Essential Elements

There are a few things that I need to display within my UI. I decided to list them, and perhaps plan some prototypes of how they can be displayed before I actually start to create them.

Must have systems:

Stamina/Energy
This is probably the most important piece of information to show with my VR game, as it's the primary resource available to the player.

Ammo
Nearly as important as Stamina/Energy, some weapons will instead use physical ammo, and the amount of ammo left will be important to show.

Special Abilities
Withing my game, there may be special mecha abilities available. I'll need to be able to show this information to the player and make them aware when the abilities are available again.

Mapping System
The player may be coming across multiple enemies at once - to allow the tracking of this, a minimap system should be implemented, which shows ally and enemy targets in the immediate area.

Targeting System
Due to this being a VR game, the player has to directly aim with their controller or hand. Because of that, there needs to be some sort of targeting assist - specifically, a target system 'leading' the enemy, allowing the player to shoot at the proper location to hit the target accounting for projectile speed.

Optional Systems

Damage Information
Throughout the game, the player will be able take damage in various parts of their body. There should be some sort of system to represent that, and allow the player to quickly see what parts are damaged.

Now, this is a lot of information to display at once. Because of that, I need to plan out each individual element and how they can go together. However, I need the idea for a base system before I can get anything working. I want to create a 'layered' UI system that takes advantage of 3D space. I have a few ideas, which I can explore below.

The above idea splits the UI to 3 layers in front of the player. However, what I want to achieve is fully 3ID HUDs - this means having the UI and the cursor move in 3 Dimensional space. While this method would be efficient, it's not what I would want to achieve. It is, however, something I can fall back to if any other idea doesn't work; this idea still achieves a sense of depth in the UI.

This is my primary idea - rather than have 3 separate layers of UI, I have a large space of 'UI space' that elements of the UI is free to move in. This method would be rather unique for a VR game. It could also be possible to allow the player to move their UI around to preferred places in a form of customisation. I feel this would be a unique, attractive system that I want to try and replicate.

With this idea in mind, I can finally start prototyping the various 'widgets' for the game.