Server Set Heads Up Display

[JG52Krupi]

I can understand why you would wish for the chat window to be set by you but I at the very minimum would want the damage window to become server set.

[SNAFU]

I voted for the option of server side enforced settings. But I don´t really mind.

Finally it is up to the player himself, what he wants. If you want realism and immersion, you can switch this all off and fly on a server with similar minded folks on. If you find yourself in the situation in which you start worrying what is balance and what is fair competition, you are likely not looking for realism and immersion, but rather for the sportative aspects of the player vs player contest. For a player vs player conest, may it be 3 or 5 vs 1 or 2 vs 1, where it is about competing skills, it would probably be the best to give the option to set it on the server side. But then you would also need icons to identify friend and foe, because all players should be using the same plane and fly on the same altitude, like in the good old league map.

I personally flew IL2 1946 for the last 3 years with deactivated Hud-Log. Knowing of the disadvantage I have from the player vs player point of view I had more fun this way. But the disadvantage in competition was more obvious in 1940, especially with the inaccurate (if working at all) temperature gauges. In my squad formation I always had problems keeping the form, because I always wanted to keep my engine temperatures in the gauge range (no overheating warning, a problem especially in the 190, where the gauge limits are off), while all others constantly flew with X% power settings, I just had to figure what that means in ata and rpm. Now in Cod, the first thing I switched off were all the hudlogs and little throttles and so on. But I still have not figured out how to switch of the top left hud-log for the messages: Gear up, gear neutral, Gear down etc. Has anyone figured out how to get rid of that?

[JG52Krupi]

Can't you hold alt right click and close it?!!!?

[SNAFU]

No, I only can deactivate the Radar info screen there.

[Madfish]

But that is exactly the point. Those of us who want control over the windows obviously interpret that the OP want's the game to completely override the window settings and in fact he specifically mentioned that in his first post. That means that we would not be able to hide the windows anymore. Sadly he only talks about showing windows in his example but hiding them would be the only important feature I believe.

As for the damage window for example Krupi, on page 2 Wolverine gave a great example why you DON'T want a damage window. It's completely unrealistic so why would anyone want that?

I guess it's okay to have the ability, as a server, to enforce certain windows - on the condition of being able to have 3 options. Allow, disallow and user controlled.
This means you could force damage window off, make chat optional and arcade/newbie servers could enforce everything to make sure people could help each other or see their planes status with ease.

[JG52Krupi]

Let me break it down for you a bit more Madfish perhaps my first ost wasn't clear enough.

Firstly I voted for some windows server set not all.

The best way around this problem would be for the server to be able to disable/hide them rather than force them on.

I.e. A person joins with all windows open but the server controls the damage window and stops it appearing. Meanwhile another person can connect that has no windows and nothing changes for him.

So really rather than have a server force them on it will just stop them appearing allowing you to customise them still.

[Blackdog_kt]

That's the way i understood it and the reason i voted for a server setting: the server doesn't force anything on (player can still manually disable it), it only forces something off.

Ideally, it even won't mess up your carefully configured interface (ie, logging off from the server will have you looking at your personal interface with no need to set it up again from scratch).

I bet it wouldn't be that hard to do either, because the information presented on those windows is separated into individual data streams.

The server doesn't need to know anything about how your windows are configured if it can simply over-ride and disable a specific data stream, then it will be disabled for all players regardless of how they set up their on-screen interface.

If for example it is set to over-ride the "secondary controls" (the blue text about flaps/gear/etc) information, then nothing will happen to your windows, they will just be blank because it's sending no data. So, no matter if i have my "secondary controls" information on a window all by its own on the right-hand side of the screen (like the default setting is) or merged into a window with other information, it will make no difference to the server at all. Think of it like "muting" on a radio: your radio is receiving fine at the same time as everyone else's radios of different brands and configurations, it's just not playing anything back.

The difference here is that we can potentially mute specific messages, so that for example if i have a text window for chat-bar, damage reports and server console, the server could mute my damage reports and i still get chat and console messages on my window without changing anything, then when i log off my damage reports are back