Since I own a FLIR camera, I have already witnessed how they work and it got me thinking:
What if the thermal vision (or, any vision?) in TPT was able to perform that way? You would simply toggle between the two modes (static display and dynamic display) by pressing D (Unless thats already mapped to somewhere else, which I do not know).

Since every suggestion needs a reason, here is mine:
Just like with real life thermal cameras, by making them dynamic, you can pick up far more subtle details.

For example: I just experimented with sawdust (it makes an awesome foundation to build stuff on water that can then collapse into the water) and after everything collapsed, I just simply set some plasma off inside the fallen concrete.

Obviously, with how our current display works, the about 140 degrees hot concrete was just a shade more green than the water surrounding it.

Other areas where it could come in handy would be to monitor miniscule air currents and pressure differentials. Right now, you either need GRAV to see them or you need an array of streamline.

And now for the part that I probably think is much easier than it actually is:
The implementation.

I think (and you may just laugh at me now) that it is implemented like this: If you press D, a simple if-then command tells the display to first look for its respective type (pressure, airspeed, temp) in a quick check before anything else happens. Then, after it has seen every particle/cell, it just simply uses the normal display modes, but sets the upper and lower limits (for temp that would be which particles appear purple, which appear dark blue) to those respective temps.

In the case of these parameters matching, I would suggest a window sice of 20K for temps, 2.0 pressure and the same for velocity.

As for the drawbacks: Obviously, since it has to run a full analysis before drawing each frame, it will be slower. A lot slower even.

So, since I just looked through it and see that D is already mapped to debug mode (which I am using already, so I am kinda embarassed to see it just now) it could alternatively be accessed like the water equalization mode, with a similar warning that many particles can cause lag.

Another thing that would need to be displayed is a scale. I would personally display it at the upper left corner by itself, or at the same place as the debug console, meaning the upper right.

@jacob1 (View Post)

 Good to know that I suggested something useful (despite it already being in your mod that is)