UI - inconsistent status icons - Explained and improvements planned.

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Mycu
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UI - inconsistent status icons - Explained and improvements planned.

Post by Mycu » Mon, 20. Sep 21, 15:58

In current game version we have a new UI icons showing state of some systems.
It's a very nice feature helping to see what's going on at glance, but quite inconsistent.

This table sumarizes current states of those icons:
Image

What I see as inconsistent and misleading is that orange color for some icons (e.g. flight assist) means: disabled/off - but for other (aim assist) it means: on/enabled.
Second thing - grey color for aim assist means "off", but for autoroll means "enabled but in standby". In the same time for collision avoidance it means "on"...
And last one - "no icon" state. Why setting aim assist to "off" gives gray icon when the same setting for autoroll gives no icon?

All of that makes those needed icons misleading and confusing sometimes.

All icons should follow the same rule - e.g:
Image

Or no icon for "off/disabled" state.
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Nanook
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Re: UI - inconsistent status icons

Post by Nanook » Mon, 20. Sep 21, 17:30

This was pointed out in Beta but pretty much ignored. :roll:
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Re: UI - inconsistent status icons

Post by linolafett » Tue, 12. Oct 21, 17:47

Not ignored, because the observation here is not right.

The aim assist has 3 states:
active/inactive/deactivated - Blue, grey, orange.

If i have deactivated the aim assist, i get an orange warning.
If the aim assist is enabled, but not active, it will be grey.
If its activated and actually steering the weapon, then it will be blue.

Same for the collision avoidance, there are three states which need to be conveyed.

If an assist is disabled and might cause issues, which can be percieved as something is broken, i used the orange colour.
The annoyance from players was just that the collision avoidance icon will now be always orange on screen, which is ofc not cool.

The change i plan on doing is therefore to get rig of the orange colour, if a system was deactivated by the player. Make that grey, but then use a bright blue and a dark blue for the active/inactive states.
01001100 01101001 01101110 01100101 01110011 00100000 01101111 01100110 00100000 01110100 01101001 01101101 01100101 01110011 00101110 00101110 00101110

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GCU Grey Area
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Re: UI - inconsistent status icons

Post by GCU Grey Area » Tue, 12. Oct 21, 18:03

My preference would be to keep the orange indicator whan operating in flight assist off mode. It's the one I tend to switch between modes most frequently, sometimes changing it every few seconds when in combat. Think a clear contrast between the indicators for each flight mode is essential. Concerned that if it's changed to just a difference between 2 shades of blue that clarity will be lost & it will be harder to ascertain at a glance which flight mode is currently operational.

|K.O.S.H.
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Re: UI - inconsistent status icons

Post by |K.O.S.H. » Wed, 13. Oct 21, 12:36

linolafett wrote:
Tue, 12. Oct 21, 17:47
Not ignored, because the observation here is not right.

The aim assist has 3 states:
active/inactive/deactivated - Blue, grey, orange.

If i have deactivated the aim assist, i get an orange warning.
If the aim assist is enabled, but not active, it will be grey.
If its activated and actually steering the weapon, then it will be blue.

Same for the collision avoidance, there are three states which need to be conveyed.

If an assist is disabled and might cause issues, which can be percieved as something is broken, i used the orange colour.
The annoyance from players was just that the collision avoidance icon will now be always orange on screen, which is ofc not cool.

The change i plan on doing is therefore to get rig of the orange colour, if a system was deactivated by the player. Make that grey, but then use a bright blue and a dark blue for the active/inactive states.
totally makes sense but the problem is, that the game does not explain it.


There could also be (additinally) different icons for the state distinction. circle with cross for active, cross without circle for inactive (so the circle means "locked")

Btw: i know the UI is blue, but usually green means active and red means inactive.
Grey for disabled is 100% the right choise.


i think, not all symbols are displayed every time (cant check atm), but should be the case, because dissapeparing symbols generate confusion ("why does not appaer?", "when does it appear?", "whats it all about this symbol?")
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S!rAssassin
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Re: UI - inconsistent status icons - Explained and improvements planned.

Post by S!rAssassin » Tue, 19. Oct 21, 12:25

Where UI icons for subsystems on L/XL?

You flying on destroyer, but have nothing info about damaged or destroyed turret, shield or even engine! Your ship just get out of controls and stops!

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Re: UI - inconsistent status icons - Explained and improvements planned.

Post by linolafett » Tue, 26. Oct 21, 17:14

I have now changed the colours as following:
icons.JPG
icons.JPG (15.98 KiB) Viewed 240 times
Active is bright blue. (e.g. ship is actively using collision avoidance)
Inactive is dark blue. (Inactive is a "stand by" mode. e.g. collision avoidance is "armed" but not currently doing any steering input)
Deactivated is dark grey at 50% alpha. (e.g. collision avoidance was disabled by the player in the options menu, it will never become active without the players input again)

All icons stay visible, i am not hiding them any more.
Ok, thats a lie, if you are using a hotas or controller for steering, the mouse steering icon will be hidden ;).

The icons got moved centrally below the speed indicator and flare indicator, as the 6 icons took too much space on the left handside and the "FLR X" text was not enough of a visual counter weight any more.
So all is now verticially aligned like following:
       Speed m/s
          FLR X
Assist indicator icons

I hope all is fine now.
The worry about the flight assist mode change being too minimal is not an issue, i think, as the difference between the transparent grey and the bright opaque blue is very visible in the hud.
01001100 01101001 01101110 01100101 01110011 00100000 01101111 01100110 00100000 01110100 01101001 01101101 01100101 01110011 00101110 00101110 00101110

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