Remove scene previews in the inspector

[Wokarol]

Describe the project you are working on

Crafting simulator involving levers, ingredients and slightly more complex processes. (This is not my current project but it's the one that highlights the issue the most)

Describe the problem or limitation you are having in your project

Scene Previews provide little to no help and information.

And often their existence hides the information I look for.

Without previews loaded:

And with them loaded:

As you can see, loaded previews hide the scene name and bloat the editor. Not all scenes have visuals and not all scenes differ by visual alone and I believe scene previews were build on that assumption.

Describe the feature / enhancement and how it helps to overcome the problem or limitation

Solution to that is allowing the user to disable previews and even better, showing the preview on hover like for scene tabs.

Describe how your proposal will work, with code, pseudo-code, mock-ups, and/or diagrams

It will not render previews and instead show as much information as when previews are not yet generated. Upon hover the preview will be shown, if possible.

If this enhancement will not be used often, can it be worked around with a few lines of script?

No, it's part of Quality of Life in the editor itself and cannot be worked around to my knowledge

Is there a reason why this should be core and not an add-on in the asset library?

Scene previews are part of the editor's core

[Calinou]

I wouldn't remove the previous entirely (or even show them on hover only, as that's still an usability regression on touchscreens). What I'd do is add a Thumbnail Size editor setting for inspector previews, similar to what's already available for EditorFileDialog and the FileSystem dock.

As for showing the scene name, we can draw the scene name's basepath at the bottom of the thumbnails (without the folder and extension, so it's more likely to fit without requiring ellipsis).

[Wokarol]

What I'd do is add a Thumbnail Size editor setting for inspector previews

Yeah, that sounds good. If it's doable to add that without much complication, I'm all for it.

On that note, what about not rendering previews at all for scenes with no renderable nodes? @Calinou (Or/and a flag that allows you to set if the scene should or should not have preview)

we can draw the scene name's basepath at the bottom of the thumbnails

That would be great. As for me the name is the most important part of the scene as it provides the most information.

[Calinou]

On that note, what about not rendering previews at all for scenes with no renderable nodes? @Calinou

See https://github.com/godotengine/godot/issues/47267 and https://github.com/godotengine/godot/issues/57321. I don't think we should make it so some scenes lack thumbnails entirely, but there definitely needs to be more control over what is displayed in the generated thumbnail.

Edit: Proposal opened: https://github.com/godotengine/godot-proposals/issues/4759

[maridany1999]

As mentioned above, there could be an option to enable / disable the previews, or simply have the title and preview side by side; Sometimes, it can be difficult to read the name of the file assigned to the variable, since only the thumbnails are displayed and not the name. Still, it is possible to see the name by hovering with the cursor over the thumbnail, but still takes some time to do.

Edited: Also, I think this issue title could be "Enable / Disable scene previews in the inspector"

[LRP500]

Very interested in the original proposal, large scene arrays and dicts would really benefit having an option or toggle for displaying/hiding previews. Any chance this will be picked-up for a future version?

[Calinou]

Any chance this will be picked-up for a future version?

I think this is worth opening a pull request for, but as mentioned in https://github.com/godotengine/godot-proposals/issues/4757#issuecomment-1166669758, I would prefer the thumbnail to be displayed in a small size next to the scene name as opposed to removing the thumbnail entirely. I also think the display of scene previews should be consistent everywhere, so I wouldn't restrict this change to arrays/dictionaries. In general, displaying the scene name (or at least the beginning of its filename) can be a lot more relevant than a thumbnail in certain situations, so it's good to do whenever possible.