Odyssey - Optimisation/Performance and UI (Galaxy & System Map) Feedback

[kosnett]

Overall thoughts – the galaxy/system map has taken a step backwards

Specific Issues –

1. my biggest issue is how focus no longer is automatic.
Pre-Odyssey, if you moved over a planet or moon or star, whatever info window you had open automatically updated to reflect the new objects. Now in Odssey, you have to CLICK on the moon/planet/star to change focus. This is incredibly slowdown when one is just trying to review a dozen moons and their stats, or drifting around the galaxy map looking for specific star combinations, or in the case of carriers trying to find an interesting system as close to 500 light years away as possible.

2. Description and planetary information should not be two different window options. Again like 1, this just slows down gameplay.

Suggested Fixes for the Issues –
1. Return focus to automatic instead of requiring the extra action of a mouse click, as it was pre-Odyssey.
2. Merge the description and planetary information windows back into one, as it was pre-Odyssey.

 

[Kantaris]

UI Feedback ---

Overall thoughts – Amazing changes so far, having the different info compartmentalized is amazing and easier to navigate through

Specific Issues – Click and hold will always cancel itself on the first click because it recenters to where you're clicking

Suggested Fixes for the Issues – Maybe allow click and hold to continue/finish even when map is recentering

 

[Deleted member 115407]

This menu right here (see attachments) is just straight disrespectful of the player's time. It's like telling the player to find their one marble in a jar full of similarly colored marbles.

This system has seventy-five Odyssey settlements in it. Seventy-five.

Those seventy-five bases are owned by a number of different factions. I can freely interact with them. They have mission boards, they have commodities markets. They have people who I can kill, things I can steal, equipment that I can sabotage.

But because of this menu it is all but impossible for me to find the right settlements to interact with in an efficient way...

• The list is not ordered alphabetically. So if I'm searching for a settlement by name, I have to scroll through everything and hope I don't pass it up.
• The list is not ordered by faction. So if I want to go support a specific faction, I have to scroll through the entire list and hope I don't pass their listings up.
• The list makes no mention of what size landing pads the bases have. If you're going to have bases with only small pads, you better let us know that we can't dock there.
• The list makes no mention of distance from arrival. Although we can use the actual map for that, it would be a handy piece of info to have regardless.

I have included a second screen that would be ideal for giving the player the option to sort this list so that they aren't wasting their time looking for needles in a gigantic haystack. It includes little buttons that would sort by name, distance, faction, what have you.

We should also be able to nav to the settlement from this same menu.

Looking for needles in a haystack is not gameplay FD, and the list I have displayed below is incredibly disrespectful of your players' time.

View attachment 232073
View attachment 232074

 

[Raliel]

specific issue.... broken missions, where either the mission cannot be done at all due to there being no landable planets to actually go to, support missions where it is impossible to hand in the mission after completion.

 

[TSINI]

Missing from galaxy map: a button to take you to the system you are in, for example after you have scrolled to the other side f the galaxy.
I could back out and open the galaxy map again but that seems like a waste of time when the old one had a button to return you to the system you are in. Perhaps the “current system” info at the bottom could have an interactive function, Perhaps the same with waypoint and destination.

 

[C'tri]

System Map
Overall thoughts – please keep this brief (one or two sentences)
Click & Hold to plot a course is a good QoL feature. Simplifying the UI's initial appearance

Specific Issues – clear and concise (bullet points are ideal)
1. Orrery view - it takes too long to navigate to a specific sub-body
2. Both views - When in a populated system, I most often want to navigate to a specific space port (easy) or a specific planetary port (harder)
3. Both views - When entering the system view, the right hand menu is empty, necessitating an extra click to view the target information
4. Orrery view - does not render planetary preview like system view

Suggested Fixes for the Issues – clear and concise, directly linked to the issues
1. Automatically focus & zoom when clicking on a body - reveal orbiting children & stations.
1. Have a "breadcrumb" for the system hierarchy at the bottom, allow quick focus & zoom out to parent body
2. Have the "Points of Interest" sub-menu the default left hand menu. when in a populated system. (attachment)
2. The PoI sub-menu should always be displayed - and have a "notification badge" style indicator for however many entries are in the category, visible without checking. e.g. "1 orbital port, 9 landfall planets, 3 surface ports, 6 surface settlements, 2 odyssey settlements" (attachment)
2. The PoI sub-menu should include a filter for fleet carriers
3. The system map should remember what you were last looking at - Planetary information, market information, features, or nothing and display that by default on the right hand side.
4. The planetary preview used in the system view should be used.

