any colour blind friendly GUI's out there? passenger seat colour.

[silent one]

Im color blind like about 10% of the male population. When I look at the vehicle GUI I struggle to tell if any passenger seats are empty on the vehicles.  The green dots and grey dots look very similar to me. Are there any mods which give colors with better contrast between empty and full?

 

Please bear in mind this is 10% of the male population and of players. Its genetic and we cant just suck it up.

Many thanks

[ChrisND]

Thanks for bringing this to my attention. For future versions of CM going forward, I'll see what I can do about changing the shape slightly when the space is occupied. Should be an easy enough adjustment.

[womble]

The particular problem raised by Silent One doesn't snag my particular version of colour vision deficiency, but, in general, it's a good idea to try and think of means other than (though perhaps in addition to) colour to identify UI elements, especially when the UI cannot be customised. The bit of the vehicle interface that's often useless to me is the damage indicators: is that yellow? Green? Orange?

 

A potentially very vexing issue for my presentation of colour blindness is the lack of ready distinction between "Quick" and "Reverse" movement paths. Even adjacent, they're indistinguishable to my eyes, which makes for lots of extra checking to make sure I haven't got that tank reversing into position for its shoot-after-scoot shot...

 

I comprehend the aesthetic that drives it, but the decision to use a pastel ochre for "Target" means that very often the Target line is virtually impossible to distinguish from the background terrain, too. It's all very well having a pretty UI, but the number of times the "U" stands for "useless" can degrade any positive reaction to the game as a whole.

[agusto]

Silent one, womble, have you considered changing the colours of your monitor? If you have a better graphics card you should be able to do so comfortably via the graphics driver UI. Other than that, modding the seat occupation indicator to your likening is probably 15 minutes work, maximum. If that' s the only thing bothering you, you could try to change it yourself, that might be quicker than waiting for BFC to  patch it.

Edited June 18, 2015 by agusto

[Bulletpoint]

 

I comprehend the aesthetic that drives it, but the decision to use a pastel ochre for "Target" means that very often the Target line is virtually impossible to distinguish from the background terrain, too.

 

To my eyes, the established target line is a quite vivid red, so maybe it's your monitor settings or your colour perception that plays a trick on you.

[womble]

To my eyes, the established target line is a quite vivid red, so maybe it's your monitor settings or your colour perception that plays a trick on you.

That's kinda the point: colour deficient vision plays tricks on those of us who have it.

 

An example from another game: Xwing vs Tie Fighter had a "radar" display that showed "neutral" ships as amber and "friendly" ships as green. But they were tiny flecks of light, and entirely indisinguishable for me. Another example: in Planetside, one of the nations (an enemy of the nation I played in) was generally "blue" (I'd chosen to play the "red highlights" nation, because then I wouldn't be confused; that worked, mostly), which was fine, but when you banded together into larger groups, one of the elements got labelled in purple which was, to me, visually identical to the blue of the enemy nation. I got yelled at for friendly fire...

[IanL]

Purple on purple fire is never good

 

Seems like customizable colours would be a Good Thing for any future UI revamp

[rocketman]

Seems like customizable colours would be a Good Thing for any future UI revamp

Speaking of custimizable colors, I would like to have in game settings for saturation, contrast and brightness - as I don't want to ruin the calibration I have for Photoshop work.

[Kieme(ITA)]

I am no expert on the matter, but I recognize the problems people can have.

 

On my side I don't really know what the solution should look like. Could you guys post a few screenshots to tell what you can distinguish and what not?

[IanL]

One thing we can do is take our own screen shots and load them into http://www.color-blindness.com/coblis-color-blindness-simulator/ .

[Battlefront.com]

As a general design rule we do try to have different shapes and/or positions instead of relying upon color alone to denote "state". Overall I think we have done a really good job with that, however obviously not perfect.

The passenger dots are probably enough of a hue contrast that most people in the "color blind" spectrum can still tell the difference between occupied and unoccupied. However, I have no doubts at all that for some people it's not enough. Either because they are on the extreme end of the spectrum or their monitor/card combo is not providing enough distinction.

A Mod for this should be pretty easy. The "Dots" are in one of the base BRZs. Someone could change them to be a different shape, such as a square or diamond. That should fix things right away.

Steve

[sburke]

Juju to the rescue?

[Jim1954]

Or perhaps have an X superimposed over the dot for an occupied seat. Mmm, that might be misconstrued as a casualty. Maybe a dot within the dot?

[Battlefront.com]

Maybe a dot within the dot?

That is sort of the way it is now. However, the icons are so small that it's not as obvious as it needs to be for some people.

Steve

[c3k]

Or a little stick figure of a sitting man?

[Jim1954]

I really never realized the extent of the problem. I googled this and came up with a lot of info.

 

"what color combinations are the easiest to see if you are color blind"

 

There does not seem to be a really easy fix, given that the dots are pretty small. I am on a 24" monitor. It would be difficult to tell if I had a smaller one. 

