DSS Overlay Map - Make it Better!

[Greasetrap42]

I think I'm stating the obvious. And yep, I'm sure this got talked about ad nauseam when Odyssey came out. But I quit the game back then because of other issues. So I missed that.


1. Give it a proper name.
Can FDev please officially call this something so we can stop calling it a "heatmap". Blue Overlay Map sounds good.

2. Decouple the Blue Overlay Map from the DSS.
Let us look at it regardless if we are in supercruise. Once the planet is scanned... we have the data. We don't need to rescan the planet... so why do we need to be in supercruise to see it ??? Let us keybind a key to toggle on/off the Blue Overlay Map.

3.Changing the filter.
Allow us to change the filter.without being in DSS mode.

 

[metatheurgist]

It is one of the most clumsy bits of game UI I have ever experienced.

 

[varonica]

All eminently sensible suggestions, not sure how they are implemented to work with the various modes, but since it was added recently it can't be mixed up with the old spaghetti code from long ago so it shouldn't be that hard.

 

[Kira Goto]

I’d appreciate being able to change the filter when I’m hunting germs and other stuff on a planetary surface without needing to go to supercruise(and above the glide drop zone), yeah. Especially if I chose to land somewhere connecting two border zones, but one of the “biomes” is really small or some thing like that.

(Or I forgot where the patch/-es with highest spawn rate are located when I got done hunting mountain fungus.)

 

[DjVortex]

And in the name of everything that's holy and sacred, please make the planet overlay graphically more eye-pleasing! That ghastly cyan pixelated mess is an absolute eyesore, ugly as heck, and it detracts from immersion. Make it an actual heatmap! A bit like those "predator heat vision" images. (And make the edges of the highlighted areas fade to transparent rather than being just pixelated hard edges.)

 

[RolloTreadway]

Must be honest, when I saw the title I thought 'not another one', but actually these are all very good suggestions. Especially being able to use it out of supercruise.

 

[Rat Catcher]

Changing it back to the 'heat map' we had at launch would be good also - that was very useful!
Otherwise, all good suggestions.

 

[varonica]

Changing it back to the 'heat map' we had at launch would be good also - that was very useful!
Otherwise, all good suggestions.

It was never a heat map, it just looked like a heat map, that's why they changed it, because people were treating it like a heat map when it wasn't, the colours were just to make it look pretty, so we ended up with what we have no, no pretty stuff, but clear in what it defines.

 

[Rat Catcher]

It was never a heat map, it just looked like a heat map, that's why they changed it, because people were treating it like a heat map when it wasn't, the colours were just to make it look pretty, so we ended up with what we have no, no pretty stuff, but clear in what it defines.

Obviously my memory is playing tricks on me - I remembered it being useful.

 

[aRJay]

Obviously my memory is playing tricks on me - I remembered it being useful.

I remember it being erratic, sometimes it seemed to lead me right on top of what was supposed to be there other times there was nothing to be found.
The other thing I remember was all the confusion amongst players as to how it worked what it showed and why they hadn’t included a simple key so we could judge the “heat”

 

[Northpin]

Tying the Exobio with DSS and making it mandatory to be in supercruise to be able to see it makes for a really unfortunate idea.

So, yea, all good suggestions in the OP.

Ideally, they should expand the SRV Wave Scanner abilities to scan for Odyssey bio features too, no only for geo and horizons bio features.

 

[varonica]

Obviously my memory is playing tricks on me - I remembered it being useful.

It's been posted here somewhere, but FDEV released a statement on the bug report clarifying the change, that is was never a heat map and had been changed to prevent player confusion. It looked nice, it looked like a heat map, I have pictures still, let's post one.

while it had definite heat map vibes, you would think the yellow patches were areas of highest density, it was still only a location map and gave no more information than we get from our current maps. That's also the reason we won't get blurring of the edge of the current location map because that would also make it look like a heat map.

 

[DjVortex]

I'd rather have it look nice and perhaps confuse a few people than have it as the eyesore it currently is.

 

[varonica]

I'd rather have it look nice and perhaps confuse a few people than have it as the eyesore it currently is.

It was changed because FDEV kept getting bug reports that it wasn't working properly as a heat map, so, what do you think they are going to do, set themselves up to get endless bug reports about a feature that's working exactly as designed? Nope, not happening.

 

[aRJay]

I'd rather have it look nice and perhaps confuse a few people than have it as the eyesore it currently is.

The trouble was it wasn't confusing a few people it was confusing many people who were as @varonica said were producing lots of bug reports about it.
To be honest I was fairly confused by it myself.

I will take working better or at least understandably over looking nicer.

 

[Greasetrap42]

I'd rather have it look nice and perhaps confuse a few people than have it as the eyesore it currently is.

The screenshot @varonica shows I would immediately believe either:

a) There are 3 distinct colors and 3 biologicals indicated. Obviously each color represent a biological.

b) The highest concentration of biologicals is obviously in the "hot' (yellow) areas.


Both thoughts seem perfectly reasonable based on maps we commonly see elsewhere. And are wrong. A map where the colors are completely meaningless is confusing.

IMO the color FDev chose for the current Blue Overlay Map makes sense. It is a color that will not be confused with the surface color of a landable planet. This might be evidence that landable planets with liquid water is not planned for a very very long time.

 

[DjVortex]

How is it working "better" now? There are still plenty of times that I land on a very large blue zone and there's nothing there. Not a single sign of life for miles and miles around.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

It's still sometimes too optimistic about where things can be generated, definitely. But at least with the current one you do get the information about terrain type changes - most of which are visually obvious but occasionally will just cut across an apparently flat plain - and you can move to a different shade of blue and try again.
The original suggestions about letting you use it in normal flight would make that quite a bit easier, too.

 

[Rat Catcher]

How is it working "better" now? There are still plenty of times that I land on a very large blue zone and there's nothing there. Not a single sign of life for miles and miles around.

It doesn't tell us "Where" stuff is, only where it is theoretically possible for it to be. Just choose Bacterium and the whole planet will be blue.

My memory is probably at fault when I commented about the pretty coloured 'maps' that appeared with the launch of EDO being more useful. A lot of things have happened IRL since then for me to not remember accurately.

 

[aRJay]

How is it working "better" now? There are still plenty of times that I land on a very large blue zone and there's nothing there. Not a single sign of life for miles and miles around.

Now it shows that you can find the target anywhere* in the blue area before it was implying that the target was more likely in the differently coloured bits which wasn’t true.

*Not everywhere in the area, the trick to using this I have found is to select a small isolated patch of blue so the search area is smaller preferably one with multiple bios present but certainly one with the bio you most want.