Whatever the colour of your Elite: Dangerous ship, one seemingly immutable constant has been the colour of the on-board computer. It's orange. Very orange. The pop-up HUD forms the basis for every action in the game, from using space station services to plotting your next jump. And while the existing palette is quite fetching, a little variety wouldn't go amiss.
Step forward Frontier forumite Kirisute, who has posted instructions (opens in new tab) for altering the colour of the on-board HUD. It's surprisingly simple to do, and has a marked effect on the feel of the game.
To change HUD colour, first you'll need to find a file called GraphicsConfiguration.xml. It should be in the EDLaunch root directory, in the folder "Products\FORC-FDEV-D-1000".
Once found, open the file in a text editor like Notepad++ (opens in new tab). You're looking for the following section:
Standard
1, 0, 0
0, 1, 0
0, 0, 1
One more thing. We're editing a file the game uses to do stuff, so it's always a good idea to save an unaltered back up copy before you make any changes.
Once you've done that, though, it's time to go to town. By editing the values of MatrixRed, MatrixGreen and MatrixBlue, you'll change the HUD's colour. But which numbers to use? Anything between 0 and 1 is fine—0.5, for example, or 0.27. Go wild, and try things out. Or, use this tool (opens in new tab), which lets you play with sliders to find the right look and then tells you the values to use.
Can't be bothered with sliders? Reddit user Megazen has some suggested styles (opens in new tab), and pictures to go along with them.
Once you've entered your own custom numbers, save the file and open Elite: Dangerous. That's it, you're done. And if you want to see just how well such a simple tweak works in game, here's a video of a nice blue hue.
I keep hearing that there’s a 3rd party application that lets you change your HUD. Where do I find this?