The "head-up vision" consists in superimposing information necessary for the piloting, the navigation or the realization of a mission, in permanent connection with the external environment. The pilot can consult the information provided by his instruments without leaving the road (or sky) eyes.

The concept of "head-up" has been popularized by such films as: "Iron Man", "Oblivion", "Avatar", "Minority report", which use it largely on large transparent flat screens, which prefigure those that we will use within a few years.

This technology, which consists of superimposing images of variable opacity so as not to hide the background of the screen, is already available in the GDImage graphic library, which is the basis of this demo.

The project originally was developed in C ++, I decided to convert it to WINDEV to see if GDImage's advanced graphics capabilities could be used in this environment while maintaining acceptable performance.

This is the result of this work that I propose to test today, but i must tell you that the code used is not intended for beginners. Because everything relies on the use of the low-level API to limit as much as possible the size of the WINDEV Framework used (only "virtual machine" and "standard functions").

In these conditions it is even possible to create real interactive games, which combine sounds and animations as shown in the code.

SCREEN COMPOSITION
The technique that allows to superpose different transparent planes on top of each other, is called "composition", it is based on the use of the "Device Window Manager" (DWM) appeared with the AERO mode of Windows VISTA.
Instead of drawing the screen in a conventional way, all displays are rendered directly in video memory (DirectDraw surface) in their stacking order (from bottom to top) and are refreshed at one time with a 66 Hz SPF ( 66 refreshments per second). GDImage and WinLIFT are currently the only graphics libraries that really take advantage of the display possibilities offered by current GPUs, provided you have a graphics card that is compatible AERO. Note that under Windows 8-10, all displays are managed by DWM and it is no longer possible to disable it (note: "blur" mode is no longer available in version 8).

HARDWARE CONFIGURATION
As all GAMERS know, graphics applications are the most resource hungry.
The animations and sound effects used have been calibrated to work on a type I7 multi-core computer with a good ATI or nVIDIA graphics card with 2 GB. All with a Windows performance index close to 6.

ABOUT THE CODE
All WINDEV functions that can increase the size of the Framework have been systematically replaced by their low-level API equivalent (see "ApiSDK" global procedure collection).
The main code is in the "MainSection" procedure collection and the program entry point is in "MainWindow" which replaces the "main window" code of WINDEV.
Written in 64-bit code, this project will not work on a 32-bit computer.

LOW LEVEL SDK PROGRAMMING
The code uses the syntax of the Windows SDK which is the only one identical whatever the development language used, which allows {easy} porting of the code from one environment to another. The use of procedural functions is systematic to avoid additional encapsulation levels of the OOP and especially the additional addition of the DotNET Framework.

USER INTERFACE
It is based on the sole use of GDImage and WinLIFT. There are no windows and no WINDEV fields.
All controls are GDImage "sprite" objects, which behave like button fields in a WINDEV window.

All sprites have properties similar to WD fields, here are a few:
- Visible / invisible.
- Anchor mode.
- Active / Inactive.
- Active frame.
- Color / transparency.
- Zoom factor.
- Angle rotation from 0 to 360 °.
- Z-order.
- Clone (raster objects only).
- Linked with (widget).
- Help bubble.
etc.

BACKGROUND
Several wallpapers are delivered with the project, you can change them by clicking with the left or right button of the mouse on the icon "Iron Man" which is at the top left of the window.

CENTRAL CIRCULAR PATTERN
It represents a pseudo command that pivots on itself, when moving the colored balls in the direction indicated by the arrows, you can restore the initial position by right-clicking on any of these balls.

POLY-LINE
This one is composed of a succession of planets to be moved by drag and drop.
(A click on the "Neutral" button restore the initial state)

WINDOW FURTIVE
It is a WINDEV concept that I have taken to display or hide the time (there is a different sound effect depending on the opening or closing of the stealth window).

WEAPONS
3 types of weapon are available with separate sound effects: "Laser", "Rocket", "Torpedo".
By quickly clicking on the different buttons, you can hear the sound of a sidereal battle.

RECTANGULAR BUTTONS
These are {real WinLIFT} buttons located directly on the GDImage field, they are managed like the circular buttons of the armament, from the WM_COMMAND message, sent to the main callback function "GDImageCallback".

SOUND EFFECTS
These are synchronized with the different animations and are based on standard WAV files.

USE OF A MANIFEST
Using the "manifest.txt" file, you can see the help bubbles when the code is compiled, without this manifest they are only visible in GO mode.


Note: This project has been tested with WD17, I do not know if it works with the current versions of WINDEV.

The original code written in C++ is available at www.objreader.com, in the "Eye Candies" section,
in order to download the attachment you must register first by sending a request at objreader@gmail.com.