Better design for the dashboard

[GRUNZ]

The dashboard for each driver requires a bit of redesign. For instance, the fuel and tyre values are the most important bits of info during a race but they are placed far apart from each other and the font is quite small making hard to gauge their level with just a quick glance at the screen. Most of the dashboard is occupied by 3 huge fields that contain timing information.

I would recommend to have Fuel and Tyre values next to each other and placed on the left side of the dashboard (close to the car pic). Use only one field for the timing showing "current time"/"best time". As for the difference in time between your current and the fastest lap use the general area on the left of the screen where currently it shows the position of each driver/car and how many laps behind the leader car. Basically I would put here the fastest lap next to the id of the driver and for each other driver I would put the different in time from the fastest.

During the pit stop, it is not clear which dashboard is yours given that the only info is the controller colour placed on the far right and the menu options for the pit stop are on the far left. How about using the id colour as a border around the whole dashboard for that particular driver/car?

[MrFlippant]

I agree. All I care about, as a racer, is my laps, fuel level, and tire wear. I'll check my lap times at the END of a race, not during it. This information may be more useful for practice, but if I'm taking my eyes off my car long enough to read a number of several digits, I'm likely in the pit lane or something anyway, and can use more focus to do so.

We haven't had any problems knowing which dashboard to look at, but we definitely would not use sort dashboard by place, because that would just mess things up. There's already a color coded racing order on the side to look at.

[GRUNZ]

I do not have any problem with the sorting dashboard: I actually like it. Maybe for a novice to RCS could be a bit distracting but mainly because most of the each dashboard are equal to each other. By simply adding a border around them with the same colour as the colour in the ID box then it would be much easier to spot your own even when position is changing dynamically.

[MrFlippant]

It' just nice to be able to look up and NOT have to seek out your dashboard, even with better color borders or whatever. Knowing where your dash is and being able to look up and see it at a glance is how we do it. Also, I'm using an older computer, and don't feel the need to take up more processor power with a feature I don't even like. ;-)

But, even so, I think the current color coding and car photo and name are enough to find your dashboard, even if it moves. I doubt that a stronger color border, which will take away from the size of the dashboard contents, will improve that much.

[GRUNZ]

While you are lapping, the colour id and the picture boxes helps. But when multiple cars are pitting, then the pit menu substitutes the car pic and things start to get confusing when the other cars lapping will make the dashboard order change. While pitting, you look at the pit menu and there is no reference which one is yours and which one belongs to the other drivers in the pit with you.

What I am suggesting here is not going to take too much real estate from the current dashboard. It could be implemented either by using the colour id instead of the current grey colour that marks the border of each dashboard or it could be the background colour of the entire dashboard for each car (for instance, the dashboard for car id 2 will have a red background colour instead of the current grey).

[GRUNZ]

I actually came across a screen shot of the previous version of RCS and each individual dashboard was code coloured according to the car ID. I think that bringing it back would make things easier especially with the sorting dashboards.