Its been a while since I had uploaded images here. Sorry..... Its just that I have been quite busy.
Anyway, one of my students was interested in creating a simple HUD (head-up display), similar to the ones that you find on a jet fighter. Basically, you want information displayed to you as you move within the world or scene, without the display being affected by your 'translation change'. One way to do this would be to create a geometry, such as a box, and map the image of the display on to this geometry. Then, using a Proximity Sensor, send out your (avatar) position to the geometry (ROUTE ProximitySensor.position_changed TO geometry.set_translation).
Well....it works, but then if your orientation changes, then you would have to set_orientation back to the geometry!
So, what would you do? Again, route the change in orientation, as detected by the proximity sensor, back to the set_orientation field of the geometry.
However, the best method I have seen so far is to use someone else's proto!! Blaxxun's seems to do the job quite well --> go here for an example http://files.virtuality3d.co.uk/examples/hud.html
Simply place the geometry as children, and hey presto! But.... wait a minute.... I can't see the geometry.... Haha, thats because its behind you! One workaround is to put your HUD geometry into a Transform node and translate it IN FRONT of you (change in the z axis) but within the first value of avatarSize (which is where? .... in the NavigationInfo node...)
Why is that? Because the first value [0] is the value that defines the avatar's width (your chest size, to be simple) If it is beyond that size, then the HUD geometry will collide with objects when you approach them.
My thanks to web3d.org and Blaxxun. Sin Cheow created the geometries for the game.