 

[Blasphemous One]

Horizon outfitting UI was much convenient, gave all information needed.
Odyssey outfitting interface takes up too much space, gives too little info.

Don't have any specific points because entire thing is a mess, if it ain't broken, don't fix it.

 

[RANDOM_GAME_ID]

Optimization and Performance

DXDiag attached

about 60% of planetary ports, settlements, etc. cause mild to medium slowdown while playing there, regardless if I'm parked, walking, or shooting. While in space occasional bright color glitches/artifacts/flashes. Light sources behind the on foot minimap get very blocky and bright (easy to ignore this one.)

Running the game in Borderless

Not running in VR mode

Occasionally i run Google Chrome and play youtube videos or Spotify in the background. However i have slowdown and occasional graphic glitches regardless if the internet browser is running in the background.

I am not running any third-party shader suites.

One important caveat i bought the game about a week before Odyssey came out. I wasn't experiencing any issues at all on Horizons. Not even any crashes. Not so much with Odyssey.

 

[C'tri]

Galaxy Map
Overall thoughts
With the exception of the active-mission view (which is great), very little value seems added.

Specific Issues
1. No way to adjust max jump range for route calculation (unless using a ship with significant cargo capacity - which most explorers are not)
2. Can only apply one filter type at a time - can't search for Democracies at War, or Federation Anarchy systems, or High Tech Civil Liberty & Boom systems.
3. Time consuming to add / remove all options from the Government, Economy, and Star Class filter lists.

Suggested Fixes for the Issues
1. As well as the cargo slider for traders, add a slider that ties to jump range. Many explorers / CMDRs on long range journeys would benefit from being able to decrease their jump range by around 10% to benefit from reduced fuel cost, and thus decreased refuel time, and overall journey speed increase.
2. Allow filters to stack (attachment), and display matching systems using the actively selected filter mode's colours (in this case, matching systems would be displayed in either Yellow or Purple depending on their government, but only those of the matching allegiance (1st filter group) and economy (5th filter group) would be displayed.
3. Add a "Select All" toggle option that can be used to make all options selected, or no options selected.

 

[norlin]

Specific Issues: The dot-reticle when on foot on a station is always visible
Suggested Fixes for the Issues: Add an option to hide it

 

[Brimstone]

UI: you made everything more difficult to find, you added more clicks, making everything less efficient.

Performance: Are you kidding? i shouldnt need to tell you my specs, as not even your reccomended specs can run this game successfully at a playable rate. I'm sure youre aware of all the players have been saying, so don't rubbish us. Fix it.

 

[GraphicEqualizer]

Copied here from the Steam announcement discussion for higher visibility - hopefully the devs take this on board and others can add constructive ideas here too. Try to keep the negativity at bay and stick to the focussed feedback they want

The issues with User Interface (UI) and User eXperience (UX) of the interfaces and especially the number of interactions required to achieve a thing in Horizons vs Odyssey, I don't mind change but change has got avoid making things worse:

GALAXY MAP

• Selecting star to jump to is 'twitchy' sometimes hard to actually select and confirm targeting/routing - worse UX than Horizons
• Bookmarks are still a sea of context-free orange and offer no new benefit of the redesigned folder management UI with extra steps. Bookmarks need customisable colours for user context, more quantity
• ability to create AND delete bookmark via galaxy map right hand button (and also in the left hand area without having to go into bookmark manager) - worse UX than H
• Filters are now split across several left hand buttons, and still offer no ability to 'stack' filters, e.g. show G type stars AND not visited AND anarchy. Enable a 'pin' for multiple filter types and a "clear all pinned" filters button
• selecting a bookmarked station or planet does not actually result in targeting that thing when you arrive in that system, you have to then do it again when you are in system - worse UX than H
• zooming out the galaxy map to maximum extent, should still show an "aggregated heat map" (e.g. https://blog.pragmaticworks.com/power-bi-custom-visuals-heatmap) view of at least some important filters, e.g. showing a rough guide to extent of personally visited stars, inhabited/civilisations, carriers, services. This would greatly reduce the number of bookmarks needed to be use just to show this information as a work around - and therefor also reduce the demand for more bookmarks and more than just a few needed colours
• some left or right button icons sometimes are not shown at all depending on context, e.g. if a system has never been visited you do not get the view system icon. Instead icons should always be shown but just not available to be used. Icon positions should never move around based on context it adds to confusion and does not enable familiarity building
• each button click should display some default content, and those buttons with two levels, e.g userdata, map mode, powerplay filter buttons should show the last selected sub-menu by default... e.g. I click on map mode it should snap to the star filters if that is what I last selected.
• still no neutron star routing

