A better "Wheel up" icon?

impaktor
Posts: 1029
Joined: Fri Dec 20, 2013 9:54 am
Location: Tellus
Contact:

A better "Wheel up" icon?

Post by impaktor »

I'm always so confused by the wheel-up icon: the arrow (in my head) indicates a direction or an action, not a state, so when I see an arrow up, I'm thinking "It's telling me I need to raise my landing gear".

So inspired by the recent gif uploads seen on the forum, I did this:
Image

compared to the old one:
Image

I'd like to see what the opinions on this is.
mld
Posts: 22
Joined: Mon Feb 10, 2014 12:18 pm

Re: A better "Wheel up" icon?

Post by mld »

nice. old one can also be good enough if the wheel part is omitted when it is up(ie just an up arrow)
or a larger up arrow in the place of the wheel (which might add some nice animation)
FluffyFreak
Posts: 1344
Joined: Tue Jul 02, 2013 1:49 pm
Location: Beeston, Nottinghamshire, GB
Contact:

Re: A better "Wheel up" icon?

Post by FluffyFreak »

I like it :)
impaktor
Posts: 1029
Joined: Fri Dec 20, 2013 9:54 am
Location: Tellus
Contact:

Re: A better "Wheel up" icon?

Post by impaktor »

mld wrote:nice.
thanks
mld wrote:old one can also be good enough if the wheel part is omitted when it is up(ie just an up arrow)
I'm just not liking having an arrow at all for the final down or up state. Any arrow is in my mind interpreted as a call to do something, "Look left", "Look up", "This way", "Follow me", "Go here", "raise landing gear"; and just removing the landing wheel wouldn't fix this glitch in my head, and I suspect it's not an unreasonable way of thinking about it.

If one wants an arrow in the animation, it could work like this:
Image
(I haven't looked at the code, so I don't know about adding two intermediate states for the wheel up/down would be worth the effort?)
FluffyFreak
Posts: 1344
Joined: Tue Jul 02, 2013 1:49 pm
Location: Beeston, Nottinghamshire, GB
Contact:

Re: A better "Wheel up" icon?

Post by FluffyFreak »

Might be worth adding the intermediates, I shouldn't imagine that it would be a lot of work but it depends on how they existing system is done.
mld
Posts: 22
Joined: Mon Feb 10, 2014 12:18 pm

Re: A better "Wheel up" icon?

Post by mld »

probably right
BTW why are those icons so small?
FluffyFreak
Posts: 1344
Joined: Tue Jul 02, 2013 1:49 pm
Location: Beeston, Nottinghamshire, GB
Contact:

Re: A better "Wheel up" icon?

Post by FluffyFreak »

mld wrote:BTW why are those icons so small?
Pioneer is secretly an internet distributed eyesight test... some people didn't even notice that the stars were stretched in the skybox texture y'know ;)
mld
Posts: 22
Joined: Mon Feb 10, 2014 12:18 pm

Re: A better "Wheel up" icon?

Post by mld »

well
Image
impaktor
Posts: 1029
Joined: Fri Dec 20, 2013 9:54 am
Location: Tellus
Contact:

Re: A better "Wheel up" icon?

Post by impaktor »

@FluffyFreak
I've looked at WorldView.cpp and it's beyond me (which doesn't say much, since most C++ in pioneer is). I don't know if adding a 4-state icon as in my last post is something worth the effort, or if that effort should be invested in now, or when the WroldView is in GUI/Lua?

@mld
It's small because I don't want to overcompensate anything :-P. And because that's the size of the icon.png.
jpab
Posts: 77
Joined: Thu Jul 18, 2013 12:30 pm
Location: UK

Re: A better "Wheel up" icon?

Post by jpab »

impaktor wrote:I've looked at WorldView.cpp and it's beyond me (which doesn't say much, since most C++ in pioneer is). I don't know if adding a 4-state icon as in my last post is something worth the effort, or if that effort should be invested in now, or when the WroldView is in GUI/Lua?
For what little it's worth, my opinion is that we should just switch to the new 2-state icon for now, since it's an immediate improvement and requires no further effort. If someone wants to switch to a 4-state icon, they're welcome to do it, but I don't think we should wait for that.

Also, looking at nozmajner's UI mockups it's pretty clear that the ship console design/flight control UI is going to change a lot, so the icons and controls we currently have will need to be updated anyway at that point. I don't know how long the current design will last when the world view is fully switched over to new-ui/Lua.

John B
Post Reply