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

Bruce G

Senior Community Manager
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.
 
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Kzak

Kzak
How about an option to use the old UI for station menus and such while docked in your ship? Freedom of choice is a good thing.

Ditto with the galaxy map, being able to use the old UI in Odyssey for the galaxy map, although the system map's UI will necessarily have to be the new one, I guess.
 

Namsel

Namsel
Hi Bruce!
The galaxy map, UI arrangement aside, needs to bring back some functions it previously had, like the possibility to delete a bookmark from the same button you add one (now we have to search the specific one in the bookmark manager) and mostly the ability to plot a route to a in-system destination (station, planet, etc.) from the bookmark list. It was possible before but currently the map just selects the system.

Thanks
 

Malic

Malic
GALAXY MAP

I feel the left side of the Galaxy map UX should be changed to this order:

Realistic Mode
Map Mode
User Data
View Route Settings
Compare by Size
Bookmarks
Missions
Fleet
Powerplay
Trade Tools
Display Options

Maybe recombine Map Mode and User Data back together into one button like it was previously.

Right side should be set up to

Target System
System info
Copy system name
Plot Route
System map (have it show up all the time, buy grayed out when not available)
Add to Bookmarks
Market Information
Stored Ships
System missions
Buy Trending Trade data
Powerplay
Focus system

Another thing I would love to see... We have click to select the system, hold to plot route. A double click would be amazing to target the system you have selected.

Other issues is the search bar. Typing an exact name and hitting Enter you expect to go there, but you have to scroll down to the system name, and then click it to move there, and then you have to UI back to get out of that to get back to star selection.

Get rid of the separators ability to stop the cursor between the buttons on the side menus. if you are on the left side, and hold down, the cursor stops at each and every little line separator, so you cant get though it fast

The click and drag to turn on/off filters is nice, but if you go too fast, it turns everything off.

On the States Filter, if you change the top 4, it turns off the bottom 4, cause it has to scroll down, and vice-versa.

When it comes to the filters, it has a lot of blank space between each one, like everything is double spaced, can a lot of that be reduced so it does not take up so much space vertically?

Friends names no longer show up in system info, so I have a friend marker, but I dont know who is there

Can we have a "minimalist" for the ship view? each button is like

Ship type
Ship Name ---------------------- PICTURE OF SHIP
Ship ID

Can we get a version that is like

Ship Type - Name - ID - no picture

Just takes up a ton of space and tons of scrolling, also a search for ship would be nice

Map filters should not change to that map mode upon mouseover, only when clicked on, accidently moving mouse and having it change modes on its own is annoying.

Population filter keeps resetting, I have this on 24/7 and I have to turn it on every time

What does "advanced search options" do? There is no documentation for what this is, and turning it on and off I cannot see any change.


SYSTEM MAP

For the system map, a bug that has existed for VR users, can we get the cursor sped up? it is 1/5th the speed of non-VR so takes forever to move around larger systems, even when zoomed out. This video is old, but behavior is still current



The rings around planets are broken in VR, so is hard to see if the planet has an atmo or is landable

8Nrsptj.png
 
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lolPants

lolPants
Overall thoughts
Overall I like the new layout of both galmap and sysmap aside from missing info and other misc details, but that's already being voiced pretty heavily so I'll avoid repeating that. The only real issue I have with the new UI is the regression in icon usability and accessibility, explained in detail more below.

Specific Issues
Icons in the galaxy map have been slowly losing their unique colours over the last few major updates. Bookmarks were changed from blue to orange, ships were changed from red to white in the fleet carriers update and now to yellow in Odyssey. Engineers icons changed from purple to orange in Odyssey.

Now the icon palette is mostly oranges and yellows, which fits with the orange theme of the in-ship UI, but is pretty awful UX. It's harder to tell at a glance what each icon represents, and I imagine for the visually impaired this problem is amplified.