SYSTEM MAP

• very dull lighting compared to H. Unable to see any colours of gas giants etc.
• very slow to load visual details compared to H. "loading simulation"
• selecting an item should automatically show the planetary information on the right hand side as the most useful first thing to show
• like galaxy map menu, buttons with two levels, e.g points of interest button should show the last selected sub-menu by default... e.g. I click on points of interest it should snap to landfall planets if that is what I last selected.
• atmosphere thickness should be shown together with atmosphere type (not split across two right hand side buttons - or duplicate this in both areas
• same as noted in galaxy map, ability to create AND delete bookmark via system map right hand button (and also in the left hand area without having to go into bookmark manager) - worse UX than H
• no target button on the right like there is in galmap
• etc., similar points as raised for galaxy map, regarding numbers of steps required, icons not moving positions etc.

The same lessons learned from these Galmap/Sysmap areas should be applied to other menu areas such as outfitting. Redesign UI must NOT mean more steps and no benefits. You immediately lose user acceptance. I document software UI/UX for a living (and end up raising a lot of bugs) and my users would start an uprising had this been their experience.

Bonus extra tip, the on foot ship boarding menu should also include an SRV deploy option so you do not have to first board the ship to then deploy the SRV.

 

[M_Biscotti]

Notes :

• UI blinking is disabled
• OOS : BGS seems generating nonsense like menace 2 wreckages in lost (really lost !) undiscovered systems
• OOS : Lighting (renderer) looking like it's completely destroyed
• OOS : Game crashing just by opening the galaxy map, touching left buttons and waiting (crash reports sent)

Now the suject :
Struture
–––––––––––
Specific Issues/Oddities
↳ Suggested Fixes

-----

Right Panel
–––––––––––
- missing progression percentage on ranks
↳ add them in Codex entries

Options menu
–––––––––––
Settings are confusing.
↳ Change paradigm from "where" to "what" and Reduce the number by removing unnecessary duplicates. eg : wasd everywhere with alternative if necessary, galaxy map everywhere ...


Galaxy maps
–––––––––––
- more and more monochrome icons on galaxy maps (already signaled)
↳ bring back icon colour diversity

- Icon inconsistency : realistic view has its groundless own icon
↳ move into map mode

- Icon inconsistency : Compare by size has its groundless own icon
↳ display options ("Display relative sizes")

- bookmark management is too heavy
↳ add all bookmark functions on the right in place of the single add bookmark function

- Search zone is not visible enough
↳ Adding something around and or moving it to somewhere else. In Horizon there was no problem finding it.

- Plotted route is lost when exiting the game
↳ I hope this is a bug and not a removed feature

- "Set destination" should be "Plot Route"


System map
–––––––––––
- missing planet type on surface information panel Having to switch again and again is heavy
↳ add body type as heading in surface information panel

- system map textures take too long to load
↳ this is a file storage management issue as Horizon has no problem loading body textures

- too many blue bodies in system map (not centered but the reason is trivial to guess)
↳ add toggle blue disc on atmosphere in options

- why do I get body materials without mapping them ?
↳ just an answer like, "bug, we know" or "now featured like that for no reason", ....


Outfitting
–––––––––––
- "my equipement" colour in categories in confusing (saw someone not understanding on a stream)
↳ change "my equipement" colour in fitting panel (white or blue seems the best)
- missing feature : "retrieve stored module when" having one instead of only "buy" (suggested by Aymerix, reported here)
↳ add this entry


FPS
–––––––––––
UI doesn't fit correctly on 16:10 screen on the left
↳ I think this has already been reported

 

[londonx]

System Map

I don't mind the overall layout, but I think some "shortcuts" should be added.

