Quote:
Originally Posted by Hallry
You could say the same thing about the vision targets. They're just for show; there's no reason to track the vision targets, you could just track the bulbs  . |
Except that if you look at how the LEDs are used and positioned, it's quite clear that their primary purpose is for spectators and drivers to be able to tell how many assists have happened and whether the goal is hot. Really easy to see bright lights on from 100 feet away, really difficult to see a small, retroreflective rectangle at an oblique angle.
On a note more related to the original topic of this thread, my team (which builds a practice field every year for a Week 0 competition), decided to simplify the lights to a yellow strip across the top and three colored red or blue strips across the bottom, which lets us fulfill what we saw as the primary function (informing spectators and drivers with field cues). We understand that some teams at our Week 0 might not appreciate this, but frankly, dropping four grand on LEDs just wasn't in the budget this year.