With all due respect to those who say "floating" name plates are equivalent to a small radar system, please think about the fact that (mentioned above) real drivers *DO* look into the mirrors frequently so they have their "own" radar system. Additionally they do have a much wider field of view and a natural peripheral perspective.

Also remember those plates arent visible all the time - they become visible as soon as you can see the driver in one of your mirrors. So it does *not* act like a radar system which makes stuff visible even if you can't normally see it.

- Plates are invisible if you can't see the players car in one of your mirrors or windows

- If a player is appearing in your mirror, the plates become slightly visible and the closer the player comes to you, the more visible the plates are. Same thing if the player is distancing, the plates become invisible.

In my opinion, floating plates are advantageous for helping people to prevent crashes. Can't see anything unreal or cheat-like in there because we all have disadvantages in comparison to "real" drivers.

Quote from VTiRoj :

+1

Maybe have an option of changing the colour of the boxes too (only on your screens, kinda like how we can colour the dials)

The plates are colored like the "arrows" on the minimap so you can easily distinguish if the player has blue flag displayed or not.

Quote from kiss me :

+1
and
-1

when going downhill,the names tell you where other players r exactly, with you suggestion, this will be difficult and will cause more crashes

huh?

i dont see the point in there...

Last edited by reetp, Fri, 11 May 2007 20:41.

I've thought about a new way to display player names in game. The way they are displayed at the moment is nice but has some disadvantages.

Screenshot 1: Current LFS Player Names



- Depending on distance, they become hard to read (see "blueSKUNK")
- As player names are above the cars, it's hard to see "thru" when there are a lot of cars in the race (especially at start).
- They look a bit old-skool (Quake 3?)

I think a mature sim like LFS deserves a better way to display player names with added functionality. I've made a plot of how player names could be displayed in future versions.

Screenshot 2: New Player Names


The new "player name plates" are sprites, therefore their size is always the same. That way the player names are always perfectly readable.

The plate's transparency depends on the distance to the driver. Near cars plates are fully visible, far ones are almost invisible.

Notice the color of the plates. Yellow ones are active competitors. The Black one (6 AzerRazer) is being blueflagged - just like the colors in the mini map.

If a driver is behind you, the position of the plate corresponds to the position of the driver relating to you. So if a driver is behind you at the left, it's plate is on your lower left corner of your screen.
This should finally solve the problem with people not using their mirrors (side view).

Also, the plates may display the current position of the driver.

Please post your opinions about that.

Edit 2007-05-12 16:10:
Thanks for your thoughts about that. Here are two more possible layouts.

w/ Country flags; no colors


w/ Country flags; w/o border/background



Also please note that in my theory, not *all* racers are being displayed as plates. It's just for those near front/behind/left/right you. The closer they come the more visible they are. So if a player is passing you it's plate is "fading out" in a linear way so from time to time you may distinguish the approx. distance according to the transparency value of its plate.

Imagine one more feature:
By having one hand free (assume you're driving with wheel the plates could resize whenever you come close to one of it (just like the Mac OS X toolbar). A click near or on a plate according to a click on one of the names on the connections list: quickly send a message OR select this player for the next F1 key press. Like clicking on AzerRazer's plate and hitting F1 will send:

Quote :

AzerRazer: =)

One more thought:
By holding down the shift key when racing, the plate's display change from player name to Player position / distance in meters or time or anything else useful. This could be automatically swapped by a timer as well.

And for those who worry about the added "unrealism", what about the reset car feature? Shouldn't that be like calling a caterpillar at the radio instead of a 0.001 second quick restore to the track?

Adding a feature that helps to prevent unclean races is something that would make LFS better as a SIMULATION.

Greetings
P. Van Reet (reetp)

Last edited by reetp, Sat, 12 May 2007 14:22.

Try increasing the sound delay thingie.

Btw. you should get a new PC / more RAM. Athlon 2500+ is like P4 1500.

Okay, so here's the ATI screenshots with MIP level 0 and -4. Unfortunately i could not find a way to clamp the setting in any of the control panels (including ATI Tray Tools). If someone aware of the checkbox, please tell and i'll post the third shot.

My Catalyst version is 06.6 (Driver Packaging Version 8.263-060607a-033678C-ATI).

All settings (AF/AA) are set to most possible quality.

Edit: There must be something wrong, apparently the settings behave opposite to NVidia. However, as there is no way to clamp i cannot say for sure which level is actually used... :\

Last edited by reetp, Sun, 6 Aug 2006 15:37.

I'm very satisfied with my X850 GTO² @ X850 XT, it delivers enough performance for All-Maximum settings in LFS.

But... while browsing this forum i have seen some nice screenshots which actually look much more realistic than what i get out from my X850.

Its not the AA/AF actually, its the lightning and also the saturation of the image. Its less saturated and therefore looks more realistic.

So my question to those who recently switched from ATI to Nvidia: *does* Nvidia look better than ATI?

Answers appreciated.
Regards
ReetP