• When Selecting a Station or Settlement, there should be a large button senstive area on the panel (highlighted green) that will bring up the vital info, Your Faction Status, Economy Type, Distance, Services, Stored Ships.
• This "vital info" could just be remembered from the previously selected panels on the right, ie do I want to have the trade details always popup, or the services details or all info, select the buttons on the right that you want to show up each time
• Not sure how this behaviour could be replicated with the icons on the map, maybe double tap to toggle the info panels
• Map already centres on the select POI so thats good
• The POI selection panel should allow you to also target it, either from holding down the button like in the map itself or from a target button being represented
• A similar approach could be made with the Galaxy Map

 

[Ancient Forester]

Greetings Commanders,

First of all, we’d like to thank all of you for supporting us throughout Odyssey’s development and at launch. For those of you who have access to the expansion and are able to play without issues, we hope you’re enjoying yourselves!

That said, we are aware of some commonly reported issues and will take this opportunity to address them. In this post, we’d like to specifically discuss optimisation and UI.

Optimisation and Performance

We’re aware that performance in Odyssey is varied according to PC builds and other factors. While many players are enjoying the game at the intended standard, unfortunately some are not.

If you are experiencing performance issues, here’s how to report them and include some especially useful information. Please send us as much information as possible to edoperformance@elitedangerous.com using the template below. To report any other issues, please go via the Issue Tracker as normal.

Please provide as much information as you can from a DXDiag report (see link for help)

Where were you in-game, and what were you doing? (Solo/Open, in Wing/group or not etc.)

Are you running Odyssey in borderless/fullscreen/windowed?

Are you running Odyssey in VR?

Do you have any other apps running at the same time?

Are you running any third-party shader suites?

In addition to the above, please send us your graphics configs. To do this:
1. Navigate to this file location: %LOCALAPPDATA%\Frontier Developments\Elite Dangerous\Options\Graphics
2. Copy all folder contents to a ZIP file and attach it to your submission

We’d like to thank you in advance for submitting this information. Your reports will be invaluable in assisting our team and expediting performance fixes.

UI Feedback

We’re also keenly aware of feedback on several aspects of the updated User Interface in Odyssey. The comments on this topic have been followed closely since the beginning of the alpha phase and your feedback shared in our Alpha feedback forum has been gathered and collected. Your concerns over the ease-of-use and accessibility of these systems are being heard and passed to the development team.

While fundamental issues such as connection and performance remain a priority, we’d like to build a clear understanding of issues surrounding features such as UI to lay the groundwork for in-game improvements.

In this thread, we are looking specifically for feedback on the Galaxy and System Map UI. We have noted feedback on other UI elements, but would like to start with these in particular.

If you have feedback on the Galaxy and System Map in Odyssey, please leave it below in a reply using the following format:

Overall thoughts – please keep this brief (one or two sentences)

Specific Issues – clear and concise (bullet points are ideal)

Suggested Fixes for the Issues – clear and concise, directly linked to the issues

Please keep all replies to this post in the format above. Any discussion that is off topic or replying to other posts may be removed to keep the thread as useful as possible.

Thank You

Odyssey represents a huge change to Elite Dangerous at multiple levels. All of the teams across Frontier, are working hard to deliver an experience that meets a standard the community deserves.

On that note, thank you again for your support and patience. As soon as we have any more information regarding the points above, we’ll make sure to share it with you.

o7

Edit: please use the edoperformance@elitedangerous.com mailbox to report optmisation issues in Odyssey rather than the Issue Tracker.

I sincerely disagree on this methodology of collecting data. It is ok for collecting opinions ("UI Feedback") yet not optimal, but for collecting objective data it's horrible. People will supply what information they WANT you to have, not what they actually have.

Until the optimization is done, what SHOULD be done, is to turn the game log up to debug level. And include "FPS min/low/avg last 15 seconds" as a line in the log. Should low go below the "red" treshold (as per your onscreen colorcoding of numbers), the following should be polled from powershell:

Write-Output "Processes: " ;(Get-Process).Count ; Write-Output "Threads:";(Get-Process|Select-Object -ExpandProperty Threads).Count​

The session should START by pulling the following from powershell:

Get-WmiObject Win32_Processor | select Name, Socket
Get-WmiObject win32_PhysicalMemory | Select DeviceLocator, Capacity, ConfiguredClockSpeed, Manufacturer, PartNumber
Get-WmiObject win32_VideoController | Select Name, AdapterRAM, VideoModeDescription, DriverVersion
​

​

(People can safely paste one and one line of theese onto a powershell(admin) themselves from the windows+x menu if they are curious about what info is fetched here).

