LCD Surface Options

Fighter cockpit with customized built-in LCD surfaces

LCD Panel blocks have only one built-in LCD Surface, but other functional blocks have several LCD surfaces built in, for example Cockpits, Programmable Blocks, Custom Turret Controllers, Sci-Fi Button Panels, and so on. All LCD surfaces work the same way, and have the same settings as the freestanding LCD Panel blocks. In constrast to the block variants, built-in LCD surfaces are fixed to their block "as is" and you cannot choose different screen sizes or positions. The advantage of the built-in surfaces is that they do not take up extra block space.

LCD surfaces need power to function.

• Without power, LCDs display an 'Offline' text.
• While powered but unconfigured ('No Content'), they display the text 'Online' or the picture of a keyboard.
• While powered and configured, they display text/images or scripts.

To configure LCD surfaces:

1. Access the Control Panel Screen of the block.
2. If the block has more than 1 built-in LCD Surface, select one from the "LCD Panels" list.
3. Choose which type of content to display:
   • No Content (Default)
   • Text and Images
   • Scripts
4. Configure the script or text/image color (if applicable).

How to Display Ship Status (Scripts)

Analog Clock script running on an LCD surface

If you've selected Content: Scripts, choose one of the following default scripts:

• Artificial Horizon -- Cockpit instruments that include an AGL Altimeter in the bottom right, current angular momentum in the bottom left, and Attitude Indicator (angled lines in unit degrees) in the center. Typically only used on mobile grids, not stations.
• Weather Forecast for planets with an atmosphere.
• Planetary and artificial gravity
• Locked Target info -- Enemy Faction Name, Owner Name, Grid Name, Distance, Relative Velocity, Approach Velocity, Mass in Kilograms.
• Velocity -- Current speed in metres per second. Typically only used on mobile grids.
• Hydrogen fuel -- "100%" means full tanks.
• Power usage levels -- "100%" means you are maxing out available power and you should add more batteries or reactors.
• Clock - The time of the day in real life, either as an analog or a digital 12-hour clock.
• Faction icon -- Dynamically displays the icon of the ship's owning faction.
• (Vending Machine GUI and Jukebox GUI) -- Don't select these on LCDs, these only work on their respective blocks.

How to Display Text and Images

If you've selected Content: Text and Images, configure which content you want to display.

• Title -- Provide the public line of text that is shown when any players click the panel with an empty hand.
• Rotation -- Optionally, turn the text and/or image sideways or upside down in steps of 90 degrees. (Since update 1.195)

Text Options

Left-aligned Monospace font versus centered DEBUG font on an LCD panel

• Edit Text -- Click this button to enter or paste text to display. Lines don't wrap automatically, so enter line breaks where necessary to make it fit.
• Font -- Choose DEBUG or Monospace.
  • The default variable-width font is called DEBUG.
  • Choose the Monospace font if you want to use whitespace to align columns, or for ASCII art!
  • The other fonts are not very useful. If you choose one of the colored fonts, the color mixes oddly with your font color choices below.
• Font Size -- Scale the text between 0.1 and 10.0 to make it fit various panel sizes. Default size is 1.0.
• Color -- Choose the text color.
• Alignment -- Text can be left, center, or right aligned.
• Text Padding -- The padding shifts the whole block of text relative to its Alignment. Use this to center text.
• Background -- Choose a background color.

Sci-Fi Button Panels from the Sparks of the Future DLC

Image options

Using default images from the bult-in list ensures that all players can see them without issues even without loading mods. See below for alternatives how to set up custom images.

• Loaded Textures -- Select from the list of default images, then click Add to Selection to display it. You can add more than one image and cycle, but you can only see one at a time.
• Selected Textures -- Lists the images to be displayed. To stop using an image, select it here and click Remove Selected.
• Image Change Interval -- Enter a delay in seconds. If you have selected several images, they are displayed one after the other with this delay in between. This allows for simple slideshow-like animations. Set it to zero to disable the slideshow.
• Preserve Aspect Ratio -- Toggle this if an image comes out distorted. When using the built-in posters, also try the "H" and "V" variants to see whether their aspect ratios look better.

You can configure text settings, or image settings, or both. If you provide both text and image, it will display the text on top of the image, which adds nice flexibility to create your own combinations of icons and custom messages.

Note: If you select the texture named "Faction" here, you'll get a generic static "Red Fist" logo, not your own faction logo. To get your faction logo, you want the "Faction icon" script instead.

How to Display Custom Images

Displaying special images using pixels in Monospace font

First consider if custom images (mods!) are needed at all and whether they cannot be approximated more easily by ASCII art or Unicode.

Second, consider creating your custom image out of Monospace text, using Unicode Block Elements as pixels. Here is a great community app that converts any pictures into Block Element text: https://github.com/Whiplash141/Whips-Image-Converter/ To load the image:

1. Select Text and Images as your LCD Panel content.
2. Click Edit Text, click into the box, paste the code generated by Whip's Image Converter, and click OK.
3. Important: Select the 'Monospace' font.
4. If the image is zoomed in too much, ctrl-click the font size slider and enter 0.1. If it's too tiny, try 0.5 or 1.0. Adjust as necessary.

The only disadvantage of this method is that images are blurry (pixelated), and stamp-sized pictures take up hundreds of kilobytes. The advantage is that this method works even on multiplayer servers and without mods.

Mods and Scripts

If you are looking for an option to display inventory capacity, radar view, planetary maps, hull integrity, and the like, alas these scripts are not available by default.

To calculate and display this type information, you need a Programmable Block. Advanced players can write custom scripts, and everyone can download community-provided scripts from the Workshop that can be configured to output info from the Programmable Block to an LCD of your choice.

Scripts can display "barcharts" for the fill levels of cargo, remaining fuel, ship damage status, etc. dynamically, simply by printing sequences of Block Elements or text characters to the screen once per second, to fake portable "graphics" cheaply.

A more advanced alternative is using custom image mods, for example: How to Make a custom LCD Image Mod

Button Pad - Touch App is a script that turns LCD surfaces into configurable interactive touch pads!