The HUD Problem
The default FiveM HUD is a disaster. Players end up with half a dozen conflicting overlays fighting for screen space, no consistent visual language, and critical information buried under decorative fluff. Every server we joined had the same issue: too much HUD, not enough clarity. Agency-Hud exists to fix this.
Information Hierarchy
We broke down HUD elements into three tiers. Tier one is always visible: health, armor, hunger, thirst. Tier two shows contextually: vehicle speedometer when driving, voice range indicator when speaking. Tier three is on-demand: minimap toggle, job status, inventory. Each tier has its own visual weight and animates in and out cleanly. Nothing competes for attention unless it matters right now.
Accessibility Built In
High-contrast mode, configurable sizing, and colorblind-safe status indicators ship out of the box. This isn't optional in 2026 — your players will include people with various visual needs and a professional HUD accommodates them. Server owners can toggle these defaults for their community.
Performance Under Vehicle Spawns
The biggest HUD performance trap is redrawing during heavy vehicle or NPC spawns. Agency-Hud uses a single render target with delta updates — we only redraw the parts that changed, not the whole overlay. On a 64-player server during a heist event, the HUD cost us a tenth of what comparable alternatives did in our benchmarks.
Customization Without Chaos
Server owners can reposition every HUD element, swap color schemes, and hide specific pieces from a single config file. But we deliberately don't ship a theme marketplace or user-side positioning — the HUD you build is the HUD every player sees, which keeps the visual language of your server coherent. Consistency is a feature.
Installation & Setup
Agency-Hud has no database dependency. Download from Tebex, drop the folder into your resources directory, and add ensure agency-hud to server.cfg. The resource detects your framework automatically and pulls health, armor, hunger, and thirst values from the appropriate sources. For standalone setups, the data hooks are four config functions.
If you're replacing an existing HUD, disable the old one first. Most HUD conflicts are caused by two resources drawing to the same screen region simultaneously. Agency-Hud has no hardcoded screen regions — all positions are configurable — so it can coexist with specific third-party overlays if needed.
Configuration Options
The config.lua covers layout, visual, and performance settings:
- Element positions — X/Y position and anchor point for every HUD element individually.
- Scale — global scale factor and per-element scale overrides. Useful for ultrawide monitor users.
- Color scheme — primary, warning, and critical colors for status indicators. Default follows Agency's teal-based palette.
- High contrast mode — pre-configured color set optimized for players with low contrast sensitivity.
- Colorblind mode — deuteranopia, protanopia, and tritanopia presets for status indicator colors.
- Tier two conditions — define exactly which conditions show each contextual element (speedometer, voice indicator, etc.).
- Minimap behavior — always on, toggle on movement, or manual toggle only.
- Update rate — how frequently the HUD polls for value changes. Default: 250ms (balanced for performance).
Framework Compatibility
Agency-Hud ships with QBCore and ESX data adapters. For standalone, implement config functions for health, armor, hunger, thirst, voice range, and job data. The rendering layer, animation system, tier logic, and accessibility modes are entirely framework-agnostic. Switching frameworks only requires swapping the data adapter, not reinstalling the resource.
Why This Matters for Roleplay
The HUD is the one UI element that's always on screen. Unlike a phone or a tablet that a player opens intentionally, the HUD is ambient — it lives at the edge of perception and influences every moment of gameplay. A badly designed HUD is an ongoing tax on every player's experience. A good one is invisible: present when needed, gone when not, never competing for attention it hasn't earned.
The tiered visibility approach is the core design insight. Tier one (always visible, small) tells players what they need to know constantly: "am I dying, am I hungry, am I armored?" Tier two (contextual, appears on condition) tells players what they need to know situationally: "how fast am I going, is my mic on?" Tier three (on demand) tells players what they need to know occasionally: "what's my job status, what's in my quick-access inventory?"
Accessibility isn't an afterthought in Agency-Hud — it's a first-class concern because a significant portion of the gaming population has some form of color vision difference. A HUD that's unreadable to colorblind players isn't just a UX failure; it's an accessibility failure that affects real people on your server. Offering the presets costs nothing and means a lot to the players who need them.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can players customize their own HUD layout?
No — this is intentional. Server owners control the HUD layout; players do not. This is a coherence decision: a server where every player has a different HUD arrangement is a server without a coherent visual identity. If you want to offer limited player choice (toggle minimap, scale size), those options can be exposed as in-game commands that write to a player preference table.
Does Agency-Hud replace the default FiveM minimap?
Yes. It renders its own minimap on a canvas element with configurable zoom and waypoint display. The native minimap is hidden on resource start. If you need to preserve specific native minimap behaviors (some anticheat tools hook into it), there's a Config.UseNativeMinimap = true option that re-enables the native map under Agency-Hud's other elements.
How does the performance hold up on crowded servers?
Agency-Hud uses delta rendering — it only redraws HUD elements whose values have changed since the last frame. On a crowded 128-player server, the typical HUD draw call takes 0.01-0.03ms per frame. The benchmark comparison in our documentation shows this is 3-5x lower than most alternative HUDs under identical conditions.
Can I add custom HUD elements for server-specific mechanics?
Yes. Use exports['agency-hud']:RegisterElement(id, options) to add custom indicators. Pass a render function that Agency-Hud calls during its draw loop. Your custom elements participate in the tier system and respect the server's color scheme automatically.
Requirements
- FiveM server (QBCore, ESX, or standalone)
- cfx.re account with valid Agency-Hud license
- No database dependency
- Optional: ox_lib (for UI components, has fallback)