Then, at the end of a session the session log should be sent to fdev directly into THEIR database (no manual work to get stats), and a flag written to the log that it has been sent. At the START of a session, the last session should be sent if that flag isn't there, including the information that "last session did not exit cleanly", since after the last hotfix I often have to kill off the process in task manager because it refuses to exit properly and just hangs at a blank screen. Depending on people to manually type up mails for you is bad. The system should be perfectly able to get telemetry itself. Especially since this method gives you a perfect chance to find WHAT PARTS of the game has performance regressions.

As for feedback on the maps, now that I've gotten more used to it, I'm generally FOR them, the thing that bugs me a lot is the following:

In the old map UI, from a "completely expanded" view (galaxy map), if a bookmark was for a specific starport or settlement, you could target that directly from the bookmark (with the new UI including mission-related temporary bookmarks and starships this becomes even more important). Now we have to go from the galaxy into system, and potentially further into planetary body, and then (and only then) can we actually target-for-navigation the place we wish to land. Can we please get the possibility to use the maximum precision our bookmarks provide at every time? (this would be insanely useful for commanders getting taken to jail, to go directly to apex, target their ship, and go there in 3 clicks instead of 7).

(Personally, I think this is the "running problem" of all the UI changes, that ... they lack task optimizations to make them more efficient when you have to use them more than once)

 

[Schubird]

I already went but I completely forgot to mention the most mind boggling one of them all: player loadout on ship (bottom panel). If you're using free cam like many people with hotas do, you have to literally click customize loadout 3 times to finally get into the loadout customization.

First out look down, click customize loadout, it takes you to a different screen with your possible loadouts, you have to click on it again, which makes the panel focus on the same panel, and then you have to hit customize loadout a third time

 

[darkbanefox]

Overall thoughts – please keep this brief (one or two sentences)
At first glance I hated the changes as most tend people tend to hate change. However, how the new maps work have grown on me and I kinda like them at this point. In the end, I find them better than the old system, though no perfect.

Specific Issues – clear and concise (bullet points are ideal)

• Limited Bookmark folders
• Bookmarks usage is more limited
• Include the ability to sort by systems visited again

Suggested Fixes for the Issues – clear and concise, directly linked to the issues

• Allow the creation of custom folders while leaving the default ones.
• Allow the ability to use a bookmarks to easily way-point a station or Settlement instead of going into the system view
• Re-add the ability to sort by systems visited from the galmap like was in horizons.

 

[NotFab]

Overall thoughts:
More clicks overall, confusing and dark.

Specific Issues:

• Galaxy Map panels keep disappearing (they have a tendency to hide back to the button, very annoying)
• Galaxy Map buttons have no labels, hard to find where important information (System Data) is located
• Galaxy Map search bar is hard to see due to dim border
• Outfitting menu is very confusing, hard to understand if you are browsing the store or stored modules
• Outfitting menu no longer shows detailed information about engineered modules (what grade is it? what experimental effect do I have?)
• Outfitting menu sell button/store module is confusing since the label changes when you toggle it
• Outfitting menu is very slow to load overall
• Overall game UI is too dim/dark.

Suggested Fixes for the Issues:

• Galaxy Map panels keep disappearing (they have a tendency to hide back to the button, very annoying)

- Make the panels more "sticky", so when you open it, it stays on the screen as opposed to easily hide away​

• Galaxy Map buttons have no labels, hard to find where important information (System Data) is located

- Add back labels to the buttons, or reorder them/group them more logically​

- Another option would be to bring back the left panel with tabs​

• Galaxy Map search bar is hard to see due to dim border

- Make the border of the search bar brighter.​

• Outfitting menu is very confusing, hard to understand if you are browsing the store or stored modules

- Make it so you can only browse your ship's modules OR the stored list (like the old UI), remove the "store" option.​

- Then clicking on a module slot on your ship brings in the store page​

- Selecting a stored module brings up a modal -> and clicking "equip" opens the ship modules screen (same as store)​

• Outfitting menu no longer shows detailed information about engineered modules (what grade is it? what experimental effect do I have?)

