Head Up Display (HUD)
Console Variables (CVAR)
Commands
Other useful information

The Basic HUD

This represents the very basic layout of the HUD. The numbers from left to right are:
Machinegun Ammo (+icon)
Speed
Throttle
Health
Main Weapon Ammo (in this case MG as well)

Machinegun Ammo

Always looks like this when you have a machinegun. If your machinegun has several barrels it shows the ammo left per barrel! That means on a machinegun with two barrels (like on the F-5) a ammo indication of 300 means that you can actually shoot 600 shots (firing 300x 2 shots a time)

Speed

The color of the speed tells you the following:
White - high speed area, gear cannot be brought down
Green - medium speed area, gear can be brought down
Yellow - slow speed area, be careful not to stall now!
Red - either stalled (use stall recovery procedure), or when on a runway too slow to takeoff (use full afterburner if available)

Throttle

The throttle can be changed in 10% increments. On planes with afterburner it can go beyond 100%, which means the plane is using afterburner (and therefore consuming LOTS of fuel! Ground vehicles can reverse (ie move backwards), for that you have to hold the throttle down key until it comes to 0% then, when you keep holding it the indication can go up to 50% again in reverse mode. To accelerate forwards again just hold down the throttle up key.
NOTE: The keys bound to "forward" (+forward) and "back" (+back) override the current throttle setting and bring it to max (100% of full afterburner if available) or min (idle (0%) or maximum reversing speed if available) throttle settings.

Health

The Health is a value between 0 and 100, for every vehicle, even though they have different strengths, ie it gives you the relative health. In the encyclopedia you can find out about the actual maximum health of all the vehicles

Primary Weapon Ammo

This shows the remaining ammo of the currently selected primary weapon. The machinegun can be selected as primary weapons as well (some machineguns -which are not yet implemented- might be able to lock on their targets when selected as primary weapon, like for example the turret that the AH64 Apache Helicopters have). The following primary weapons are currently available:

Machinegun

Unguided Rockets (FFAR) - fire in the direction the vehicle is travelling

Unguided Bombs (Iron Bombs, ca. 500lb) - free fall bombs, start with the speed your vehicle is travelling (can be quite far if you are high and fast!)

Ballistic 125mm gun of Main Battle Tank (MBT), follows a ballistic trajectory. The higher you aim the farther it goes. At the moment using the same icon as the FFAR (will be changed later).

The Advanced HUD

Flares

On vehicles which have flares the HUD shows the number of flares remaining in the right bottom of the screen. At the moment they cannot be used though (would be pointless anyway as there are no guided missiles yet)

Radar

On vehicles which have RADAR you can find it on the right side of the HUD, and it will be displayed whether it is turned on or off. When it is turned off it shows the word "OFF" in its right top corner.

When you turn on the RADAR it will look something like this:

The number "4000" in this picture represents the currently selected range. The range can be 100%, 50% and 25% of the maximum range. With a typical range of 8000 this means you can set it to 8000, 4000 and 2000 units.
Targets are represented by different shapes and colors:
Blue Targets represent friends.
Red Targets represent enemies.
Yellow Targets represent unidentified or neutral targets.
Buildings are represented by squares
Ground Vehicles are represeneted by circles
Aircraft are represented by triangles
For Aircraft there is extended color information, where a brighter color means that the target is higher than you and a darker color means it is lower than you.

NOTE on the use of RADAR:
You can only see buildings and vehicles not using RADAR when they are in front of you and where there is an unblocked line of sight between you. BUT you can see ALL vehicles within range that have their RADAR ON! That means if you are always flying around with your RADAR on you give away your position and an aware enemy might know that you are coming long before you can see each other. Therefore use your RADAR wisely and don't turn it ON for long times!

GPS

Located in the center of the HUD you can find the GPS with its navigational information (but only when it is turned ON).The numbers (from left to right) mean the following:
Heading - in degrees from 0-359 (in this picture 136, which is south-east)
X Coordinate - your x position on the map
Y Coordinate - your y position on the map
Altitude - readout from the radar altimeter, which is for low altitudes only, if you are more than 2000 units above the ground it shows "XXXX". When you get lower the numbers turn green, then yellow and when you are almost hitting the ground they turn red.

EIB - extended information board

To the left you can find (but only if turned ON) the EIB, which shows additional information, that didn't fit on any of the other HUD panels. At the moment this shows your remaining fuel, and the status of the speedbrakes and gear. As shown below the color of the text depends on the status of the system. White means retracted/up/off, green means extended/down/on and red (not yet implemented) means damaged.

Gear down, Speedbrakes retracted

Gear up, Speedbrakes extended

Gear down, Speedbrakes extended

When the fuel gets low the indication turns yellow, and then red. When it turns yellow you should start thinking about disengaging from the action and getting home to refuel. Red means you will quite soon run out of fuel. At the moment when you run out of fuel it means that your vehicle is rendered useless. A tank can still defend itself, although it is quite vulnerable when it is static. A plane will unavoidably crash. In later versions of MFQ3 you will have the option to get out of/eject from your vehicle and walk home (or get a lift from another vehicle).

NOTE:On vehicles without speedbrakes, you can see that status of the wheelbrakes. To engage the wheelbrakes on tanks you have to be slow enough (best below 10). On planes without speedbrakes you can obviously only engage the wheelbrakes when on the ground.

