Real foglights are low and focused to be a flat beam, so they help. Real halogen headlights are also helpful in that they focus a brighter light, making them give better visibility and are friendlier to oncoming traffic. Add-on foglights and halogens, which you often see on "riced out" imports, are poorly designed and usually have the opposite effect.
--Eric Thu Jan 20 11:41:40 2005
How does the "friendlier to oncoming traffic" thing work? Just that it's more focused in general.
I did have to laugh in a bitter way about the advertisement "brightest legal lights! be safe! be seen!" because yeah, the surest way of being safe is to blind the people in the uncoming lanes, not to mention making the rearview mirrors of the car in front of you useless.
--Kirk Thu Jan 20 11:46:55 2005
Not an addict - just a daily visitor whose experience is that if it's a short entry, you'll usually add something later. (Your comment counter doesn't seem to be working.)
--YELM Thu Jan 20 11:55:51 2005
Ok, ok... (For those who haven't figured it out, "YELM" is "Your Ever Lovin' Mother")
You might have to reload to see the comment counter update.
--Kirk Thu Jan 20 11:58:41 2005
Yeah, when it's that foggy, it usually means that you've got a memory leak in your car somewhere and your windows are compensating by not drawing the cars around you or much of the road.
Man, I hate seeing distance fog in video games. Anyone who has played Rogue Squadron on Gamecube can tell you that a memory shortage combined with supposedly huge exteriors means they'll be times where all you see is fog and maybe the ground.
FarCry, the recent PC game that pushed the limits of exteriors with miles and miles (scale, natch) of draw distance, was set in a lush tropical paradise, as if to spit on the whole concept of fog. For that, I applaud it. Frankly, even in large scale urban games, I prefer half-drawn buildings to buildings engulfed in fog. Carmageddon 2 (et al.) and the GTA3+ games did this right.
--LAN3 Thu Jan 20 13:47:30 2005
I have no idea whether it came out in America, but in the early 90s in Britain we had 'Almost Everything You Ever Need To Know' by Tim Hunkin and it was a book of all sorts of facts, and was v v cool. It's good to see he's still doing things!
(And, to join the debate, I've checked twice today... :-) )
--Catherine Thu Jan 20 14:23:49 2005
"Yeah, when it's that foggy, it usually means that you've got a memory leak in your car somewhere and your windows are compensating by not drawing the cars around you or much of the road."
Heh. Or maybe just a memory leak in *me*...that would explain a lot of things.
--Kirk Thu Jan 20 15:14:53 2005
Oh, I forgot to mention the other solution that's more elegant than fog. Sometimes, as in the 1997 PC game "Crimson Skies," the player would end up off the map and end up in a fairly impenetrable fog, though thanks to a minimap and the game's target-locking system, one could select a target or waypoint and find one's way back to the map. I prefer the Battlefield 1942 system, which puts an invisible border will inside the limits of the map, and if you cross this from this border, you've got about 10 seconds to get back in before your life starts depleting, giving you about 20 seconds from full health to death. (You know the line's been crossed first from a radio message indicating that leaving the area of battle is a punishable offense.) In the upcoming Battlefield 2, the area enclosed by this border will change on the maps depending on how many players the server is configured for-- hence 32 players will have a lot more breathing room than a game with max. 8 players.
Later versions of BF1942 (and certainly BF2) have fast airplanes that let you fly off the map if you don't turn often enough, and what's there, terrain-wise, is a copy of the map as though it has wrapped, but in fact you're on a copy of the map that's adjacent to the one you're playing on, devoid of players and hence rather Twilight-Zone-like. Don't break your glasses, Burgess Meredith!
I was gonna say that I could go on at length, but I think I did that already.
--LAN3 Thu Jan 20 20:22:01 2005
Dude, it's your mom. When not working with my mom, she's always trying to find out what's happening with me. . .I think it's just something mom's do.
--Mr. Lex Fri Jan 21 07:37:08 2005
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