Making a Racing HUD

Hey everybody! Recently for my programming class, I've been working on a HUD that will display along the Volkswagen T2 Type 1 I modeled for the Sophomore racing game. I decided to go along with my mod kit and create something that follows a busted up skeumorphic design. 

To begin my research, I looked at pictures of the actual dashboard of a T2 Type 1.

As you can see, the speedometer has a very distinct classic style to it. When it came to integrating the actual design language of the speedometer into what I wanted to do for my hud, I had to do some research of some games with cool examples of skeumorphic HUDs.

This one is from Fallout 2.

This one is from S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat.

And here's a photo of a dashboard from Mad Max: Fury Road just for fun!

When i t comes to integrating all of this within a hud, I had to get creative. First, I grabbed a really nice reference image of an actual T2 Type 1 speedometer, and made some customization to it to make it look more beat up and rustic. Then, for elements like the dashboard HUD and the gear indicator, I went into maya to make a 3D model of what I wanted to depict, then textured it all in Substance Painter before doing some further modifications in Photoshop. The results I came up with can be seen below, one with callouts and one without.

As you can see, we are depicting the speed, the gear, the RPM, ammo, lap times and lap number, vehicle health, ammo, and kills. The kills are displayed as little notches in the bottom of the HUD, giving everything a more savage look. The bar (which was originally a weapon cooldown meter) will depict the health of the vehicle, and the slider on the left will be used to depict the current reload status of the weapon. When the slider is at the top, it will be ready to fire. However, when the slider is down and coming back up, it will indicate that the weapon is reloading.

I'm really excited to get this all working in Unreal soon!