[Battlefront.com]

Yes, it is commonly thought that there is only one type of color blindness and that is total inability to see colors. That is untrue. In fact, that is the rarest type of color blindness. Most people have difficulty with hues and telling the difference between two primary colors (IIRC Red and Yellow are the most common, but I forget now!).

Because of this we do try very hard to keep color as an accent and not a primary means of communication. Obviously imperfectly The issue is the smaller the space, the less flexibility we have because then you start running into standard vision issues (i.e. far sighted, myopia, etc.). The passenger dots are definitely packed in there very tightly in a very small space. Honestly, I'm surprised its taken 8 years to have someone say they can't see the difference.

Steve

[silent one]

Hi

Thanks for the response to my thread.  Im red green color blind, the most common type at 6% . There are other types.eg  blue yellow . To those of you with full color vision , Yes we do see colors , not in black and white. Ill normally encounter some ignorant person in every color blind conversation who'll point as something, like a red jacket and say " what colors that?  Color blindness doesn't work like that , and no you cant just change the monitor or the gamma. LOL

 

I generally do ok with the movement and orders colors. Though they sometimes seem very similar. Yellow / amber and especially reverse as its green. Its a lot worse when its colors on a background eg red writing on blue or green. or any combination thereof. Which is pretty much what the seating format looks like from memory.

 

Battlefront .coms idea of changing the shapes is the most logical. round full and square empty and make them different colours. so everyone happy.

Someone in the  thread says easy to mod.  Well great . Im not a programmer

 

As to why no ones ever said this before? Might be 2 things. Im a health professional so Im used to thinking about such stuff. Also on playing BN last night I found it a lot easier as the seat circles are bigger, but more importantly they were on a pale buff background giving me a better contrast. I recon its the choice of colours unique to BS that's making it an issue now rather than before.

 

So if someone could make a mod. Or if Battlefront could take this on board for the next patch that would be great. Its an issue that effects 1/10 of your fellow gamers.

 

Allan

[Kieme(ITA)]

Ok let's try something shall we?

 

I followed Jim's suggestion of a dot inside a dot. The shapes are so small that changing them didn't get great results, there are too few pixels to work with.

 

White empty squares + White squares with a black dot filler. The empty square means nothing there, the square filled with a dot means there's a man there, besides, that becomes closer to a circle than a square.

What do you think of this modification of the UI for the passengers on a vehicle?

 

 

Are the crew blue dots a problem too?

 

 

Ian, great site that was! I uploaded this one above and now much better understand the problem! Thanks a lot.

Edited June 19, 2015 by Kieme(ITA)

[JonS]

That's kinda the point: colour deficient vision plays tricks on those of us who have it.

Yup. I have the same issue as our friendly rubbish collector here, but not as badly I think, based on what he said.

[silent one]

That looks a lot clearer.

I can read the green writing v clearly on that pic but struggle with the blue.

The blue crew dots arnt great but I can see them. They do disappear a bit vs that gray green background though.  If they left the vehicle would they be white squares?    The circles vs squares are good , very clear. Any color vs empty white squares would work for me, just not blue

Edited June 19, 2015 by silent one

[Kieme(ITA)]

The background is quite dark color, and the blue is a deep blue, let's see if I can do something for the blue dots too.

[Kieme(ITA)]

This is a variation with the dots spotting a bit lighter blue, but with a black dot inside, like for the White passengers ones:

 

 

Could pretty much make the crew dots White too, since they are on the other side of the vehicle, could be a bit confusing though. Or the blue could be lighter, but int hat case it won't be much different from the White.

 

This is the original (vanilla) for comparison:

 

 

What's your opinion?

Edited June 19, 2015 by Kieme(ITA)

[Offshoot]

White empty squares + White squares with a black dot filler. The empty square means nothing there, the square filled with a dot means there's a man there

This seems counterintuitive to me. I don't see a white empty square and a white square with a black dot in it - I see a filled white square and an empty square. To my mind a solid white square = a filled white square = a filled seat. A square with a black dot in it (especially on a black background) = a white square outline = an empty square = an empty seat.

[silent one]

Kieme Showing the vanilla brings the issue much more to focuss.

The blue with the dot in the middle is harder to see than the original. The vanilla screen clearly reminds me the blue crew arnt the issue. the issue is the green dots loooking just like the empty dots . are they gray?

 

Your first version with white circles with dots for full and empty white squares for empty was by far the best so far. The white squares are the easiest to see.

 

In the original vanilla screen the green dots is horrible. Green dots are too similar to the gray? of the empty dots. they just merge together when they are next to each other and I cant tell them apart..  The issue isnt so much seeing whats full as seeing whats empty . Can you try green dot full and white square empty.? I think that would work. The white square is good . Also white isnt a color so it cant get messed up and a square helps + makes it bigger