More transparency!

[rasqual]

The extrusions over cities need to be less opaque, for sure. Try 50%!

[rasqual]

Aaargh. More than 3 minutes. Much more. Make it at least 10.

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Also, hey -- how about leveraging the description field a bit more? It'd be darned nice to click up a balloon for a city, and see not just information about who holds it and recent actions on the locale, but more importatnly, links that will perform particular actions -- actions otherwise possible only via external web session.

When the GET methods are thus evoked, have Earth open a page that makes good use of horizontal real estate, and doesn't require much vertical at all. That would fit with the screen real estate issues entailed in Earth's limit of opening a browser below (only) the geo-field pane.

BTW, I haven't said it yet -- major kudos. This is great stuff.

[Mickey]

Originally Posted by rasqual

Aaargh. More than 3 minutes. Much more. Make it at least 10.

I'll play with that.

Also, hey -- how about leveraging the description field a bit more? It'd be darned nice to click up a balloon for a city, and see not just information about who holds it and recent actions on the locale, but more importatnly, links that will perform particular actions -- actions otherwise possible only via external web session.

When the GET methods are thus evoked, have Earth open a page that makes good use of horizontal real estate, and doesn't require much vertical at all. That would fit with the screen real estate issues entailed in Earth's limit of opening a browser below (only) the geo-field pane.

Great idea! The only potential roadblock I see is that the Google Earth browser won't know who you are, and therefore won't allow you to do anything. I'll have to figure that out. Excellent idea, though.

BTW, I haven't said it yet -- major kudos. This is great stuff.

Thanks.

[Mickey]

Re: More Transparency

Why? What is the drawback to having the bright colors now? It's easy enough to do, but I'm not sure what the advantage would be.

[rasqual]

It'd be nice to be able to see through the extrusions before diving through them.

IMO, translucency rocks -- kind of like a 3d heads-up display.

Speaking of which, how about that? How about more extrusion-oriented presentation of strategic metadata?

More! More! Quit your day job!

LOL

[rasqual]

Hokay, here's another argument for transparency -- it would increase the number of distinguishable colors available to assign. If some people preferred opacity, and others transparency, then more users' color preferences could be accommodated. Red opaque for one person, red translucent for the next guy, and a gossamer pink for someone else.

Also, if you make the default color some unimaginably terrible hue, there'd be less need to encourage people to change their setting. ;-)

[giasen]

You could have game stats ping a png overlay file in real-time. Google Earth supports overlays (hud display-esque) and can auto-refresh. Might be nice for a scoreboard or something.

Like AmpPoster

[rasqual]

Yeah, that sounds like a winner.

[Mickey]

Originally Posted by rasqual

Hokay, here's another argument for transparency -- it would increase the number of distinguishable colors available to assign. If some people preferred opacity, and others transparency, then more users' color preferences could be accommodated. Red opaque for one person, red translucent for the next guy, and a gossamer pink for someone else.

Excellent idea! It's on the to-do list now. I'll probably implement it shortly.

Also, if you make the default color some unimaginably terrible hue, there'd be less need to encourage people to change their setting. ;-)

I'll see what kind of nasty color I can choose.

You could have game stats ping a png overlay file in real-time. Google Earth supports overlays (hud display-esque) and can auto-refresh. Might be nice for a scoreboard or something.

I would have to be careful with this, as dynamic image creation like that can get rather server-intensive. Still, it's a great idea on it's on the to-do list now.