FSS Diagram In-Game Overlay | How To

Qohen Leth · Dec 29, 2018

Heya

I figured a lot of y'all would like an overlay of the FSS diagram I posted some time ago, so I've looked for a solution. It's not perfect, but I have one. So you can explore like this!

Step-by-step

1. Download the file right overlay size for your monitor. For the moment there is 1080p@72dpi and 1440p@96dpi (my own primary monitor), but post here and I will try to accomodate as many screen sizes as possible if needed.

1080p@72dpi
1440p@96dpi
3840x1600@72dpi

2. Put this file in a dedicated folder (wherever).

3. Download, extract and open this little app called Custom Desktop Logo. It's portable, no installation needed.

4. Locate the folder of the overlay.

5. Enter all these settings below to ensure the image is properly aligned.

6. Set the Size to 1, if you use the file that fits your monitor resolution.

7. Set the Opacity to whatever you like. The screenshot above is at alpha=255, below inside spoilers is an example of alpha=55.

This is were this solution is not perfect: the app apparently doesn't have keyboard shortcuts, so the overlay will remain on top unless you manually hide it (taskbar notifications > right click on icon > hide), which is not really practical. So I'd recommend a dim opacity that's not invasive outside the FSS and still legible inside it.

8. Finally, minimize (don't close!) the app, and launch Elite in BORDERLESS WINDOWED mode. The overlay will not be visible in Fullscreen mode; Windowed mode will probably require you downscale the overlay ever so slightly, to keep it aligned.

And you're good to go! It's probably not worth having it constantly up, but for long sessions of deep space exploration or simply to help learn all the frequency ranges, I think it's gonna be helpful

If you have other tips or better tools, feel free to post!

EDIT: Oh yeah, the acronyms. Same thing as the reference diagram.

SS = Signal Sources
NHSS = Non-Human Signal Sources
CZ = Conflict Zone
MS = Megaship
I = Installation
S = Scenario
TB = Tourist Beacon
LP = Listening Post
OS = Orbital Station
Nav = Nav Beacon
RES = Resource Extraction Zone
NSP = Notable Stellar Phenomena

<Belts skipped bc who cares>
MR = Metal Rich
HMC = High Metal Content
R = Rocky
I = Icy
RI = Rocky Ice
ELW = Palpable cash money
AW = Ammonia World
WW = Water World

W = Water giant
WL = Gas giant with Water-base Life
AL = Gas giant with Ammonia-based Life
I, II, III, IV, V = Classes of Gas giants
HR = Helium-rich Gas giant
H = Helium giant

Nick Sticks · Dec 29, 2018

Brilliant.

MattG · Dec 29, 2018

Just this morning I was considering an app to do exactly this (and a few other things). If I stop being lazy, can I steal your overlays? I mean, there’s a good chance I’ll get distracted anyway... but maybe I can come up with something useful.

Iron Body · Dec 29, 2018

Makes me wonder why fd didn't make it look like this to start with.

And why they didnt make the blue blobs reflect the predominant colour of the signal source.
After all we all (well nearly all) have quite good colour vision.

Straha Yeagar · Dec 29, 2018

I am thinking this may be a good addition to the various ED Discovery overlays.

BTW, my display resolution is 3840x1600

marx · Dec 29, 2018

It was inevitable.

Dwarf Fortress reference aside, thanks for making and sharing this!

BlackMirror · Dec 30, 2018

Nice. Now if only I could figure out a way to hotkey this thing.

Qohen Leth · Dec 30, 2018

MattG said:
Just this morning I was considering an app to do exactly this (and a few other things). If I stop being lazy, can I steal your overlays? I mean, there’s a good chance I’ll get distracted anyway... but maybe I can come up with something useful.

Sure, it could really be improved!

Straha Yeagar said:
I am thinking this may be a good addition to the various ED Discovery overlays.

BTW, my display resolution is 3840x1600

Try this 3840x1600@72dpi

BlackMirror said:
Nice. Now if only I could figure out a way to hotkey this thing.

If you do, let me know

Darkfyre99 · Dec 30, 2018

Iron Body said:
Makes me wonder why fd didn't make it look like this to start with.

And why they didnt make the blue blobs reflect the predominant colour of the signal source.
After all we all (well nearly all) have quite good colour vision.

For the same reason why FD doesn't make crowd sourced trade data or the "road to riches" available in the game: because some of us actually want to play the game, not have the game played for us. We find it more fun that way. Sure, it opens the possibility for failure (such as going to an unvisited system where you think a commodity should be available, but it turns out you were wrong), but some of us find failing can be as entertaining as success.

That's not to say that I particularly object to what Qohen Leth did above, but removing the need to learn how to read the waveform skirts a bit too close to automated system exploration for my taste. I think tuning provides too much information as it is. YMMV

Ozric · Dec 30, 2018

Darkfyre99 said:
For the same reason why FD doesn't make crowd sourced trade data or the "road to riches" available in the game: because some of us actually want to play the game, not have the game played for us. We find it more fun that way. Sure, it opens the possibility for failure (such as going to an unvisited system where you think a commodity should be available, but it turns out you were wrong), but some of us find failing can be as entertaining as success.

