I'm here to bring up an issue that may not be very common these days, since most people today have big monitors on their setups (and sometimes even huge monitors or plasma TV's). But there are still a few people in this community/leagues that are still unable to afford good hardware, or simply give their money other priorities, and end up playing on 14" or 15" screens. And, for the ones that already tried this, it becomes, obviously, nearly impossible to be competitive at a league level with such a small radar (radar is currently locked in the source to a max size of 3/4 of screen). So, in these cases, the radar size becomes about 9" - way too small

Still, for most players, this is not a problem. Most already have, on their 19" screens, about a 14" radar already. Some players even play on 52" screens - preety cool

Although, in the previous version of bzflag, there was still a turn around: Those players could still use an old release, 2.0.2, which had the option unlocked - even if not explicitly available from the panel. But now, in 2.4, this is burried for good. Sure someone will say, people can still compile. But as long as this is not a built-in feature anymore, who would feel good by doing this? Also, some players simply don't wanna use other version than the official build. And this is the only part where 2.4 is a downgrade IMO: some players of the community got lost in the way because they don't have the new minimum hardware requirements to be competitive, and also won't feel good by using an unnoficial build with an alternative query string. Personally, I know at least 2 top-level players that have quit because of this reason, and many others that are having trouble to readapt their styles, and even playing with eyes from inches of distance from the monitor - which will eventually screw up their brains!

So of course, this option is still open for those that wanna do it by themsleves, but why on earth, to completely forbid by all means, such an useful option? We know that there was something about this that was bring up among devs in the past, and many times this has been discussed, so they've decided that the game was supposed to be, at least, "1/4 3D" - even for players that would prefer the 3D screen to be in the background layer as a feature. But maybe, and this is my point/question here, perhaps no one has ever wondered that the fullscreen radar could still be needed to be left available as an useful workaraound for those who find themselves under this sort of situation. Even if the point of conflict is about "how much 3D" would be allowed for BZFlag to be, it's at least preety obvious that a fullscreen radar is not "cheating" in any way (otherwise, playing with a big monitor would have to be considered like that aswell, and obviously it's not). FS radar is just a turn-around to allow players to play on small screens, or even to play more distant from the monitor, laying on the couch, or whatever.
Yes, there are many fancy and cool effects in the 3D screen. And I'm sure, that if a decent monitor or plasma TV is available, no one would simply choose to dump the 3D screen, since they can have both a big radar, and also a cool 3D screen. Although, I'm just here to ask, and not just for myself, but also in the name of dozens of players from this community, for this decision to be reviwed - not made default, or anything like that, but at least made available for whoever it may be useful. It's simply a 2-byte patch in the source, won't be time-consuming, neither won't hurt anyone. Just a matter of overwriting a number "30" with a number "48", and it's done. We all love BZFlag, that's why we're here, but I think that when it comes to the point that the community start losing some of its members just because they can't afford good hardware, it may be time to give some second thoughts about it.
Thanks for your consideration in advance, and sorry about bad english if so. (not my native language).