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.
Thanks for this thread Bruce. This should make optimisation reporting a bit more direct, and I'll send the necessary to the appropriate.
As for the UI, my own experience (and I may have missed out others based on what I've seen so far):
Overall:
In all honesty, I like the new maps for the most part. The orange interface takes a lot of getting used to compared to the black and white interface of old, and organising the big unwieldy side bar to give the map more screen real estate seems like a step forward. The galaxy map search bar taking pride of place at the top is fine, especially as it was one of the most used functions, and great that it offers suggestions as you type now so that I make fewer mistakes. I also like the new "copy name" function for the third party guys - and, I assume, to communicate with others by text easier.
On the system map, sorting out points of interest is much better now. For both maps, I like the new function to hold to target or untarget a location, especially as now the hit box is bigger vs the Alpha and it becomes second nature.
Issues and suggestions (based on functions that need to improve as opposed to bugs that simply need a suggestion of "fix pks kthx")
1) Searches - as has been reported by some, the old search function whereby a partially filled in location cycles through possibilities is missed now.
Suggestion: offer a small search results popup when a partially filled name is entered and searched for, staying on screen all the time while you cycle through the systems, and hitting Enter cycles through all the results one by one.
2) Map information sidebars - it is cumbersome to reclick on the side bars for relevant information when an object is selected on the galaxy or system maps. In particular, I am used to seeing the information tab popping up straight away on the old maps.
Suggestion: when an object is selected, have the Info sidebar pop up immediately to give basic info on the object, with the option for other sidebar info to be shown at the player's discretion. Even better, have a setting to allow the player to pick and choose which sidebar information immediately pops up when an object is selected eg if the player is interested in markets or info or discoveries or the science bits etc.
3) Map Filters - I can understand from a certain perspective that filters are separated into user based filters (places visited etc) and galactic info filters eg services, governments, states, allegiances. However, this seems very arbitrary and adds to needless clicks. It might be that the intention is to combine statistic filters with user filters, but there is a better way.
Suggestion: reincorporate the filters to a single menu - but on top of this, allow multiple filters to be applied, eg system state and economy type and security together if one were to look for, say, an Anarchy Industry system in Famine that you have already visited before.
4) System map planetary phases - in the Alpha the planets were set up arbitrarily in a way that you could not tell if the location you were going to was in daytime or night. This could be important for missions where lighting or night vision could make the difference.
Suggestion: have real time planetary day/night terminators displayed to accurately display which parts are in the daytime and which are at night.
5) Mapping and the System Map - yes, clicking on the system map objects tells us if the object is mapped by you or not, but I think this can be improved further, especially in light of the DSS heat maps
Suggestion: show the heat maps on the planetary bodies where applicable on the planetary view of the system map, set to All by default with options to cycle between them in the planetary view. This, combined with the real time terminator, means you can see where the heat maps are in a better way than having to get into supercruise to use the DSS etc which is tedious and time wasting.
6) Exobiology status: planets do (somewhere) tell you how many Biologicals are on the planet, but not what, how many or which ones you have sampled partially or fully and subsequently catalogued with Vista Genomics. The potential for retreading old ground is therefore very high.
Suggestion: either expand the further detail tab on the system map for the planet, or add an Exobiology tab listing the number, general type of life, specific species listed and their sampling and cataloguing status. Furthermore, add an Exobiology summary status tab in the cockpit, collating all this info in the Transaction panel on your cockpit - and perhaps also an Exploration tab listing data of all systems you have scanned. (Makes sense to have it in Transactions rather than Inventory as these are lost if you die.)
7) Smuggling - for the life of me I cannot find the information listing which goods are illegal in a system.
Suggestions: add the information on prohibited goods to the market information tab on the system map.
8) Bookmarks - I knew I forgot a big thing.
It is nice that bookmarks separate name from location, and own bookmarks from squadron ones. But these need to do so much more. Also, it is less easy to target and plot to a bookmark, be it a system, body station or port. Often this needs to go via the system map from the galaxy map and vice versa. Also, also, it would be very nice to have more clear differences between bookmarks of different objects, either by an obvious symbol or a different colour.
Suggestions: a lot of suggestions to improve bookmarks...
Firstly, use the innovative "hold to target" function so that it works on the bookmarks menu itself, no matter which map you are in. To simply go to the bookmarks menu and plot to a system, body, station or port either in galaxy map or system map would be a small change, but would make an immense difference to quality of life.
Secondly: allow more opportunities to make custom bookmark groups. We have general ones and squadron ones, but also have other categories we can make for ourselves like xeno, exploration, markets, anarchies, etc.
Thirdly, more clearer symbols or colours to differentiate between bookmarks would be nice.
Fourthly, please let us access the galaxy and system map bookmarks from the cockpit as well, in a separate tab on the Nav panel if necessary. Also, let us bookmark objects from the Nav panel and the FSS please.
Finally, please increase the number of bookmarks from 128 to at least 512. Many of us have reasons to bookmark things.
9) General feature request: please also add the following to the system map:
Notable stellar phenomena to the Points of Interest tab
Tourist beacons, Nav Beacons, etc. to the Points of Interest tab
Found megaships and other special structures
Mining hotspots to planetary ring information
Geological heat maps to mapped planets
Many thanks. There are probably many other issues but I may add them later.
! No dev/design time needed!
