Sorry, no, that's a little screen on the dashboard. When you can't see out the windows because they're touch screens, and your door has a screen on it too, wake me up. I'll be in cryosleep til then. My mind will be uploaded somewhere and I'll be happily playing LT, where I can have touchscreen walls to my heart's content.

Talvieno wrote:Sorry, no, that's a little screen on the dashboard. When you can't see out the windows because they're touch screens, and your door has a screen on it too, wake me up. I'll be in cryosleep til then. My mind will be uploaded somewhere and I'll be happily playing LT, where I can have touchscreen walls to my heart's content.

I'm confused. What are we discussing or debating now?

ThymineC wrote:

Talvieno wrote:Sorry, no, that's a little screen on the dashboard. When you can't see out the windows because they're touch screens, and your door has a screen on it too, wake me up. I'll be in cryosleep til then. My mind will be uploaded somewhere and I'll be happily playing LT, where I can have touchscreen walls to my heart's content.

I'm confused. What are we discussing or debating now?

Hyperion put down a picture of a car with a touchscreen on the dash and saying we almost already have vehicles with tv-screen walls... and I was being a little imaginative with my response and going off on a sci-fi tangent which, to be honest, didn't really make sense, but I was just messing around.

I want a level of immersion that is present in multiplayer FPS titles such as Planetside2. What this means is that from the moment that you load into the game universe to the moment you log out something is happening somewhere and time is progressing forward. Menus are used to present information when needed but are hidden during the majority of the game-play. The only way to pause the game should be through the menu where gameplay can't be effected.

I want to feel immersed in the game universe itself between the main menu options. In-game menus, I feel, should be presented in a way that mimics some form of display the pilot may use, so I love what is developing in LT currently. Even if they weren't, I don't think they would break immersion, but that is a case-by-case basis and there's no black and white as to if in-game menus break immersion.

Middle ground works for me based on two facts:

1. In LT, I am a spaceship. (Not an avatar of a person.)
2. Menus are presented as a cylindrical projection, as if they are drawn on a... glass cockpit window.

Basically what we've seen so far is a combination of Diegetic and Meta interface modes.

When I'm represented as a person in a game, I strongly prefer far fewer menus and HUD-like elements. If we were 3D avatars in LT, this would be true for me even if we assumed that space-people have the futuristic equivalent of Google Glass embedded in their eyeballs. Nor would I care for such elements to appear as though they were just stuck on my monitor's screen like the pop-up dialogs of a basic UI.

But because I'm going to be represented by a ship in LT, and because Josh is cleverly rendering menu elements as if on a pane of curved glass, they're less immersion-breaking for me. So I can tolerate more of them than in a fantasy game or one where I'm represented by an avatar of a person (or a combination of those two).

That doesn't mean I want a bunch of info-boxes constantly cluttering up my window onto the world! But dealing with abstract aspects of the world through menus feels like it won't intrude much on my experience of being "in" the world of this particular game.

Flatfingers wrote:2. Menus are presented as a cylindrical projection, as if they are drawn on a... glass cockpit window

Otherwise, yes, exactly.

All of the levels.

I find it amusing that four people have chosen the top joke option so far. It's still pretty obvious which way people lean, though I think that's partially because of how it was worded. You can be immersed in a game even if there are menus and an HUD, in my opinion, so long as they're done well.

Talvieno wrote:...though I think that's partially because of how it was worded.

This is a very interesting statement, considering I'm more for either the balanced or menu side and I tried to make it more even.

DWMagus wrote:

Talvieno wrote:...though I think that's partially because of how it was worded.

This is a very interesting statement, considering I'm more for either the balanced or menu side and I tried to make it more even.

No, I simply mean the voting options seem to make the assumption that immersion and menus are opposites. It's simply a difference in definition. Personally, I consider an immersive game to be one that sucks you in and makes you forget about real life for a while, and in my opinion, menus only have something to do with that if they're poorly done. (Mass Effect 1 inventory, anyone?)

Talvieno wrote:

DWMagus wrote:

Talvieno wrote:...though I think that's partially because of how it was worded.

This is a very interesting statement, considering I'm more for either the balanced or menu side and I tried to make it more even.

No, I simply mean the voting options seem to make the assumption that immersion and menus are opposites. It's simply a difference in definition. Personally, I consider an immersive game to be one that sucks you in and makes you forget about real life for a while, and in my opinion, menus only have something to do with that if they're poorly done. (Mass Effect 1 inventory, anyone?)

This is another thing I thought about recently. I think I should have re-worded it, but was unsure how exactly to phrase it.

DWMagus wrote:This is another thing I thought about recently. I think I should have re-worded it, but was unsure how exactly to phrase it.

I agree it's not brilliantly worded, and I had an idea how to reword it too and might have posted my own poll about it. But didn't.

It would have been a poll containing the definitions for gamism and simulationism and asking which one of the two people most side with.

I didn't do it because I wanted to misuse the results of this poll to reinforce any future arguments that simulation accuracy is super important even if this poll is worded in such a way that they're gonna go for those options anyway. :S

Talvieno wrote:

ThymineC wrote:

Talvieno wrote:Sorry, no, that's a little screen on the dashboard. When you can't see out the windows because they're touch screens, and your door has a screen on it too, wake me up. I'll be in cryosleep til then. My mind will be uploaded somewhere and I'll be happily playing LT, where I can have touchscreen walls to my heart's content.

I'm confused. What are we discussing or debating now?

Hyperion put down a picture of a car with a touchscreen on the dash and saying we almost already have vehicles with tv-screen walls... and I was being a little imaginative with my response and going off on a sci-fi tangent which, to be honest, didn't really make sense, but I was just messing around.

The reasons we don't have TV-screen walls in car are primarily for safety, I would imagine.

Aye, but if the outside of your car had cameras all over it...