Camera-to-Screen

It might be done, there is already a mod for that (IIRC it does not work anymore).

But it will decrease the performance of the game - you need to have powerful GPU for that, as each screen is essentially another frame to render. Thus if your FPS is 40, with another camera-on-screen it might drop to 20 (if low FPS was caused by taxed GPU, not overloaded CPU). And it will incur some cost in CPU performance.

But it can be managed: in graphic settings there might be another slider: maximum of camera-to-screens, max distance of player to screen with screens nearer to player taking preference, plus if screen is LOD model it should be ignored.

Two screens showing the input of one camera shouldn't incur double GPU cost - camera should render to buffer and that should be used twice.

And camera displaying screen (with input from any camera) should either show blank screen or screen from frame behind.

The original mod worked fine, almost no performance impact whatsoever. It was well designed, didn't do anything it didn't need to, and used a dynamic pool of your available frames so that it literally couldn't drag your FPS down. The worse your frames, the less the mod did. If you got over 60, it used those for even smoother displays. Xocliw showed it off on the community stream. He showed it directly to Marek, showed it working beautifully, while having none of the drawbacks it was claimed such a mod would have. And then Keen ignored the potential and changed a bunch of things and the mod died.

An option in game settings with sliders to limit darn thing. Probably I would think of getting new computer since cam feedback was so cool back in a day. But I guess it's to much of an effort, shame mod isn't working anymore.

But what if i just REALLY REALLY wanted to build myself a gundam?

I absolutely agree, and with the new In-Cocpit-LCDs it would be even more useful. (Wingman-View, Turret-View...)

Rendering a scene to a dynamic camera is something video games have always struggled with, especially if it's a scene from an area wwith no players anywhere near by, you're asking the server to keep up with scenes that could be across the map, or atleast across max antenna range.

But the real issue with this is rendering a scene to a texture that gets applied somewhere in word.. It's the same as trying to render a dynamic reflection, it's incredibly intensive and difficult to implement.

To help, you can add this feature BUT calculated only in local when people are near the grid. So it wont use/overload net datas ?

keen pls

Old mod was great, as long as you didn't have dozens of screens running. IIRC there was a 'performance' slider to make it more user friendly to lower spec machines. If you could at least consider it Keen, that would be great!

While the actual rendering is client side, the camera can be several subgrids - maybe kilometers - away and see a different part of the universe. A camera would be like an additional player, spawning in local asteroids and streaming grid data from the server to be rendered on the remote camera feed. Or cameras are 100% local and intended for cameras in close proximity only, with no load on the server and very low PCU amount. (Maybe have separate server/client PCU?)

Rendering performance impact could be made O(1) by updating a set amount of screens per frame at a preset resolution. I.e. A surveillance room with 10 camera feeds would update every screen at 6 FPS instead of 60, as in this example surveillance camera clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2oNWHv0zSQ

Eventually all "extra rendering step" could be queued up so that only one extra rendering is done per frame. I.e. environment cube maps could be on every frame if the queue is unused, but reduce to every second frame if camera feeds are active:

CAM1|ENV|CAM2|ENV|CAM3|ENV|CAM1|...

(Effective frame rate of the three cameras would then be 10 FPS. Camera feeds should only update when the player is actually standing in front of and looking in their direction. Screens being "freshly" activated would take the next slot in the update queue for a max 1 frame delay, unless several screens activated in the same frame.)

There was actually a mod for this, but KSH broke it about two years ago and the creator has not had the time/energy to fix it :(

I'm appalled at how few votes this has with the amount of people begging Tysis to update his mod that did just this:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=611332581

Unfortunately it's not possible to add this with a simple mod anymore. Would be amazing to see it implemented natively into the game!

Previous camera-to-lcd proposals for reference:

https://support.keenswh.com/spaceengineers/general/topic/camera-to-screen

https://support.keenswh.com/spaceengineers/general/topic/working-live-cameras-on-lcd-screen

Not sure about random LCDs, but I definitely would like to have a feed from camera in my cockpit.

Glass cockpits aren’t worth it on large grids! The glass is far more fragile than heavy armor! I want cameras to be my window to the world and to be sheathed in armor, like ships in The Expanse!

Please, KEEN

Hooo Yes !! make that !

THis is the first fing I was so disapointed when building my first ship in SE :

I saw Camera, LCD, then it was obvious I could link a camera feed to one of cockpit LCD to have a view..... even at low resolution, and even with limitation numbers.

Yes please do that for external LCDs or cockpit LCDs even for one or two feeds that would be awesome.