- Bring back the details panel of the modules when hovering your installed modules, with all the detailed information the game can provide on the same place.​

• Outfitting menu sell button/store module is confusing since the label changes when you toggle it

- Make the text NOT change when you toggle the button​

- Additionally, change the text permanently to "Sell Module", with the toggle being ON/OFF for selling the module.​

• Outfitting menu is very slow to load overall

- Not sure how to suggest something better than "optimize it" but outfitting the ship is twice as slow on Odyssey as it was on Horizons (I mean animations, being blocked/waiting because of an animation)​

- Additonally, don't lock the UI during the "weapon going out/weapon going in" ship animation, I don't need to see/wait that every time I outfit my ship!​

• Overall game UI is too dim/dark.

- Make the UI brighter, there is a forum thread about why Odyssey in general is so dark, in general just make it as bright as Horizons.​

 

[salika86]

The performance improved somewhat from the alpha for me, but not significantly. I am happy with it for now, the stunning new shaders and light effects absolutely make the FPS drops bearable. I am sure it will be much better though. Some people say the space feels too dark, and you cannot see the ship. But I say now we are cookin'. The space is dark, I like the higher contrast.

I am also happy that the beta does not crash anymore with graphics driver timeout and no signs of the flickering happened with Horizons when I tabbed out of the game for tools.

As for the UI, I have seen some glitches, like when I had uncompleted scavenger mission I could not book a shuttle.

I did not like the carrier-ish look of the station UI for the first time, but now I got used to it. Bit more clicks, but come on, I do play this game to relax, not in a hurry. I love the new galaxy map. Got used to it and now I like it.

As for room of improvement, I think it is a bit more annoying that the cargo is still tied to the pilot and not to the ship. Why I cannot park a big ship full of cargo then switch to a small ship? Or even have like 1000 tons of personal station cargo area (combined, not per station) and cargo beyond that would cost based on its value to make sure it does not worth to play stock market with it, then alert email per day about the storage bill.

I could also imagine an improvement for the bounty system. If I am wanted and pay the bounty, why I am transported to the detention facility? I could imagine a system like I could chose whether I want to pay the bounty or spend the amount of time in jail. If jail is selected, the character could not move out our suicide.

Killing an other cmdr should also cost more.... like paying the full insurance of the destroyed ship and another 30M fine or 1 month in jail. (not bounty, bounty does not work in an immortal world) That would discourage gankers.

 

[camenecius]

Overview​

The Map UI is better cosmetically, but overall there is less information per panel and it takes more clicks per activity compared to the Horizons maps. No new features stand out for improving my gameplay other than new elements added specifically for Odyssey.

Bugs​

• Galaxy Map: Scrolling in Galaxy/“Manage Bookmarks” zooms map in and out.
• Galaxy Map: My Carrier bookmark shows up in system category, favorited or not.
• System Map: Scrolling System/Factions zooms map in and out.
• The Krait II ship icon is brighter than the others for no apparent reason.
• Making a bookmark a favorite doesn’t do anything.
• When renaming a bookmark, the text field is empty rather than including the original text.
• Select a power player. Mouse over another power player. Change the view. The view changes for the selected power player, not the moused-over. In map mode, clicking on a box in a moused-over view selects that view. PP should behave like MM.
• Cannot unselect eco/fast routes to get a view without paths drawn. The result is no way to view the map unobscured and slowly rendering many paths on high jump ships.
• Multi-second lag when selecting a ship in a different location
• Multi-second lag when switching into or between map modes

Design Issues​

• Favorites
  • There is no category for showing just favorites.
  • There is no badge on a bookmark indicating it’s a favorite.
  • Favorites do not sort differently in bookmark lists.
  • The edit screen star does not reflect if the selected bookmark is a favorite or not.
• Bookmarks
  • There is no “all” category, although performing a text search results in a display of all categories of bookmarks matching the search term.
• Manage Bookmarks
  • System Menu Bookmark Manager does not restrict view to bookmarks in the system versus showing bookmarks which does. They should be consistent.
• Map Mode
  • The User Data main icon doesn’t add any value. There is enough screen real estate to fold these into Map Mode, and any selection within it is mutually exclusive to Map Mode.
• Mouse
  • The “hold to target” is clumsy and as another poster mentions feels more like a touch UI feature than a PC feature
  • Having RMB change mouse behavior to the Z axis is inconsistent with the X and Y axes having no equivalents. Either the mouse should allow movement in all directions or none. (Existing Horizons issue)
• System Map
  • Information about planets has been split across two panels, Body Description and Planetary Information. I have to switch back and forth between them to view all gameplay-relevant facts about the body, making scanning new or large systems tedious.

