Weather

[qgaliana]

Sure - I bring it up because we swapped some posts on the topic a while back.

Personally, I have a brutal time with the with the two blue colours over sea (face pressed against the screen, squinting "I think I see it"). But this will vary from person to person. Depending on what colours you pick, someone else may have trouble. As long as one is toggleable, plus the info panel, it should be easy to figure out. Two would make it easier, but I personnaly don't see it as more than an esthetic issue. I expect I will enjoy looking at the pretty map uncluttered by lines.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: qgaliana

Sure - I bring it up because we swapped some posts on the topic a while back.

Personally, I have a brutal time with the with the two blue colours over sea (face pressed against the screen, squinting "I think I see it"). But this will vary from person to person. Depending on what colours you pick, someone else may have trouble. As long as one is toggleable, plus the info panel, it should be easy to figure out. Two would make it easier, but I personnaly don't see it as more than an esthetic issue. I expect I will enjoy looking at the pretty map uncluttered by lines.

I'll try some different colors for the shades of blue. Several other people also reported them as being too similar and hard to see.

How about the pink? I'll show the red variation later too.

[qgaliana]

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets

ORIGINAL: qgaliana

Sure - I bring it up because we swapped some posts on the topic a while back.

Personally, I have a brutal time with the with the two blue colours over sea (face pressed against the screen, squinting "I think I see it"). But this will vary from person to person. Depending on what colours you pick, someone else may have trouble. As long as one is toggleable, plus the info panel, it should be easy to figure out. Two would make it easier, but I personnaly don't see it as more than an esthetic issue. I expect I will enjoy looking at the pretty map uncluttered by lines.

I'll try some different colors for the shades of blue. Several other people also reported them as being too similar and hard to see.

How about the pink? I'll show the red variation later too.

Pink on green (esp clear terr) or yellow (desert?) is trouble, on low zoom I can't see it at all. On other terrain no prob. Again, if you have an alternative system that doesn't rely on coloured lines that will work best, and it sounds like you do (mouseover/hex select?). Tweaking colours until they look good to me is bound to lead to trouble (wife:can you bring me my black sweater, me:sure, wife: that's green, me:??, wife: the other dark one, me:aaah )

[Shannon V. OKeets]

Here are the weather zone boundaries with one color inside of another. I have reduced the weather zone boundaries to a width of 3 when they are by themselves - that seems to work well everywhere.

What you are seeing here is a white line 1 pixel wide inside a dark blue line 7 pixels wide. The white really takes over doesn't it? Where the weather zone boundary parallels the Norway-Sweden border you can see the same 1 inside 7 but with maroon as the outside color.

This is zoom level 3 and it's not too bad. Compare the white inside blue in the Atlantic versus the pure white inside the Baltic.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

Here is the land overlap at zoom level 5.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

Zoom level 6. There is one hexside that is 1 white inside of 5 maroon; the other s are 1 inside of 7. At higher levels of zoom, things are even clearer.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

Here is zoom level 4. This looks good too.

One of the reasons I am exploring two-toned boundaries is for the color blind players - does this work for you?

[Shannon V. OKeets]

Here is a difficult test for the design, zoom level 3. Not great, but not too bad either.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

Another zoom level 3. The reduction to a width of 3 for the white really helps here; the island outline effect is less pronounced.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

Zoom level 2. The white in maroon can be seen (if you look hard) but the white in blue is very difficult to see.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

8th and last in the series. Again the white in maroon can be seen, while the white in dark blue is hard to distinguish from the pure white.

[Froonp]

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets
Here is a difficult test for the design, zoom level 3. Not great, but not too bad either.

Personaly, I like all those way better than the "change color" way. For me it is a no brainer that those are better. No need to decode !!!!

What about if we go back to green ?

What about trying having the lines side by side ? This is not exactly the same as the "lines within", as there won't be one line separated in 2 lines by the line that is within.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: Froonp

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets
Here is a difficult test for the design, zoom level 3. Not great, but not too bad either.

Personaly, I like all those way better than the "change color" way. For me it is a no brainer that those are better. No need to decode !!!!

What about if we go back to green ?

What about trying having the lines side by side ? This is not exactly the same as the "lines within", as there won't be one line separated in 2 lines by the line that is within.

Green is very hard to see against the blue all sea and also over the different green terrain types.

Side by side is difficult to program (the problem I described earlier with which color goes on which side) and I do not expect there to be much difference - the white will overwhelm the other color. That's primarily because of the medium (the computer monitor generates light instead of reflecting it). Those white lines inside of the dark ones have a ratio of 6:1 for the # of pixels in the darker color : white. White stills wins easily.

[c92nichj]

I like those better than the previous option.

[Peter Stauffenberg]

I like these weather zone lines too. It's great the weather lines don't conceal national borders and sea zone border.

[qgaliana]

I think they look better but white in blue on the ocean is tough to see (Dark blue bleeds away in my vision except for the odd pixel that breaks up the white line). Low zoom was difficult but I don't think that's my colour vision.
 
Have you experimented with blue in white? Or dotted lines?
 
Agree these look better - it's easier to make the brain shift to seeing borders vs seeing weather zones.

[lomyrin]

I also agree that these latest weather zone lines are much better than the earlier versions.
 
Lars

[Shannon V. OKeets]

Ok, I think I've nailed it. Like so many things in programming, once you find the answer, you wonder why it took you so long to see it. Bloody obvious, mate!

Zoom level 2, and everything is clear (it also works at zoom level 1).

[Shannon V. OKeets]

Here it is over land. I am keeping the weather white at the same size throughout (3). Country and sea area boundaries are 7.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

Subcountry borders are 5 pixels in width (e.g., between Transylvania and Hungary) instead of the normal 7 for country borders.