Crosshairs

In order to help you see which type of weapon is currently selected as primary weapon, without moving your eyes off your enemy and looking down on the weapon icon (see above), we have implemented a couple of different crosshairs. At the moment you can find the following in the game:

Machinegun Crosshair, for all types of machineguns.

Bomb Crosshair, with a little line down so you can better line up your targets (doesn't show you the point of impact though...you gotta practice a lot, because it takes quite some skill to hit targets when you are flying fast and high!

Crosshair for Rockets and Ballistic Guns. For rockets just line it up with your target, for ballistic weapons you shouldn't forget to aim higher, depending on the distance of your target. Requires a lot of skill as well, so keep practising!

NOTE: The crosshair will always point in the direction the projectile will go, and not in the direction the camera looks. So if you see an enemy and want to shoot at it, just look at it and wait for the vehicle to align and the crosshair to go over the target. Then you are ready to shoot. If the target is moving you have to shoot ahead of the target. Also note that the crosshairs are calibrated to a max distance of about 2000 units, which means if your target is further away there will be a slight error...

mf_gameset - can be "modern" or "ww2" default "modern"

cg_thirdPerson - external-cam = 1, cockpit-cam = 0, default 1
cg_thirdPersonHeight - external-cam height, default 0
cg_thirdPersonRange - external-cam distance, default 0

g_tracer - number of bullet tracers, default 2 (0 for every bullet visible)
cg_radarTargets - number of blips that can appear on the radar, default 20

encyclopedia - shows encyclopedia
vehicleselect - shows vehicle selection menu
gps - toggles GPS (navigational information)
extinfo - toggles EIB (extended information board)
radar - toggles RADAR
radarrange - cycles radar ranges(100%, 50%, 25% of max range)
contact_tower - request tower to operate certain things (like doors)
+scores - shows scoreboard while held
messagemode - chat
messagemode2 - chat team

cameraup - moves camera up (changes cg_thirdPersonHeight)
cameradown - moves camera down (changes cg_thirdPersonHeight)
zoomin - moves camera in (changes cg_thirdPersonRange)
zoomout - moves camera out (changes cg_thirdPersonRange)
toggleview - toggles internal/external camera (changes cg_thirdPerson)
+zoom - zooms in while key is held down
+button9 - freelook camera (freelook whlie holding down)

+attack - fire machinegun (if available)
+button2 - fire selected primary weapon (if available)
weapon 0 - select machinegun as main weapon
weapon 1 - select weapon 1 (vehicle dependent) as main weapon
weapon 2 - select weapon 2 (vehicle dependent) as main weapon
weapon 3 - select weapon 3 (vehicle dependent) as main weapon
weapon 4 - select weapon 4 (vehicle dependent) as main weapon
weapon 5 - select weapon 5 (vehicle dependent) as main weapon
weapon 6 - select weapon 6 (vehicle dependent) as main weapon
weapnext - select next weapon
weapprev - select previous weapon
+button10 - fires a flare (not yet functional)

+button5 - increase thrust by 10 percent
+button6 - decrease thrust by 10 percent
+button7 - toggle landing gear
+button8 - toggle brakes
+forward - maximum forward speed (afterburner on planes)
+back - minimum speed (idle on planes, revers on tanks)
+moveleft - turn tank left
+moveright - turn tank right

Your plane will always try to follow your camera (ie where you are looking):

This will sometimes be annoying, as you want to see if there are any enemies in your proximity, while still going towards your destination without losing time circling around to make sure your airspace is clear. For that case the freelook camera comes in handy. Bind a key in the setup/controls/look menu, and whenever you hold that key down and look around the vehicle will keep going without following the camera:

You can refuel and rearm and repair your vehicle at spots that look like the ones marked by red circles in the picture below:

You have to stop on those spots (speed and throttle 0) to make use of them

NOTE FOR MAPMAKERS:When you create your maps please make sure that those refuel/rearm/repair (RRR) spots are easily recognizable by the player. It might be a good idea to use those or similar textures to mark those RRR spots.

Landing:

Plan your approach carefully and try to align your flightpath with runway when you are still far out:

Stay on your flight path, as you are closing in, and don't forget to bring down the gear and to slow down to the green speed area, but still keep the throttle between 80 and 100%:

If you are getting too slow (speed yellow) retract the speedbrakes, but take care that you don't get too fast.

Try to touch down on the beginning of the runway or at least as early as possible, but remember not to land at too steep an angle or you will crash, touching down like in the picture below is just fine (but not perfect):

Don't forget to set the throttle to zero and make sure the speedbrakes are extended so that you stop before you reach the end of the runway.

Congratulations you have mastered that art of landing!

Takeoff:

If it is not already there taxi your plane to the beginning of the runway:

Apply full throttle (afterburner if available!) to make sure you can take off before the runway ends:

When your speed turns yellow you are fast enough to take off, but preferably you want to keep your plane on the runway until the speed turns green, because when you pull up the plane will get slower anyway, and if you take off too early and/or too steeply you might crash back onto the runway. After takeoff retract your gear to reduce the drag (and therefore get faster more easily without using up too much fuel), and also stop using afterburner as soon as possible as it eats up your fuel quickly! Nicely done! This was your first takeoff: