With some of the not-so-common and obviously/potentially dangerous creatures, it would be nice if there was a way to 'look' at them when they're in your line of sight and get a sort of basic description since they aren't in the docs, and it can make explaining what you saw off in the distance hard if you've noting to go on but a vague sdesc which may even contain the creatures name that you'd have no actual way of knowing. I wouldn't want this to work on PCs because it shouldn't show the main description, in my opinion, and it'd be a bit unrealistic if you ask me. Just would help with discerning something out to be a big bipedal insect instead of thinking its a giant lizard with wings.
Well from a distance, you probably wouldn't be able to tell if you're seeing a big cat, or a tiny dog, or even a potbellied pig, if you were in - for example - a high-grass meadow.
If you were in swampland, you might not be able to tell if what you're seeing is an alligator, or a fallen tree log. You'd see something - and you'd see it moving - so you'd assume it was some kind of animal. But you wouldn't really be -knowing- that it's not a tree log, other than for the fact that it's moving.
In a distance, in the game, you _are_ seeing that it's some kind of critter. It's definitely not a tree log. But you can't tell for sure what -kind- of critter it is, until you get close. Hopefully by then it's not too late. But that's the whole fun of it :)
Pretty much completely disagree with Lizzie.
When you see a Blah blah beetle in the next room, and can't tell if this beetle is ten foot tall or two inches tall, it's an issue.
Yea, my largest concern is general size and general shape. At a distance you should be able to tell that you see a massive furred creature, who's head is half the size of its body, standing on five legs with a dorsal fin running down its back as opposed to seeing 'A large, many-legged silt-gator is here'. You probably won't notice it has six close-knit eyes that appear to be 2 separate orbs. If something was too small to make out at the distance you are, i'd be fine with a 'You can't really see that too well from here' echo.
I think a lot of this could be solved by better building practices, rather than by implementing new code, but there's only so much you can do with ldescs.