Based on an idea by Mito and with the help of Svedalrain's new set of great radar icons, here is a script that displays ship-class specific radar-icons on top of ships in 3D-space. Especially in cluttered missions, this can drastically increase pilot awareness. See screenshots (by Mito) below:
The script is designed to both work as an addition to already existing mods (pre-configured for the MVPS ships), as well as a module for custom mods, where a bit more flexibility can be achieved with SEXPs.
For more detailed configuration details, see the script's GitHub repository.
Link to the repository. Link to a simple zip file with the script.Installation: unpack the zip, toss the "data" folder into your MediaVPs directory, done. If you run on at least 21.0, I suggest enabling the respective flag in the config, even if you are just bolting it onto an existing mod.
How does it work: the script generates IFF colored icons of ships displayed over the ships themselves. The icons fade roughly within the targeting reticle and if the object is within a certain distance from the player.
If you want to change the fading distances, you can tweak the values in data/config/radaricon.cfg - the values are under "Alpha": category. Near and Far decide over fading based on distance from the player, ReticleNear and ReticleFar decide over fading based on the icon position relative to the center of the screen.
Edited to function as introduction post.