color airport/citynames in Condor3

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pgas
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color airport/citynames in Condor3

Post by pgas » Tue Jan 14, 2025 4:11 pm

A lot of landscapes has a satelite image and not the most common yellowish color. Compare i.e. Slovania against Western germany / France

Condor 2 used yellow for de names, Condor 3 uses a darkbleu/purle color and that color is particularly difficult to distinguish/readable on the often dark baseground of the satellite images used in a lot of landscapes. On the Slovania chart or ICeland that it is no problem because base color is a light one.

I asked the sondorsoaring support team twice for help because i cannot read the darkcolornames on a dark base color of the charts. I did not received an answer.

Is it possible to change the color of the airport/citynames?

If not, Condor3, is not useable for me.

thanks for your help

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wickid
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Re: color airport/citynames in Condor3

Post by wickid » Tue Jan 14, 2025 4:21 pm

No this cannot be changed. Ask the landscape creator to provide a different landscape map.
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NickB
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Re: color airport/citynames in Condor3

Post by NickB » Tue Jan 14, 2025 10:37 pm

Wow, it was yellow and readable, now it's changed to blue and un-readable on all Condor-2 landscapes that have only a textures map and no false color elevation map or other, and it cannot be changed? Not even a white outline/border under the text?
The solution is to change the map? I suppose you can make your own map, and add it as an alternate or substitute it, perhaps using https://maps-for-free.com/ ?
Condor.club has alternate maps as 'goodies'. May there is one for your landscape of interest. https://www.condor.club/srchgoodies/0/ search in family 'landscape map' and pick Condor version.
If not successful, Send me a PM and I can make an alternate map for your landscape.

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wickid
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Re: color airport/citynames in Condor3

Post by wickid » Tue Jan 14, 2025 10:53 pm

NickB wrote:
Tue Jan 14, 2025 10:37 pm
Wow, it was yellow and readable, now it's changed to blue and un-readable on all Condor-2 landscapes that have only a textures map and no false color elevation map or other, and it cannot be changed? Not even a white outline/border under the text?
Yep, the landscape creators should update their Sceneries to Condor3 standard anyway. We tried to keep as much backwards compatibility as possible, but not everything works for stock Condor2 maps. Yellow wasn't readable on the new Slovenia3 map.
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NickB
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Re: color airport/citynames in Condor3

Post by NickB » Tue Jan 14, 2025 11:10 pm

The typical way to make text readable on any background colour is to use white with a black outline or black with a white outline. The mouse icon is an example. It is visible anywhere on white, black, green, blue, yellow, whatever...

NickB
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Re: color airport/citynames in Condor3

Post by NickB » Fri Jan 17, 2025 5:33 pm

pgas, check your PM inbox for maps as requested.

pgas
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Re: color airport/citynames in Condor3

Post by pgas » Mon Jan 20, 2025 4:18 pm

Hi,
sorry for my slow response. Birthdays, grandchildren. etc. Moreover, I received no notification of new email via the forum.

I had to figure out what to do with the files you sent, but change Bright.bmp to NetherlandsHD.bmp and indeed, that is very readable. Thanks for that.
I also looked at the "soaring tools" site. I'm going to take a closer look at that to see how it all works.

Thanks again

regards
Paul

NickB
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Re: color airport/citynames in Condor3

Post by NickB » Mon Jan 20, 2025 4:39 pm

You don't have to change names of files, you can just right-click on the map (Flight-planner) and select 'Maps' and pick the map you want.
You can change you your Forum Preferences/Settings to get a notification on various events such as a PM.

bluefang
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Re: color airport/citynames in Condor3

Post by bluefang » Sun Jan 26, 2025 10:12 pm

NickB wrote:
Tue Jan 14, 2025 11:10 pm
The typical way to make text readable on any background colour is to use white with a black outline or black with a white outline. The mouse icon is an example. It is visible anywhere on white, black, green, blue, yellow, whatever...


This is the correct answer and I have no idea why the devs are being so hard-headed about this.

