FiveM HUD Guide: GTA 6 Style HUD Design Principles

Your HUD is the one part of your server that every player looks at every second. A good one disappears into the game. A bad one covers the screen in bars, icons and numbers nobody reads.

"GTA 6 style HUD" is a popular search, so let’s be clear about what it can mean. Rockstar’s GTA 6 (GTA VI) trailers are mostly cinematic and show very little of an in-game HUD. So when people ask for a GTA 6 HUD, they usually mean a look: Vice City colours, sunset gradients, bold condensed type and a clean screen. That is a design direction, not a copy of anything. It runs on GTA V FiveM like any other HUD.

This guide covers the design rules first, then the technical side.

What a HUD is for

A HUD answers questions the player has right now. Before adding anything, ask which question it answers:

• Am I about to die? (health, armour)
• Do I need to eat or drink soon? (hunger, thirst, on servers that use them)
• How fast am I going, and do I have fuel? (only in a vehicle)
• Am I talking, and who hears me? (voice range, radio)
• Where am I? (minimap, street name)
• What just happened? (notifications)

If an element answers none of these, it probably belongs in a menu, the phone or the inventory, not on screen.

Six design principles

1. Show things only when they matter

Hunger at 90% is not information. Hunger at 15% is. A modern HUD hides or dims values that are fine and brings them forward when they need attention. Vehicle information appears when you get in and leaves when you get out. Voice range shows when you change it or when you talk.

This is the biggest single difference between a HUD that feels current and one that feels like 2019.

2. One visual language

Status bars, notifications, progress bars, the phone and menus should look like they come from the same place. Same font, same corner radius, same colours. Many servers run five UI resources from five authors, and players notice, even if they can’t say why.

Pick your HUD first, then choose or restyle the other UI resources to match it. With full-source scripts this is usually a few CSS variables. With escrowed scripts it may not be possible at all.

3. A palette with a job

A Vice City palette usually means hot pink, orange and a deep purple or navy, often as a gradient. It looks great in a trailer. On a HUD it needs discipline:

• Use one accent colour for "attention", not five.
• Keep text white or near-white on a dark, slightly transparent background.
• Keep red for danger only.
• Check contrast. Pink text on an orange sunset sky is unreadable.

4. Type that reads at a glance

Condensed display fonts give the poster look, but they are hard to read small. Use them for big numbers (speed, cash) and headings. Use a plain sans-serif for anything the player needs to read, like notifications.

Load fonts from inside the resource, not from an external font service. It is faster and it works offline.

5. Respect the edges of the screen

Players run 1080p monitors, 1440p, ultrawide screens and TVs. Place elements relative to the safe zone and the minimap, not at fixed pixel positions. GTA V has a safe zone setting in its display options, and a good HUD reads it. Test on at least 16:9 and 21:9, and check that nothing hides behind the minimap or chat.

6. Leave the minimap readable

Many servers restyle the minimap frame or make it round. That is fine. Hiding it completely usually is not, unless your server gives players another way to navigate. Keep the street name visible; it is how players tell each other where they are.

What to show, and when

A simple plan that works for most roleplay servers:

Element	When it shows
Health, armour	Always, but small; bigger when low
Hunger, thirst, stress	Only below a threshold, if your server uses them
Voice range	When talking or changing range
Radio channel	When on a channel
Speed, fuel, seatbelt	Only in a vehicle
Street and area name	In a vehicle, or when it changes on foot
Cash	When it changes, or in a menu
Notifications	For a few seconds, then gone

This is a starting point. A hardcore survival server will show more. A social server can show less.

The technical side

NUI and performance

Most FiveM HUDs draw their interface with NUI, which is a web page rendered on top of the game. NUI is flexible, but it is not free.

• Update on change, not every frame. A HUD that sends the player’s health to the UI 60 times a second wastes CPU. Send it when it changes, or a few times per second at most.
• Keep the page light. Big images, heavy blur effects and many animations cost frames, especially on weaker PCs.
• Cache what you read. Reading the player ped, vehicle and position in several loops at once adds up. Libraries like ox_lib keep a cache of common values for exactly this reason.

Check the result with the resource monitor. An idle HUD should cost very little. FiveM resmon basics explains how to measure it.

Hiding the default HUD

GTA V has its own HUD components: weapon wheel stats, cash, area names and more. A custom HUD hides the ones it replaces, usually every frame with the native HideHudComponentThisFrame. Check that your HUD does not hide things players need, such as the weapon wheel, and that two HUD resources are not both trying to control the same components.

Framework data

Hunger, thirst, stress and job data come from your framework. A HUD built for QBCore reads them differently from one built for ESX. QBox has its own exports but a compatibility layer for many QBCore calls. Check the HUD’s support notes for your framework before you buy, and see QBCore scripts, QBox scripts or ESX scripts for resources that list their support per framework.

A checklist before you pick a HUD

1. Does it support your framework natively, and your voice resource?
2. Does it hide values that are fine, and bring them back when they matter?
3. Can you change colours and fonts without editing minified code?
4. Is the idle resmon cost low, on a real server with players?
5. Does it look right on ultrawide and 1080p?
6. Do notifications and progress bars match it, or can you make them match?
7. Is there a changelog, and does someone answer support questions?

Making it yours

A HUD is where a server’s identity shows first. Even with a bought HUD, change the accent colour, the logo and the fonts to fit your server. Players should recognise your server from one screenshot. This is much easier with full-source code, which is one of the reasons we ship all our scripts that way. More on that in escrow vs open source FiveM scripts.

If you are building a full GTA 6 inspired look, the HUD is step three of the Vice City checklist, after light and weather. And for which GTA 6 ideas are realistic on GTA V at all, see GTA 6 features you can already add.

Our own take on these rules is the GTA 6 style HUD for FiveM. You can also browse all our FiveM scripts, try the free FiveM loading screen to see our UI style, or look at bundles. If you need help making a UI match your server, ask support.