WHERE IS THE PLANE ON THE MAP?

[wrench]

Here's one scenario where I have problem seeing plane icon on map.

• Let's say bagged some kills, my plane is damaged or pilot wounded, and want to land where won't be vulched or picked. Most likely canopy is oiled so outside visual cues are limited.
  
• Large amount of planes upping from a friendly base i'm near with furball near that. Cannot see my plane icon because of all the green icons.
• Only way to see my plane icon is to zoom in almost all the way on map. But now can't see where I'm at in relation to everything else.
• Once I get my general direction of flight must zoom back out to see where everything else is.
  
• Then make a decision about what to do next.

Meanwhile, with the goal of landing in mind, precious time has passed and now may not make a nearby base. Or enemy has spotted my disabled smoking plane and zooms in for easy kill.

If the plane icon was easily discernible from all the other clutter on the map I could have made a much quicker decision with less risk to landing successfully.

So...how can the plane icon be seen over all the other clutter?

Does this capture the essence of this wish and the other wish about which way icon is pointing?

[Arlo]

Could you mention a specific map that is causing your icon to be lost in all the clutter (bearing in mind that re-opening the map always brings it up with your plane position in the middle)? I looked at more than a dozen maps after BBP mentioned his difficulty in losing the icon on a 2 inch magnification of the map (such being way too low a magnification to be efficient - yet ... I could always make out the aircraft icon, easily).

[surfinn]

I had this problem in AvA once. They had a winter map and you could not see your icon at all it blended in so well with the terrain on the map. Would have loved to been able to change the icon color of mine on the map. Finally got frustrated and went back to the MA. Cant imagine that it would be that difficult to give us the option of colors for the map icon.

[Arlo]

One of the maps I tried was the 'AHRHINEWIN.EXE' (Rhine winter).

Depending on what the player activates or not on the map (radar, base names,
vehicle spawns, base alts, etc) the player aircraft icon should still be fairly easy
to locate at a decent magnification.



Anyone in the game that is recommending to new players that they keep their
clipboard/maps open at an extremely small magnification either doesn't actually
understand the impracticality of such or are using this in lieu of the old 'alt f4' prank.

[surfinn]

This one was different. It had a winter camo look to it without the terrain features the whole thing from the clip board was the same color as your icon with black lines mixed in to give it a winter camo look. It may have been a custom map just for the AVA. Again though its the only time I've had that problem. If it takes a lot of time to give us a color option then your right its not worth it but how hard can it be to give us that option? I'm not a programmer so I honestly don't know  but I would think it would be something simple to do.

[Arlo]

Are you talking about a shader/color option for the player to control? Guess there's that.
What's a 'good color' on one map may not be for another. And imagine changing it to
red and the confusion of whether an enemy icon is on top of you or not? Enemy, friendly
and other GUI colors could be changed and that could require further self-icon changes.

Guess I'm just not understanding the 'small clipboard' trend.

[surfinn]

Only time ever I've had a problem with it so honestly no big deal to me personally but It would be cool if you could either shade it from white to black or have color options.
If its easy to do if it takes a lot of time to implement then its not worth it.

[Arlo]

Only time ever I've had a problem with it so honestly no big deal to me personally but It would be cool if you could either shade it from white to black or have color options.
If its easy to do if it takes a lot of time to implement then its not worth it.

I honestly don't know how easy or hard it would be to implement.