Requiring all landscape developers to completely re-design their flight maps for v3.0 just because the Condor devs don't understand basic UI fundamentals is insane.

I have responded about this previously and even provided (for free) some UI proposals that work for a large majority of maps.

Here is a copy from a different thread on this same topic:


-------------------------------------------
There are 100s of landscapes out there that may never be updated to C3 - and even if they are updated, it is not a good strategy to force the Landscape designer to design a flight planner map to match the inadequate color scheme of UI elements in C3 Flight Planner.

Topographic map color schemes are not standardized - here are some good articles on the subject:

https://wanderingcartographer.wordpress ... harmonies/

http://docs.idldev.com/mglib/vis/color/ ... talog.html

and an amazingly in-depth publication by the USGS on the subject matter of Color Selection and Patterns for USGS maps:

https://pubs.usgs.gov/tm/2005/11B01/pdf/TM11-B1.pdf


Instead of forcing everyone to use the same color palette for their FP imagery, a much better solution would be to choose a design language / color scheme for the UI elements of the flight planner that actually work with a large majority of the landscapes already out there. This is not that difficult - but does require a bit of thought and effort into UI / UX / Accessibility - which does not seem to be an area of focus for the Condor team.

I have many other UI / UX gripes with Condor and the Landscape Editor - but this new change to the Flight Planner in C3 is really bad.

And because this may feel like harsh feedback, and I don't like criticizing without providing options, I decided to put together a sample design language / color scheme example that seems to work for both dark flight planner images as well as light. There are many other color schemes that could be used that would work with both light and dark maps. This is just an example.

Here is a sample flight plan mockup displayed in 2 different FP maps - Slovenia and AA3. Nothing changed with the UI elements - and they are easily visible in all maps. Notice that the airport symbols include a graphical hint at the runway alignment of the airport - similar to how runways are displayed in FAA Sectionals.


Slovenia-example.png
AA3-example.jpg
Last edited by bluefang on Mon Jan 27, 2025 5:09 am, edited 2 times in total.
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6266
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Re: color airport/citynames in Condor3

Post by 6266 » Sun Jan 26, 2025 11:23 pm

I have started now to make special maps only for that. First the maps have to be 32 Bit, not 24, 150 MB instead of 110 MB in my case. Then I make a new copy, add a layer, fill it with white and reduce the opacity so far, that it's still light, but the map is recognizable. So I get 40 new maps = 6 GB wasted disk space. Ok, if it's the only way to get a usable result, but the trust that they only do logical and good things is gone ... unfortunatly
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dgtfer
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Re: color airport/citynames in Condor3

Post by dgtfer » Mon Jan 27, 2025 7:37 pm

6266 wrote:
Sun Jan 26, 2025 11:23 pm
I have started now to make special maps only for that. First the maps have to be 32 Bit, not 24, 150 MB instead of 110 MB in my case. Then I make a new copy, add a layer, fill it with white and reduce the opacity so far, that it's still light, but the map is recognizable. So I get 40 new maps = 6 GB wasted disk space. Ok, if it's the only way to get a usable result, but the trust that they only do logical and good things is gone ... unfortunatly
Actually, it works with every color depth except 24bpp!
For example, you can save your maps in 8 bpp - indexed 256 colors - or even 4 bpp -16 colors. That's not a big problem for a map; you will have a much smaller file.
Image

6266
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Re: color airport/citynames in Condor3

Post by 6266 » Mon Jan 27, 2025 7:54 pm

dgtfer wrote:
Mon Jan 27, 2025 7:37 pm
Actually, it works with every color depth except 24bpp!
For example, you can save your maps in 8 bpp - indexed 256 colors - or even 4 bpp -16 colors. That's not a big problem for a map; you will have a much smaller file.
Great, that is good. I accept of course a big sized map for pda use, but only for finding an airport on a planner ... Good news, I will try that soon

Thanks!

EDIT: 18 MB instead of 150, saved as 4 bit, and good enough for the planner. That is ok, I don't say anything against this solution!
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