Its totally doable, albeit a lot of effort. I would really like to see this added! PLEASE KEEN!

not mine but just wanted to post it here

i saw this reddit post the other day but it takes a big performance hit.

https://www.reddit.com/r/spaceengineers/comments/hqf9ln/cameralcd_a_new_mod_to_render_camera_displays

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2037606896

Keen Support replied to this in an XBox thread;

https://support.keenswh.com/spaceengineers/xbox/topic/lcd-screens-with-live-camera-feeds

Saying that "they will consider this feature".

This current page for PC, was posted way earlier than that post yet, they didn't reply to this one.

Furthermore the discontinued "Live Camera Feeds" mod in this page https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=611332581 is filled with people requesting/expecting this feature to be in vanilla since 2016.

Other than possible incapability due to technical difficulties, I really don't understand why developers disregard highly requested features like this and push out totally unrelated content for long periods of time...

In short, as many people out there, I really believe that this should've been in the vanilla game since the LCD's were introduced and also believe that it would elevate the game play so much.

Keen Support replied to this in an XBox thread;

https://support.keenswh.com/spaceengineers/xbox/topic/lcd-screens-with-live-camera-feeds

Saying that "they will consider this feature".

This current page for PC, was posted way earlier than that post yet, they didn't reply to this one.

Furthermore the discontinued "Live Camera Feeds" mod in this page https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=611332581 is filled with people requesting/expecting this feature to be in vanilla since 2016.

Other than possible incapability due to technical difficulties, I really don't understand why developers disregard highly requested features like this and push out totally unrelated content for long periods of time...

In short, as many people out there, I really believe that this should've been in the vanilla game since the LCD's were introduced and also believe that it would elevate the game play so much.

Keen Support replied to this in an XBox thread;

https://support.keenswh.com/spaceengineers/xbox/topic/lcd-screens-with-live-camera-feeds

Saying that "they will consider this feature".

This current page for PC, was posted way earlier than that post yet, they didn't reply to this one.

Furthermore the discontinued "Live Camera Feeds" mod in this page https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=611332581 is filled with people requesting/expecting this feature to be in vanilla since 2016.

Other than possible incapability due to technical difficulties, I really don't understand why developers disregard highly requested features like this and push out totally unrelated content for long periods of time...

In short, as many people out there, I really believe that this should've been in the vanilla game since the LCD's were introduced and also believe that it would elevate the game play so much.

Having the ability to view a camera image from an LCD in a basement - which is what I nearly always end up building in order to protect my gear from meteorites - would be a massive boon.

Also, displaying multiple camera images on LCDs means that a ship could have a decent bridge buried deep inside it and still have good visibility of the surrounding space, without needing to cycle through cameras while sitting in a control seat.

I like the security room concept, too.

I want this to very very badly I had a ship idea that had this involved with a script but I didn’t know that Scripps couldn’t allow this yet. I hope they Addison to the game I really really do!

A few other suggestions would be to resize the screen if adjacent displays share a tag, an option of linking it to a remote grid would be useful too for situational awareness of your current position while controlling a remote vessel.

This used to be a plugin mod (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBbW2EZK7N0) but it was VERY GPU intensive and broke as soon as Keen updated the game. You are basically asking your GPU to render the same scene twice over.

The mod is smart about it and makes it so that the LCD can "share" frames instead. So it can update at 30 fps but it doubles the GPU Render Load, or all the way down to 1fps which divides evenly amongst other LCDs. So if you had the setting at 30fps they'd each run at 15fps, which would divide further as you added more.

It's kinda strange to have jump drives and gravity generators but a simple backup camera is too much.

I don't know the limitations of this engine, but that what we ask for here, is used in many games like Portel or Prey (the old one) and is used, when some NPCs are in a monitor. For example, in Half Life 2, when Wallace Breen has his speeches on the monitors, the actual NPC is loaded in a separate room on the map, where the NPC gets recorded by a virtual camerajand is streamed directly to the ingame TVs and monitors, the player can see and they do it that way, because, according to the devs, tihs is much easier then make a actual video clip to play back on the screens. So it schouldn't be wichcraft to make something like that. Except the engine really can't cope with that.

The Mods we had, are more or less a collection of workarounds to make this feature somewhat functioning, but someone with unrestricted access to the source code, should be able to implement, at least the frame work, for such a function, without all too heavy performance impacts. Furthermore we are in an age, of ridiculously powerfull GPU like the Nvidia 30 Series and Space Engineers never was a casual game, requirement wise. And for those with a too weak system, we could make a tab in the world settings to disable this feature.

I also find it very strange that this is so hard to implement... Duke Nukem 3D dynamically rendered security cameras onto display screens just fine 25 years ago (before even basic 3d graphics cards were even in most gamer's PCs) along with a few N64 games, like Goldeneye. Not to mention more recent games like Half Life 2. There are a lot of ways to keep it performant on modern systems. Here's a few suggestions that little old me can think of to keep system performance from being too negatively impacted.

