abstreet/docs/TODO_ux.md

TODO - GUI and UX

Quick n easy

• try showing traffic signals by little boxes at the end of lanes

  • red circle means right turn on red OK, red right arrow means nope, green means normal turns ok, green arrow means protected left, crosswalk hand or stick figure

• if a lane could feasibly have multiple turn options but doesnt, print "ONLY"

• color roads as solid black when zoomed out, and make intersections similar (except for stop sign / signal)

• audit all panics

• tune text color, size, padding

• sort the top menus

• click cycle diagram to edit duration

• lane edit validity

• make it easy to see current lane when changing it

Less easy

• revamp stop sign editor
• toggle rewind mode
  • sim stuff feels like a modal menu that's kinda omniprescent, but gets hidden sometimes
• yellow or flashing red/yellow for yields
• text box entry: highlight char looks like replace mode; draw it btwn chars

General ezgui stuff

• optionally limit canvas scrolling/zooming to some map bounds
• T top menu doesnt know when we have a more urgent input thing going!
• cant use G for geom debug mode and contextual polygon debug
• on a menu with preselected thing, clicking ANYWHERE does stuff...
• X on all menus
• when dragging, dont give mouse movement to UI elements

New features

• swap direction of one-way

• convert between one- and two-way if there's enough space

• undo support for edits

Better rendering

• depict residential bldg occupany size somehow
• render overlapping peds reasonably
• draw moving / blocked colors (gradually more red as they wait longer)
• render cars with textures?
• rooftops
  • https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/b/top-view-city-street-asphalt-transport-people-walking-down-sidewalk-intersecting-road-pedestrian-81034411.jpg
  • https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/top-view-city-seamless-pattern-streets-roads-houses-cars-68652655.jpg
• general inspiration
  • https://gifer.com/en/2svr
  • https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/research/safety/05078/images/fig6.gif
• color tuning
  • neutral (white or offwhite) color and make noncritical info close to that. http://davidjohnstone.net/pages/lch-lab-colour-gradient-picker, chroma < 50
• use new arrows for drawing...
  • triangle and base have a gap; why?!
    • only for turn icons?
    • draw as one polygon when fixed
  • dashed thickness is way off
  • last dash shouldnt appear?

Switch to OpenGL (for speed)

• speed
  • show FPS or some kind of measure of lag
  • sleep better in the event loop
    • first make UserInput borrow state and not need to consume
• quality
  • need padding around text
  • text entry needs to draw the cursor differently
  • better arrows (then debug the legend plugin)
  • time for a car texture?
• more speculative performance ideas
  • experiment with batching and not passing colors
  • specialized shaders for common shapes like circles?
  • try https://docs.rs/dymod/0.1.0/dymod/ to link in a release-mode ezgui crate?

Performance

• it's a pity we have to redo DrawCar work for all those parked cars every tick
• areas like lakes are incredibly detailed