The HUD

The HUD

The HUD is the instrument you fly. It appears once guidance is armed and stays up through the drop and the load's descent.

If it is missing, check HUD Enabled under Settings → Display.

The rows

Row	Meaning
RP	Range to the release point, counting down. Shows PASSED once it is behind you.
XTK	Cross-track: how far off the run-in line you are, and which way. CENTRE when you are on it.
TRK	The locked run-in heading, with the correction to fly. RIGHT 0.8 means turn 0.8° right. HOLD means stay as you are.
ALT	Height above ground against the target, e.g. 3041 → 3000 AGL.
GS	Ground speed against the target.
AP	Autopilot state, and the path phase.
VS	Commanded vertical speed, with ALT CAPTURED, ALT HIGH or ALT UNAVAILABLE.
DRFT	Predicted sideways drift the load would inherit at release, against the limit.
PKG	Package state, once something has left the aircraft.
DROP / CHUTE	Countdown to release, and to canopy opening.
TOT	Time on target — clock time the load arrives, and the countdown to it.
STK	Stick size, when you are dropping more than one.

The flight director

Three marks, centred above the rows:

• a fixed | centre post — the locked run-in heading,
• a moving ^ caret — where you are actually tracking,
• and the block they sit in.

Fly the caret onto the post. It is the same information as TRK, read faster.

Path phases

These appear on the AP row and describe what the path manager is doing, whether or not the autopilot is flying.

Phase	What it is
INTERCEPT	Heading for a capture gate upstream on the locked final line.
CAPTURE FINAL	Turning onto the line and settling on it.
FINAL RUN	Holding the locked heading, tracking the line.
RELEASE STABLE	Inside the final envelope and within every limit. This is the pass the gate accepts.
POST DROP	The load is away.

The HUD turns green at RELEASE STABLE.

Package states

Once a load leaves, the PKG row tracks it independently of whether a release solution still exists.

State	What it is
IDLE	Nothing in progress.
ESTIMATE	Predicted, before anything has left.
RELEASED	The load is out and in freefall.
CHUTE	The canopy has attached. Time on target is rebased here on the real event rather than the prediction.
ARRIVED	On the ground — low-AGL contact held for half a second after airborne confirmation.
LOST	Tracking gave up on it.

Messages you will see

About the pass

Message	Meaning
CORRECT TO RUN-IN	You are not on the line yet.
ON RUN-IN	On the line, inside tolerance.
STANDBY	Release is approaching.
NO DROP — GO AROUND	The gate refused this pass. The HUD says which limit failed.
ALT HIGH	Above the target height. Advisory — it does not block a drop.
ALT UNAVAILABLE	No valid vertical solution.
INVALID	No solution at all. Nothing will drop. Usually an unsupported aircraft or a failed solve.

About the autopilot

The AP row names the reason it disconnected. All of these come straight from the autopilot:

Reason	Meaning
PILOT OVERRIDE	You moved a control past the override threshold. This is the normal way to take it back.
PILOT SEAT LOST	You are no longer flying the aircraft.
GUIDANCE DISARMED	Guidance was switched off.
RUN-IN UNLOCKED	The run-in lock was released.
UNSTABLE RUN-IN	The run-in could not be held.
INVALID SOLUTION	There is no release solution to fly to.
INVALID PATH	The path manager could not build a route.
AIRCRAFT NOT LOCAL	This machine does not own the aircraft, so it cannot fly it. See Crew and Multiplayer.

Opening the map, using freelook, the ACE interaction menu, Zeus or the CARP panel does not disconnect the autopilot. Arma reports mouse motion as flight input in those modes, so CARP suppresses override detection while something else owns the mouse, plus half a second afterwards.

About guided cargo

Message	Meaning
JPADS REMOTE	Another machine is flying this canopy. Normal on a server — you still see a true closing error.
UNSTEERED — NO OWNER	No machine is flying it. This is a fault worth reporting.

The difference between those two is the whole reason the heartbeat exists: from the cockpit, "somebody else is flying this correctly" and "nobody can fly this" otherwise look identical.

Other screens

On the map

With Map Trajectory on you also get the run-in line, the release point, the predicted canopy point and the predicted touchdown, drawn on your own map.

Those markers are local to you. CARP never creates a global marker, so two aircraft running CARP in the same mission cannot write over each other's map.