1. If a remote camera LCD isn't in visible range to a player, then don't gather render data from the camera nor render the camera onto the LCD. I do not believe this is something that a modder could do, since it would require access to a player's rendering data and being able to detect if any remote camera LCDs are within what's being rendered.
   
2. Any camera feeds are sampled at a lower resolution and also rendered to LCDs at a lower resolution than when a player views through the camera directly. With a lower resolution on both sampling and rendering I would expect GPU stress to be lower as well.
3. Nested camera LCDs (any LCD's rendering a camera that are THEN viewed by a later camera and rendered to a later LCD) would be only rendered at 1fps and only when the player is looking at the later LCD, otherwise it is not rendered. Or just don't render nested camera LCDs at all, though that might confuse some players if done without explanation.
   
4. Restrict FPS and change resolution based on system specs, which could be checked on initial game load.
   

Ill be honest, I don't care about the GPU limitations and all the technical issues. Sorry but thats not for us players to worry about, we come up with ideas and devs make the judgements and solutions. If this feature works it would be a massive improvement to the game.

Honestly I love this idea and I wish it was in the game this would be definitely revolutionary in my opinion and I think it would definitely be a great idea!

I think the reason it hasn't happened yet.

Is probably because of the wide array of computer spec's the players are using.

Also another problem you'll find in a feature like this.

Is you have two options.

In one way. You would have to have the game screen grab and redrawing that screen grab over and over again onto the LCD.

Then the second option is that you would have to have the game repeat the game scene and on the LCD as well.

Also you have the 3rd option have each LCD be treated as additional AI players capturing what the cameras are looking at.

Now as to why this will never probably happen other than those options I had given above and not dragging into question player Computer specs and what not.

First off you have the issue of in Game Draw Distance.

What that means is the game would have loaded where you are at and each camera scene that's being shown on each LCD screen.

So if you take that into account.

If you was the game development team.

You would know full well the players would want the Monty Burns CCTV wall effect.

So yeah the Lag would be hair pulling bad.

Plus if you add online servers into this plus two different Bases worth of CCTV camera banks.

Yeah I have this feeling that's probably why support for that mod got dropped and why KEEN have not added it in!

so if yall dont mind downloading plugins, https://github.com/austinvaness/CameraLCD does exactly what you want

What about showing LCD content as a camera feed overlay? It wound not involve excess rendering.

What about showing LCD content as a camera feed overlay? It wound not involve excess rendering and can give a better picture.

What about showing LCD content as a camera feed overlay? It wound not involve excess rendering and can give a better picture.

I was searching about the best camera for photography then I found an article on google which gave the best info about top cameras and lenses. The article was from bestcamerashub. This website is given amazing cameras

Perhaps a way to link multiple displays together to create larger ones?

For heavily armored vehicles that don't want the fragility of a bridge, but want an interior first-person view, this could be amazing

Whats the reasoning behind declining this sugestion? Is it the usual BS about performance impact or any other of the usual exscuses or are you finaly ready to admit your incompetence, of which we are all alredy well aware?

Let me guess, it didn't work on console, because consoles suck and so nobody gets it...

Okay, so how many of you who are insisting that this feature is so easy to implement are actually programmers, software developers of game developers?

I have a lot of critique for Keen and their decitions, but I agree with them on this one. I am a software developer, with 8 years of experience in game engines and I don't know of any way to implement this in a way that performs well and satisfies what players expect.

It's a feature I would love as well, but the amount of time they would have to spend on this one feature, can be spent on many things that will benefit the game more.

So unless you can give a detailed explanation of how to implement this, and not just how you "think" it can be done, then please respect the actual developers who decided not to implement this one feature.

I do understand that this is not an easy thing to do, I still want it, but I have the programmer training to know you are basically adding a player for each camera feeding to an LCD, (For other programmers I know this is a vast over simplification but not everyone has the knowledge we do) VRage chokes enough at 12 players much less the higher numbers some servers can represent if it is add there would also need to be a server setting toggle to disable it or some troll can crash the server by setting up a dozen or two Camera/LCD pairs.

Listen. SnowRunner and Construction Simulator do this easily in their games. It's something Keen decided not to do, who knows why, but that's their decision. By leaving it out, it significantly leaves out a major gameplay experience. But they have reasons.

Lol so I understand the technical restrictions of Space Engineers and the amount of work that this kind of feature implementation would require. Do I want it? Yes. Do we all want it? I'm gonna' go out on a limb and assume yes. Do I understand why it isn't and why it may never be? Also yes.

Does this thread deserve to be necro'd from FOUR. YEARS. AGO.

No. Lol let it die. Everything that can be said, has been said.