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Zooming out and assessing the big picture


Tsambo

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Before i start i want to state that i searched the forum for a little while and i didn't find a satisfactory thread to bump. :)

 

So i just think that you should be able to zoom out much more because almost noone just sees what is going on only for 50 meters around him. What do you think?

 

The first issue many of you will have is that it will make things around the survivor look really small and even so small that you can't click them. Well in fact that's a good thing. It simulates that your attention is drawn far away and you just assess the big picture at the moment. If you want to click at things close to you, you zoom in. Zooming in on your survivor then simulates that you draw your attention to your close surroundings and you aren't aware of the current big picture.

 

Maybe a feature would be to zoom in somewhat (not all the way) at a far location, let's say 150 meters away. That simulates you concentrating at what's going on at that location and losing all visual sense of your surroundings (or maybe a little corner of the screen remains zoomed on the survivor to simulate a little visual sense of your surroundings you have with the corners of your eyes). Maybe some noise indicators could warn you if something is sneaking up on you. Offcourse as the distance of the far away location you observe increases you are able to zoom in less.

 

The above features could be used for "sniping" with long range guns you may find (like a bolt action hunting rifle). The above features would also give meaning to items like binoculars, gun scopes and even telescopes.

 

Another issue with zooming out would be that it may affect the performance of low end computers. I don't know about that. When zooming out you only see what happens in your line of sight, not everwhere, so 90% of the screen would still be affected by the "fog of war", so i don't think it will have a big impact on performance.

 

What do you people think???

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It isn't the fog of war that affects the performance, but rather the size of the streamed area which would have to be  a lot bigger to enable very far zooming. If it won't be an issue it'd be nice to have a little bit larger area to view, maybe yes.

 

Did you know if you hold ctrl or right click and move the mouse to the edge of the screen the screen will pan there and help you see further?

 

I don't really know if this is truly necessary atm, but maybe something down the lines.

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It isn't the fog of war that affects the performance, but rather the size of the streamed area which would have to be  a lot bigger to enable very far zooming. If it won't be an issue it'd be nice to have a little bit larger area to view, maybe yes.

Ah yes, i hadn't thought about that...

 

Maybe there should be an option how far you can zoom out, so everyone can adjust according to their machine's performance.

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Actually, we could factor in fidelity decay with range - when something is far away, we can only make out its shape. I'll be the first to admit to not being an expert in terms of streaming graphics, but wouldn't it help if the resolution were lowered, giving a "blurry" effect in long-distance vision mode ?

I will be the second to admit that i don't have a clue about streaming graphics. We need help over here! :P

 

On the other hand it's nice to see that everyone (hey two out of two people who answered in here, so everyone) like more zooming out and to be able to see further away! ;)

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count me as third, so you don't fell so lonely in here ;D

 

i would like to zoom out a little more too.

your examples of "your attention while zooming" were pretty good

Welcome aboard :lol:

Another idea i had is that by zooming out much more you can take advantage properly and fully any tall buildings you come across and maybe even make really tall buildings fighting grounds for rival gangs when playing online.

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