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Anyone have any suggestions to detect the distance between the player and the nearest zombie? I'm still lookin through existing lua files and methods but figured I'd check here too.

It is a source of occasional frustration for me that you can't see farther than approximately the width of the screen from where you stand. Based on the Google Maps Street View going along Dixie Highway in Muldraugh, during the day, a survivor on the highway looking south from Knox Bank should be able to see zombies milling about in front of the Sunstar Hotel, and if that survivor had a one-story watchtower next to the road, they might be able to spot a horde as far away as Pizza Whirled. Plus, if we want to use vehicles and rifles to their full effect, we need to know what going on more than a couple hundred feet away. I like Project Zomboid's third-person view setup. I don't want to change it. What I want is to brainstorm UI workarounds for offscreen-but-within-line-of-sight data. My current thought is something like the Moodle system: icons that appear on the edge of the screen with a background color to indicate distance (perhaps dark red for just off screen fading to white at the horizon). Like on-screen objects, they would fade in or out based on your ability to perceive them, but the total amount of information they would give you as a player would be pretty sharply limited: for example, you could have separate icons for one human or zombie, for a group humans and/or zombies, for a vehicle in motion, for a side street, for a side trail, for a dead end ... I think you'd need some playtesting to figure out what distinctions to include, but you'd never put in enough to (for example) tell which survivor on a multiplayer server is coming up the highway towards you.

Okay, I have had an idea how binoculars could work in game: When you press and hold the sneak/ready attack button and drag the mouse to the edge of the screen you get a slightly wider view of your surroundings. With binoculars equipped as a primary/secondary, this view is significantly increased, although you will only be able to see what your character can see, so if there is a house blocking your peripheral vision you obviously would not be able to see anything behind it. A way around this would to be able to get to higher vantage point, a second or third floor for example, enabling you to see over said house. An alternative to having binoculars equipped as primary/secondary, you have the option to "wear" them around your neck. To balance this out, wearing binoculars or having them equipped leaves them prone to damage. They could deteriorate completely over time or slowly get damaged, making the view distance shorter or blurrier. Rendering the Binoculars almost useless. Binoculars will come in a small variety, ranging from 100m-500m (or shorter/longer distances) and will be slightly rare and are not regarded as military equipment. What do you think guys?

Hey guys, Not sure if this has been suggested before or in the way I propose, but here's my idea. So I'm thinking that a pretty simple new item could be a pair of binoculars, which basically double your view length whilst halving your field of view, allowing you to spot distant threats before they spot you (could come in particularly handy against other humans) or simply to scope out an area before moving in. While using the binoculars you'd be vulnerable to attack, so perhaps a scoped rifle, which would do the same thing to your vision while aiming, and allow you to shoot further. Just a simple idea which could be pretty useful -GodWaffle