Solutions​

• Bookmarks
  • MORE BOOKMARKS. AT LEAST 255 BOOKMARKS.
  • Add default “all” to bookmarks categories to Bookmarks and Manage Bookmarks.
  • Add a “favorite bookmarks” on the leftmost panel that only shows favorites but allows using the categorization.
  • Allow deleting bookmark from the right-hand icon; i.e., if the selection isn't bookmarked, show “+”, otherwise show “-”.
  • Support context mode on RMB to plot, rename, remove, or copy the name of a bookmark to the clipboard--like Horizons behavior but not depending on mouseover time.
• Bookmarks Manager
  • Multiselect bookmarks to batch favorite or delete
  • Option to show smaller tiles or list/details view (a la Windows Explorer)
  • Export to CSV/Excel
• Keyboard
  • Keybind to activate search bar (CTRL+F default), hitting enter to confirm search
  • More keybinds to plot route, favorite, bookmark, etc. the selected object.
  • ENTER should behave differently in map mode, probably equivalent to SPACE, since there is no chat from here and experience with computer apps (spreadsheets, webforms)
  • The machine-appropriate shortcuts for cut, paste, moving within a text box should be available.
• Map Mode
  • Move Apply To Route to top of all lists. It’s something I want to know immediately, and I may toggle this without changing other selections in the view.
  • Visually distinguish when mousing over a view that is not active (grey vs. black?)
  • Add “route” badges to map mode and separate mode icons to indicate if routing is being filtered.
  • Move User Data views into Map Mode UNLESS you plan to allow filtering by both Map Mode and User Mode at the same time. If the latter, then User Data should have the same badging about active and applying to routes.
• Mouse
  • Remove or provide a switch to disable Z axis movement on RMB.
  • Support meta key shift/alt/control + move mouse to move in X, Y, Z axes.
  • Use RMB for context menu pop-up, as is standard in PC interfaces.
  • HOLD button mode could also be used for context menus if there’s a valid case for this gesture that I fail to see.
• My Fleet
  • Add context menu on RMB from selected ship to plot a route to the station where the ship is or transfer the ship to my current location (if possible)
  • Option to show smaller tiles or list/details view (a la Windows Explorer)
  • Export to CSV/Excel
• System Map
  • Rename the first right-hand icon as “Summary” and include gameplay-related data only: name, body type (not the full description), terraforming status, firsts status, my mapped status, features, locations, gravity, temperature, atmosphere, volcanism. Looking at the summary should be the information that helps me decide gameplay choices here. Can I walk around? Is there stuff to scan or harvest? Do I have to be careful of pancaking on approach? etc.
  • Rename the third icon “Detailed Information” and swap positions with market data. Put all information, including the long body type description and information from summary here, just like the original details from Horizons display.

ABOUT TAGGING AND SORTING BOOKMARKS​

I have developed a system for adding prefix characters and tags to bookmarks to control sorting order and to specify particular actions I want to take with the bookmarked open. The filters by object type are less helpful since I’m using bookmarks as workflow: I am more concerned about what I want to do with a bookmark than what kind of thing it is at a high level.

Ideally I was hoping for some kind of Favorites folders or google-style tagging in this update so I could create my own categories. I can accomplish some of this with text searching for specific tags, but direct support either as folders or just harvesting on hashtags from the names and creating a tag cloud would also be an improvement.

Tagging Examples​

Asterisks sort at the top. [] for tasks, sort before {} for reference. Typical ASCII order games.

• * {BGS @OOM} SomeSystem
  -- current BGS target for OOM, sort to the top
• [DSS] SomeSystem
  -- found a world worth scanning but didn’t have time or DSS, grouping all carto targets
• {ENGR @Deciat} Felicity Farseer #gankers
  -- all my engineers are tagged for grouping and sorting by system name, hashtag notes
• {INTFAC @OOM} SomeStation
  -- where to go when I’m in OOM space for legal and mercenary services

ABOUT FILTERS AND VIEWS​

The long-running weakness of using the maps is that they don’t provide any kind of faceted search or selection. I would like at a minimum to see favorites, text searching, and categories/filters AND’ed together. Even better would be allowing multiple map modes at the same time.