here in a direct way.

Cheers

 

[RisingFury]

It would be great if this could be adjusted per default.

It is!
Alt + H

 

[cjp]

There is an open source version of Orbit MFD by cjp here:
http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=3609

Perhaps you can play with that. If you do make changes and you want to release them, it would be worth talking about it with cjp so that we don't start having many forks floating around.

This is exactly the kind of small things that are not possible with the closed source version, and it's exactly why I like things to be open source!

There are two ways for an MFD to set its colors: set a specific color explicitly, or set one of Orbiter's default colors. It would be cool if Orbiter had many default colors, and if these could be changed by the user. Also, to avoid confusion when a user makes large changes (e.g. "yellow" to "blue"), I'd suggest using symbolic names for the default colors, e.g. "vessel orbit color" and "target orbit color" instead of "green" and "yellow".

Unfortunately, that's not the case now, and many MFDs set their own color scheme. So, for now, you'd have change colors for each MFD separately. In many cases, I think this currently involves changing the source code, and recompiling the thing.

Currently, Free Orbit MFD also sets most of its colors explicitly. Did you know that the exact shades of green and yellow used by Orbit MFD don't exist as standard color in the Orbiter API? I copied them by taking screenshots of Orbit MFD, and defining the colors from the screenshots as constants in the source code.

A nice improvement would be to read these colors at module initialization from a configuration file. If someone can send me a well-programmed patch for that, I'd be happy to apply it.

 

[ar81]

It will be released on Tuesday...
What Tuesday? I don't know...

 

[blane]

It is!
Alt + H

Oh, Hah! Thanks

 

[cjp]

It is!
Alt + H

I didn't know that. In which documentation file is it?

 

[RisingFury]

I didn't know that. In which documentation file is it?

In the keymap.cfg

 

[cjp]

Check out the latest version of Free Orbit MFD. I added a configuration file for the colors.

To help you a bit with the hexadecimal color notation:

bright green = 00FF00
bright cyan = 00FFFF
blue = 0000FF
red = FF0000

Format: rrggbb
rr = red intensity
gg = green intensity
bb = blue intensity

Intensity examples:
100%: FF
75%: C0
50%: 80
25%: 40
0%: 00

 

[Quick_Nick]

Check out the latest version of Free Orbit MFD. I added a configuration file for the colors.

To help you a bit with the hexadecimal color notation:

bright green = 00FF00
bright cyan = 00FFFF
blue = 0000FF
red = FF0000

Format: rrggbb
rr = red intensity
gg = green intensity
bb = blue intensity

Intensity examples:
100%: FF
75%: A0
50%: 80
25%: 40
0%: 00

To be picky, A0 is not 75%, but 62.5%. C0 is 75%.

 

[cjp]

To be picky, A0 is not 75%, but 62.5%. C0 is 75%.

You're right. I'll blame it on my calculator .

 

[Cornflake]

This is exactly the kind of small things that are not possible with the closed source version, and it's exactly why I like things to be open source!

I was just thinking that today: why has martin chosen to release it closed-source? It's not like he has a bunch of competing programmers (that could steal his work) to worry about.

It's been made clear already (through the release of addons for Orbiter) there's a fairly large pool of programmers that could do great things for the game. We might of already had Orbiter running with normal mapping and other DX9 graphical enhancements by now :lol:

 

[Hielor]

I was just thinking that today: why has martin chosen to release it closed-source? It's not like he has a bunch of competing programmers (that could steal his work) to worry about.

It's been made clear already (through the release of addons for Orbiter) there's a fairly large pool of programmers that could do great things for the game. We might of already had Orbiter running with normal mapping and other DX9 graphical enhancements by now :lol:

Forks.

 

[cjp]

I was just thinking that today: why has martin chosen to release it closed-source?

That's a question only he can answer. So far, I haven't seen any comments from Martin himself on this. Anyway, with the OVP & so on, Orbiter is slowly moving towards a more open design. With the closed source part becoming smaller, it might be easier to replace it with an open source clone.

It's been made clear already (through the release of addons for Orbiter) there's a fairly large pool of programmers that could do great things for the game. We might of already had Orbiter running with normal mapping and other DX9 graphical enhancements by now :lol:

There used to be an attempt to create an open source clone of Orbiter:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/openkosmos/

It is my experience that it usually takes a very dedicated person to finish a large project like this. Someone like mr. Schweiger. I think OpenKosmos just didn't have someone like that.