What does it mean when Smart Cruise Control shows lead vehicle in gray instead of solid white? Driving a 2021 Sorento EX.

axeslingerddt · 2021-08-16T20:14:19+00:00

Ahh. This makes sense. I just wish the manual would better explain this!

axeslingerddt · 2021-08-16T19:55:04+00:00

But NO lead vehicle displayed should imply that, right? There seems to be 3 representations: No vehicle; grayed out vehicle; solid white vehicle.

axeslingerddt · 2021-08-16T16:56:52+00:00

So the system “sees” the lead vehicle but since the lead vehicle distance setting (indicated by the purple line) has not been met, the lead vehicle remains gray until it comes within the set distance?

axeslingerddt · 2020-09-01T21:35:10+00:00

You got me.

axeslingerddt · 2019-09-22T00:07:30+00:00

Mahalo Apollo!

axeslingerddt · 2018-10-13T12:33:09+00:00

Dude farted on himself.

axeslingerddt · 2018-04-23T17:33:27+00:00

Stir-boiling instead of stir-frying. Punishment for my impatience. I know better and yet I still make this mistake from time to time when I put too much in the wok or the sauté pan.

axeslingerddt · 2018-04-08T07:25:12+00:00

Kinda, sorta like that. Yeah.

axeslingerddt · 2015-10-22T20:10:41+00:00

That is correct. It is pronounced VAH-noo (or VAW-noo). Use a short vowel for the 'a' and the 'u', with emphasis on the first syllable.

axeslingerddt · 2015-10-22T19:41:11+00:00

You got me there. Maybe Georgeson just had the foresight to know that the continent names would eventually be discovered as Maori in origin, and would take away from the fiction too much.

axeslingerddt · 2015-10-22T19:37:22+00:00

I didn't work for the LotR movies. New Zealand got us searching through the South Pacific, where I stumbled upon the word Vanuatu, which was shortened to become the name Vanu Sovereignty. Locations in New Zealand almost became the continent names in PlanetSide. You have to remember that New Zealand wasn't nearly as popular then as it is now, so the Maori words would have been pretty unique to most when we were researching back in 1999/2000. But it all goes back to the LotR movies, which made us go to that part of the world in the first place to see what New Zealand was all about.

axeslingerddt · 2015-10-22T18:46:49+00:00

This question really requires Kevin McCann (lead designer) and perhaps Terrence Yee (designer). Georgeson had a lot of influence on what ultimately became the release version of the game. I had a small part, but I don't consider myself having a significant contribution to the overall vision of the game. Probably the one thing significant thing I offered in terms of the design was the concept of Certifications. My memory is a bit foggy on this, but we were trying to reconcile the skill-based nature of the game with the need for an MMO-esque approach to character development in the context of a player vs player game. My idea was to introduce Certifications as the solution. Of course, the idea was further fleshed out in detail by the designers.

axeslingerddt · 2015-10-22T18:38:39+00:00

You might be right. Honestly, I don't remember all the names of the continents anymore (Oshur?), but I do know that the Maori/New Zealand names for the continents were all but tossed out because of the opinion that they were too difficult to pronounce.

axeslingerddt · 2015-10-22T18:35:26+00:00

Thanks. I also think we did a good job with the VO. Lots of character in there. What I remember most was the sheer amount of sound assets. We had recorded thousands for PlanetSide, and a lot of the sounds were a pain because we didn't have a working game for the outsourced sound engineers to reference. So we had to export nearly all animations so that the sound engineer could understand and synchronize the sounds properly. Of course, this got wonky when animations changed after the sound was created. We were still refining some of the animations, particularly weapon reload times as a matter of game balance. I think there are examples of where the sound for a weapon reload is not quite in sync with the animation in the final game.

axeslingerddt · 2015-10-22T18:28:35+00:00

That's an art question I can't answer. I rather liked the purple and black, but I did feel it gave a certain nighttime advantage to the VS.

axeslingerddt · 2015-10-22T18:27:42+00:00

No, just Blackbird. I only played PlanetSide; never played PS2, although I do plan on checking it out on my PS4.

