Vision restriction suggestions

We have lighting options, which are really nice for setting mood. We even have the option to restrict player's map vision to what their token can see, which is ALSO pretty awesome! It means that all those instances of players not being sure if they could see/hit something without it having cover don't have to happen anymore. Unfortunately, maps that wind up being totally black outside of what the players can see as a consequence tend to wind up disorienting, and I've had my players get frustrated and confused. Now, the compromise is to not restrict token vision at all, and ONLY use fog of war, but I don't think the solution to a problem should just be to not use what could be a really good feature. I have had a few ideas, here. 1) Perhaps a way outside of a token of granting players blanket vision of a specific area? For example, if the players left base "camp" on a map, and I wanted them to retain vision of the camp, I could grant them vision that way? Currently, of course, I can just give them control of a token, but that seems suboptimal. (Expanded in 3.) 2) A "decal" layer; anything placed on it would be considered fully lit and players would have full vision of everything on this layer at all times. (Unless hidden by fog of war.) What would this mean? Let's say I broke a dungeon map in to two parts; I don't want players to have vision of areas they can't see, but I want them to have knowledge of areas they've already been. So, a map that previously looked to players like a single island of a room surrounded by inky blackness... would now look like this. 3) An alternate suggestion to the decal layer; perhaps adding another option to fog of war, so that in addition to being able to mark "fog" we could mark areas players should have absolute vision? (A sort of anti-fog, I suppose.) Allowing this to trump line of sight restrictions would be fabulous. Unlike the decal layer, this would merely grant absolute vision. Areas would still need to be lit to be seen properly.

This has been talked about before and a Warcraft 2 style fog of war showing the map details but none of the token details would be great. An interim workaround that may have suggested is to drop invisible tokens that emit a dim light anywhere players have gone. That way those places are illuminated, despite not having players there.

Hmm I have a map currently I'm loading with invisible tokens for vision. I'll see how it fares, but I do look forward to a better solution, certainly!

Truth is, the way it works now is realistic. Most of us have a video game mindset. I restrict the dark vision as 60 0 N and from 90º to 240º depending on armor, but I leave "vision" set at 360º. This keeps the players from spinning around constantly to see where everybody is.

I wouldn't necessarily consider it 'realistic'; true, we have a video game mindset in wanting a map to refer back to, but in a 'realistic' scenario, I'm going to have actual spatial memory of where I've been. I'll remember "I turned right when I saw this peculiar splotch on the floor. So the room where we killed the troll was back this way." This spacial memory is what the maps we're given in video games represent. Unfortunately, when you only have a flat space to navigate in, that spacial information is effectively lost. Players struggle to remember basic things that would be (and should be) effortless in character, and struggle with things that would give them no problems in real life. The way it works now is an unoptimized nightmare. There are work arounds, and they often cause severe lag even on high end machines (I mean, you COULD spam vision tokens everywhere, but I've learned the hard way that dynamic lighting does not like that.). There are a lot of features we're missing that we still desperately need. I do use token vision only that player can see for dark vision. I leave vision at 360, because if I didn't, things would be even more horrifically difficult to navigate for the players.The issue isn't where they can see. It's that whatever room they're NOT in is inky black nothingness on the map, and there's absolutely no way to alleviate that without either creating a potential laggy nightmare, or not using line of sight altogether. I like the feature. I do. But it really needs work to be fully useable at all.

When you walk from one room to the next, can you see the other room? I am talking reality here, walk out of the room you are in and close the door...

Ayeaka , are you using Freehand at all to draw lines on the DL layer?

In real life, are there large week long gaps in which you make no progress, freeze in place, and have to try and remember where you left off? The 'real life' argument really doesn't hold water in the context of a once a week (and many games are once a month) D&D game. Of course I can't see what's behind me or in a different room. But in real life, I was in that room less than a few seconds ago, and obviously will have no issues remembering what was in the room. The ability to make things visible outside of vision lock would be useful for a variety of different reasons. Gauss; Yes. Polygonal tools are far more useful for long straight walls, but free hand works wonderfully for marking off tall piles of rubble that the party shouldn't be able to see around. I just wish vision lock wasn't all or none. It really cuts down on how useful the feature is.

We cannot say this often enough, do not use freehand on the Dynamic Lighting layer. Freehand on the DL layer is probably a large part of your lag problem. For best results only use Polygon/Line for the DL layer (Draw Shape's squares and circles have drawbacks and problems too). Freehand has many many points that all require calculation when interacting with light sources. Polygon/Line does not have that problem. If you need ideas on how to replicate freehand using Polygon/line send me a join link and I can walk you through how to do that.

I didn't realize freehand specifically had issues. I can switch to using polygon exclusively for more complex masks then. Thank you for telling me that. That said, the lag issue I encountered was entirely due to too many light and vision sources. Once the extra sources were removed, the lag was gone for all players.

While too many light and vision sources might cause lag freehand is actually a bigger problem. You could think of it this way: a map with Freehand on the DL layer and dozens of lightsources will cause a huge load compared to a map with Lines and the same number of light sources. The difference is the Freehand.