The point in audio warnings is to enhance situational awareness. A audio warning delivers information on an additional information channel. Reading gauges and displays for information that can easily conveyed by audio is detrimental to the awareness.
So I agree with you on that, the question is if proximity/approach information is better communicated by gauges and writings or audio/visual warnings.
So is it really important to know whether a enemy bomber is at your location in 2 minutes or 2.5 minutes and sacrifice the possibility of the message even beeing read at all, or is a warning that it is approaching shortly enough?
Issue with Newtonian flight and jousting is that people donāt know when to start reversing thrust in order to slow down and so overshoot. Sure you could make an audio announcement overshoot, overshoot, reverse thrust and that might do the trick. Announcing something like overshoot in 5 seconds gives more information, but at that point having a number might be more appropriate, maybe even an overshoot, oveshoot audio warning when it drops to 3 seconds or something.
ā¦
Two minutes is an eternity, Iām talking about actual combat, as in 10 seconds away ranges, hence single digit indicator.
For an overshooting warning a audio warning would be much more effective than reading a number IMO. A number has to be interpreted and eye-manually read, a audio warning is forced into your brain.
I think a combination of both is probably the best for all of these kinds of things, depending on the urgency and importance of the message.
Especially for high stress situations like firefights an audio warning would be far superior to a single digit display. I think most people are probably to distracted to even look at anything other than the target in these situations.
A number gives depth and accuracy for those that want to use the information, itās one of those loved depth with experience concepts. Audio on itās own as I have said a few times now is a single piece of information, a single ping that you canāt extract more information from, itās effective to prompt a reflex reaction, it doesnāt add to tactics though.
I agree. But only on the taget ā¦ one target. Your target. And then on a fixed position on the HUD. Like they plan to do. Putting numbers on everything closeby will not work and will not deliver any situational awareness.
Text and Numbers on Moving HUD elements is a HUGE NoNo. WarThunder is sadly the best example of that.
In WarThunder the hardest thing to learn is situational awareness. Not flying/driving or aiming but situational awareness. If you die in the game, 90% of the time it was because someone shot you who was closer than you thought or out of your view. And sadly War Thunder totally failed on itās HUD, putting text and numbers on the targets. I donāt know anyone who is able to keep track of what is going on and how fast most of the enemies are. Maybe 2, 3 but above that only the most experienced players are able to read that nightmare UI.
Text and number in fixed positions on the HUD are alright. Even one symbol moving on the UI is too much for such a hectic game. Translate that to size or colour please ā¦ pleaaase!
What Iām saying is that itās impossible to read moving text and numbers on the UI. Impossibe or impractical for 90% of the players in the situations we plan to have in Battlescape.
You are mistaken again. A audio warning can surely deliver as much information as a single digit number.
For example:
āimpact 9 secondsā
ā8ā
ā7ā
ā¦
much better than searching for a number on a cluttered hud and interpreting it IMO.
Its an example. A lot of games have audio warnings like āmissile incomingā etc.
Balancing between audio information and numbers and gauges is surely important and one doesnāt exclude the other.
To eliminate overshooting a visual warning like enlarging or coloring the hud element that is overlayed on the enemy and or blinking lights in the cockpit in a special color would probably do the trick too.
But please. Reading is bad.
A moderately quite/mundane sound that isnāt too irritating and changes pitch, spacing or something else depending on impact time. After a few hours players will know quite precisely how to interpret and act upon the sound. Or thatās what Iām guessing.
A lot of games do have that for incoming missile distance ā¦ it works quite well.
Missile incoming is a critical and reflex reaction announcement, while counting down time to intercept when most combat takes place in that counting time-frame is a bad example.
As for colors, we had this conversation a few times before, conclusion always comes down to, no, itās bad design, people process colors differently and some people are color blind. Using a few base colors is alright, but using them to convey a large variance is a bad idea.
Whatās your issue with reading a single number, too much to process?[quote=āLomsor, post:1344, topic:136ā]
A moderately quite/mundane sound that isnāt too irritating and changes pitch, spacing or something else depending on impact time.
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That sounds more irritating than than reading this thread. What you are describing is essentially music and God knows that always comes down to taste.
For what exactly now. Just the target or everything closeby? In a fixed positions or right on the target symbol on the HUD?
As said. Fixed for the currently selected target is alright for me. Everything else is not. Things move too fast, are too numerous and text/numbers look too similar too each other to identify them in such a situation. Thatās why I strongly advocate every other mean of transmitting that information. Just please no text or numbers.
I donāt think tweaking will be enough to fix the problem thatās why I so strongly am against text/numbers.
Having a sound for ātime to interceptā would be something really new and interesting. Instead of depending on distance it would depend on what actually matters: time to engagement. I think I would love such a thing in WarThunder that would warn me if someone was closing in from 2 Oāclock, just outside my view.
Iām fine with the notion that only the target has the time to intercept display. Iām not so fine with constant sound warnings, you can ignore a number if you want while a sound warning is intrusive, hard to ignore and should be used sparingly.
So what can a single digit number really deliver on information? What is the number supposed to represent in your example? Time? I think it will be reaaaally difficult to accomplish that with a single digit.
Have you been here for the past day that this has been discussed, you telling me you have no idea of the feature Iām suggesting, yet you have been debating that idea since yesterday?
Yes I have, no need to be hostile my friend.
I think a single digit number isnāt enough to clarify and a multi digit number is not that readable when judging quick happenings. I think that whole idea is flawed because time to intercept as a single digit number is difficult to interpret.
0 to 9 seconds as a indicator would just be not effective because the relation to your approaching speed isnāt taken into account. You might be way too fast to not overshoot even with a 10 seconds warning. Slingshotting noobs also takes longer than 10 seconds most of the time.
I think a audio warning that plays a few moments before its technically too late to stop and not overshoot would be better.
I think you are borderline trolling at this point, count to 10 in a CS or Overwatch then tell me how long 10 seconds is in a twitch based fps game.
Also, āYou might be way too fast to not overshoot even with a 10 seconds warning.ā, while in the same post you claim āI think a audio warning that plays a few moments before its technically too late to stop and not overshoot would be better.ā.
So 10 seconds is not enough, but a moment before overshoot is okā¦
I would need a mockup to see if that would actually work. It might if itās big enough and obvious, but how can it be big enough with many enemies closing in, will they overlap? Combine?
If itās just the target and in fixed position this all isnāt that bad of course. We already have a few number on the HUD so one more isnāt a bummer.
Iām just wondering how to fix the general awareness problem.
If these events were really that fast paced jousting wouldnāt even be a problem. Jousting is so annoying because it takes us out of the fight for so long.
I wrote moment before its too late to not overshoot. How early that warning sound plays is entirely determined by your speed and the distance to your target then. It could be minutes even!
