Draw Distance Control in Rapid Access Spot

This is an old one I know Torley has mentioned wanting, and so have I, and boy would it be nice for new users who are having bad performance.

A slider, a 4 position checkbox, a number with the two little increment up and down triangles, or any form of instant access draw distance control that is visible on-screen all the time.

most new users dont realise up means forward

not to be mean but the ppl who know what draw distance does probally have seen it

and those who dont wouldnt know what it was would just see it as another popup box spitiing info into an already overwhelming world

dont overload the new user , write a freaking pamplet that says more that you can do anything with Secondlifes biult in tools, but you have to figure it all out yourself ha ha.

or even better yet make sl autoconfig not suck and tell that your on a X machine and it will only do min FPS at this draw distance take the user out of it, like most games (you can tweak quality up later)

It's not always a matter of determining the optimal draw distance.

Many times when I do high-res aerial photos for the Messenger I will crank my draw distance up all the way to 512 to snap the photo; it makes for a very clear, clean looking photo. But then afterward I need to bring it back down to my normal setting (usually 128 or so).

Many times I have forgotten to do so and wandered around badly lagged for a half hour or so until I realize what I've done, slap myself on the forehead, and fix it.

An on-screen display and control (at least as an option) would be quite nice, IMHO.

P2

Boy, does that sound familiar. I can set my draw distance up high in some places, and often forget to change it back.

For the new user having it on the screen means not having to say Edit Preferences Advanced Graphics tab , no , not that Graphics tab, the other one, Advanced Graphics, down in the middle below show avatar in mouselook, and above fog distance ratio.

Instead one would just say "Lagging badly?Click the leftmost green button at the top right of the screen", or whatever the simple instructions would be.


It wouldn't need to take up any significant screen space, no need for any dialog boxes, maybe just the word Draw: the current value, and two triangles to increase or decrease it. It would fit to the left of the time display. That is just one idea of many possible ways it could be done.

AHHHHHH THIS AGAIN!

Yeah I remember asking about this before. In 2006 AD now, I wonder what the best way of doing this would be. I remember that for the longest time, it wasn't really noticed that DROP DRAW DISTANCE wasn't compatible with DISABLE FAR CLIP, but I'd noticed that something just didn't seem to make a difference.

Sometimes I think to my old Mac, running System 7, and how I could have extra menubar widgets depending on what I needed. Now, I wouldn't want things to be too confusing, but a draw distance slider... or even up+down arrows would be VERY handy since performance changes DRAMATICALLY depending on what's within your draw distance. I like to crank up to 512m for some epic, very telephoto shots, but then I have to go back into PREFERENCES and lower it down again. If numbers are too scary for new Resis, you could even just have a little graphic. (And two L$ signs, one green and one blue, is very redundant... save that space!)

Actually, here's something funneh: I never knew before I could right-click on the MINI-MAP to change magnitudes of zoom. I've gotta think, how else could effective controls be effectively kneaded into the interface without feeling packed?

hmmmmm.... mini-map..... maybe... dunno about u guys, but i pretty much always have the mini-map open. do most ppl?

if so, a draw distance slider could be added to the bottom/top of the mini-map.
as long as you have grabbed the control with your mouse, the mini-map could also display a yellow (or pink-n-green) circle centered around you showing the selected distance visually.

yes? no?

This makes sense to me because of the following very good reason:

if you adjust your DRAW DISTANCE, then your "cone of vision" inside the Mini-Map visually gets longer and shorter. To have an unintrusive slider or some control in that space to adjust it, even if it requires a right-click, would be a natural coupling and way handy.

Could we just lump this in with the fully customizable UI proposal?