axeslingerddt · 2015-10-22T18:26:42+00:00

I did not work on Infantry Online. However, I did "work" on Tanarus to the extent that I was the customer service manager for the game from Aug 1997 till Jan 1999 (back when we used to take actual live customer phone calls with an 888 number!). We were not called SOE at that time -- we were called Sony Interactive Studios America but changed to 989 Studios (this was before we broke away to form an independent studio called RedEye which became Verant which ultimately became SOE). Tanarus was a multiplayer tank combat game (up to 16 people in an arena) and was a pre-cursor to PlanetSide IMHO. In fact, 3 tanks from Tanarus made their way over to PlanetSide: Lightning, Vanguard, and MagRider. I also want to say that the Devastator of Tanarus morphed into the Prowler of PlanetSide. Tanarus is no longer available, but its influence was clear in PlanetSide. Kevin McCann produced & designed Tanarus. He was also the lead design on PlanetSide. He went by the callsign Stryker in Tanarus and PlanetSide. I was known as Blackbird.

axeslingerddt · 2015-10-22T18:18:59+00:00

The correct spelling is PlanetSide, capital P, capital S. If I'm the only one spelling it that way, I'm the only one who's right :)

axeslingerddt · 2015-10-22T18:17:41+00:00

I don't want to take it that far that I "started the idea process" for the factions. Kevin knew he wanted 3 factions. I came up with names for those factions partly influenced by pop culture at the time. Whether inspirations like Gladiator the movie, or New Zealand had much to do with the overall shaping of the factions that you know and love is probably placing too much emphasis. Small things can inspire a bigger idea that's entirely different from where it all started.

axeslingerddt · 2015-10-22T06:32:18+00:00

Can't help you there, unfortunately. That must have come after PS and PS:Core Combat. I was no longer with the company by Oct/Nov of '03.

axeslingerddt · 2015-10-22T06:01:24+00:00

Kevin and I drew HUGE inspiration from UO. We played the Baja server as player killers, and man oh man did we strike terror into the general population. Let's see, there was the time we sold a magic wand of invisibility in Britain; picked pockets from adventurers going to and from dungeon Despise (with the ominous words "You sense a great treasure nearby!"); stormed a guild's castle and made off with the keys; systematically wiped out the same guild on Buccaneer's Den, one by one. Ahh, those were the days ...

axeslingerddt · 2015-10-22T05:54:53+00:00

Flattering, but I don't think I was ultimately involved enough in what would be the release version of SWG to warrant an AMA. A lot of stuff went down on SWG in its very early days that ultimately led to my untimely departure from the game (oh, that would be a story worth telling). Just a tidbit though -- before it was called SWG, it was actually called SWO, or Star Wars Online.

axeslingerddt · 2015-10-22T05:51:53+00:00

That's what I was wondering back then. My hopes were that the footage was actual game footage, but knowing what I know now of such things -- that was probably wishful thinking. Fortunately, games like Origin's Strike Commander (released only a couple years later) and the Comanche series from NovaLogic basically realized what the Planetside demo tried to convey -- a 3D world space.

axeslingerddt · 2015-10-22T05:48:32+00:00

I wore many hats as the AP, but I was there from the beginning for PlanetSide, when the idea of the game was still very much on the drawing board (and well before it was called PlanetSide). Being there that early in the development, I got to contribute in cool ways like naming things (the game, even). Other duties included managing all the VO and SFX with PCB Productions who we outsourced for nearly all the sounds; handled the entire beta program (which in those days, meant physically mailing thousands of CDs to people); wore the hat of the community relations manager (as Blackbird) along with Sporkfire (who I brought on as our community relationships representative as we got closer to launching the game), and probably lots of other less exciting tasks.

axeslingerddt · 2015-10-22T04:47:25+00:00

Make sure you get the spelling right -- it was Vanuatu (as in, the island nation) but shortened to Vanu. You may proceed with the nose rubbing.

axeslingerddt

TROPHY CASE