Suggested Fixes for the Issues
Return ship and engineer map icons to their original colours, red and purple respectively. Bookmarks I think are fine staying as orange, so long as they don't clash with other icons. Additionally, please consider adding a colour variant of any favourited bookmarks, eg: the original blue so you can distinguish favourited bookmarks from regular bookmarks at a glance.
 
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smoke_th

S
  • Ship outfitting doesn't show which stored modules have been engineered.
  • There is no "wanted" indication on the galaxy/system map anymore, you have to go to the nav panel to actually see where are you wanted.
  • The from-pov view of the player terminals is godawful and should be replaced with camera snapping to the terminal the moment player activates it.
  • The current hold to select interface is awful as well because the points wander around. Not to mention - before on the starview only thing to build route you needed was hovering over star, waiting a bit for popup and then clicking build route. That's gone.
  • Also exiting the system view on a remote star in galaxy view brings camera back to the system you're in, not to the remote system you were checking out.
  • Also, and this is only partially related - the overall look is too dark - someone threw a 0.7(to 0.45 depending on average star brightness) multiplier on top of "outside of the ship" shader stack and it screwed everything up.
    https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1396546306420707329
    Source: https://twitter.com/smokefumus/status/1396546306420707329
 

CMDR Yates

C
System map: Don't hate it, but feel all planetary information should be together in one window/tab, not split scross two tabs on the right hand side.

General system/galaxy map usability: I feel like I should be able to both plot a course to, and directly select, a star/body using just the mouse buttons, not have to go across the screen to a separate button to directly target.

FSS view: on scanning a planet in the FSS, include terraformable [EDIT: AND LANDABLE] status here, instead of making us navigate to the system map to check.

Planetary map: I don't think there's an option to view the colour/heatmap overlay from the planetary map. There should be. As it is, we have to fly back into space to check where can find various things.
 
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partwelsh

partwelsh
EDIT: Updating my post to comment that I have now observed that 'View System Map' does appear on the right side of the galaxy map, but only for certain systems (presumably previously visited, or notable systems). This button however completely vanishes for other systems where I assume you don't have this data.

A better user experience would be to maintain the 'View System Map' button at all times (and avoid disrupting the muscle memory and having buttons change positions) and have it greyed out with a tooltip advising you that system data is not available.

----

Galaxy Map

Overall thoughts – I appreciate the new look and I prefer this vs. the old approach.

Specific Issues – It's not clear to me that I cannot view the system map on certain systems, and the game isn't informing me why. I want to plot a jump to another system, and select my final destination in the process (switching from Galaxy Map to System Map).

Suggested Fixes for the Issues – Provide a secondary action that allows view of the destination system map after 'click to hold to plot route' // inform me when this isnt possible and make it clear to me that I'll have to do this when I reach the system (present user experience is inconsistent)

Big fan otherwise. Big GG on the update!
 
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Andro

Andro
Thank you for the continued work. Please also look into the Outfitting. I have not used it yet in Odyssey, but I have heard it's much worse than the maps.

For the Galaxy map, my feedback would have to be plotting a route to bookmarks takes way more clicks than it should. You have to use the "manage bookmarks" section instead of just being able to select it from bookmarks normally. You should be able to click and hold to plot a route to any bookmark, and not just the system it's in.
 

bitstorm

bitstorm
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Shimmermist

S
@Bruce G
I'm sorry but what do you expect of the issue tracker? It's not a good system for the sheer influx of reports (Many of which were duplicates)
I reported this list of things I noticed that hurt performance 3 days ago and its barely had any reponses due to the fact that it was drowned out extremely fast, I tweeted frontier support on twitter regarding this asking if there was a better way to bring topics to attention than the issue tracker because of how fast they got buried and basically told, no.
 
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DerHug

D
Overall I like it more just needs refinement, dunno I like the look way more.

Issues:
System map - would be good if the ui remembers the last of the right side windows I had opened an keeps it openend if I wish.

Navigation - targeting a body kinda removes the overall route in overview tho not in map. This makes traveling/exploration quite annoying.
 
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