That's not to say that I particularly object to what Qohen Leth did above, but removing the need to learn how to read the waveform skirts a bit too close to automated system exploration for my taste. I think tuning provides too much information as it is. YMMV

Completely agree.

Sapporo · Dec 30, 2018

Have some rep.

MattG · Dec 30, 2018

OK, I've thrown together a quick and dirty preliminary version of EDJPO ~~here~~. (Edit: Instead, go to EDJP thread to ensure latest version)

Before using it, remember it's barely been tested and you're using it at your own risk etc. That said - it works for me. Unzip it somewhere, make sure journal path is correct, choose an overlay, change opacity if necessary and hit "Add Overlay". All being well, your selected overlay will appear when using the FSS. I won't get to look at any problems for next few days at least, but any issues are probably best put in the EDJP thread

Thanks again CMDR Qohen Leth for the great overlays.

marx · Dec 30, 2018

Darkfyre99 said:
For the same reason why FD doesn't make crowd sourced trade data or the "road to riches" available in the game: because some of us actually want to play the game, not have the game played for us. We find it more fun that way. Sure, it opens the possibility for failure (such as going to an unvisited system where you think a commodity should be available, but it turns out you were wrong), but some of us find failing can be as entertaining as success.

That's not to say that I particularly object to what Qohen Leth did above, but removing the need to learn how to read the waveform skirts a bit too close to automated system exploration for my taste. I think tuning provides too much information as it is. YMMV

Well, you're most likely wrong about why FD doesn't make crowd-sourced data available in the game. There has been plenty of discussion on this, and the bottom of it all is that it would be too expensive for them to provide the additional infrastructure that would be required to implement those in-game, for not enough gain. But we do have the data available thanks to Frontier, because they could have chosen just as easily not to have the client produce any such logs. If they didn't want people to compile such data, they wouldn't provide it.

As for the overlay, I think it illustrates quite well just how dead simple the FSS graph is. After all, to interpret it, all you need to do is learn static positions. It's a question of memory, not of pattern recognition or any other skill, so where's the harm in an overlay? If there's any such issue here, it lies with the design, not the tools others have made for it.

BlackMirror · Dec 31, 2018

marx said:
As for the overlay, I think it illustrates quite well just how dead simple the FSS graph is. After all, to interpret it, all you need to do is learn static positions. It's a question of memory, not of pattern recognition or any other skill, so where's the harm in an overlay? If there's any such issue here, it lies with the design, not the tools others have made for it.

Additionally, I noticed today that even without the overlay the game actually tells you which "section" you're in. In the lower right corner, it'll identify what type of body you'll find from a signal occurring wherever your cursor is.

So the overlay's actually not providing anything the game doesn't, just presenting it better.

Rhaedas · Dec 31, 2018

BlackMirror said:
Nice. Now if only I could figure out a way to hotkey this thing.

I set up my Voice Attack to load it when activating the FSS scanner and kill it when exiting. Pretty simple, VA has specific commands under Other|Windows to run a file application and to also stop processes, so it's almost like it's part of the screen.

Qohen Leth · Dec 31, 2018

MattG said:
OK, I've thrown together a quick and dirty preliminary version of EDJPO here

Before using it, remember it's barely been tested and you're using it at your own risk etc. That said - it works for me. Unzip it somewhere, make sure journal path is correct, choose an overlay, change opacity if necessary and hit "Add Overlay". All being well, your selected overlay will appear when using the FSS. I won't get to look at any problems for next few days at least, but any issues are probably best put in the EDJP thread

Thanks again CMDR Qohen Leth for the great overlays.

I will test this shortly!

Rhaedas said:
I set up my Voice Attack to load it when activating the FSS scanner and kill it when exiting. Pretty simple, VA has specific commands under Other|Windows to run a file application and to also stop processes, so it's almost like it's part of the screen.

Excellent! I should look again into VA but I think last time I checked, it wouldn't work on my PC because my Windows speaks french and doesn't understand when I speak english

MattG · Dec 31, 2018

Qohen Leth said:
I will test this shortly!

Just a heads-up, it only seems to work when desktop zoom is 100%. Given the default at 1080p is 150% it probably looks like it doesn’t work... I’ll fix that.

BlackMirror · Dec 31, 2018

Rhaedas said:
I set up my Voice Attack to load it when activating the FSS scanner and kill it when exiting. Pretty simple, VA has specific commands under Other|Windows to run a file application and to also stop processes, so it's almost like it's part of the screen.

Yeah I was thinking of doing similar with AutoHotKey. I don't use Voice Attack since I don't have a microphone.

marx · Dec 31, 2018

MattG said:
Just a heads-up, it only seems to work when desktop zoom is 100%.

Any chance of making it work with scaling? As far as I know, most people who use 1440p in Windows scale it up to 125%, like I do. I imagine it's even worse above.

Rhaedas · Dec 31, 2018

BlackMirror said:
Yeah I was thinking of doing similar with AutoHotKey. I don't use Voice Attack since I don't have a microphone.

You know that you don't have to use voice to use VA, right? But there ought to be a similar way to do it with AHK, I just never tried to learn a second macroing "language".