Inside Star Citizen: Maps and Apps
Inside Star Citizen: Maps and Apps
TL;DW:
- Complete overhaul of mobiGlas, moved to "Building Blocks" & "Cards" system
- New home panel displays:
- Tracked missions
- Notifications
- Reputation & crime stat
- Status of connected ship (ammo, fuel)
- Environment data (gravity, atmo, pressure, temperature, radiation)
- Health data (overall %, temperature, heart rate, suit fuel & oxygen)
- Some app updates won't make it to 3.23 (chat, vehicle customization)
- Health app displays everything home screen does as well as:
- Conditions effects (injury status)
- Active drugs
- Hunger & thirst
- Blood drug level
- Contract manager changes:
- Toggle between legal/illegal missions instead of separate tabs
- "Mark all as read" button
- Star map changes:
- Now responsible for everything (space and locations)
- Local map has a clickable list of available points of interest (shops, transit, hospitals etc)
- GPS routing
- Custom markers
- Mission markers
- Will be able to navigate between zones (ex. needing to travel via trams) but there are some issues that require fixing first
- Space part contains all the info available until now, plus
- Clicking on a space location (like space station) displays info about available POIs (stores, landing options etc)
- Improved feedback when routing between space locations
- Search bar
- Marker list
- HUD shows level of injuries to each body part
CIG asked for feedback on HUD readability, drop by on Spectrum if you have something to add.
New mobiGlas looks good though they're still sticking with the transculent holo style that can be hard to read on light backgrounds (there are multiple parts in this very video with this problem). Oh well...
Hopefully they'll continue to iterate. I'm just so glad we'll have a functional starmap to be honest.
So do I, it's just kind of stupid considering this has been a problem for years and they'd rather reinvent the wheel (like in case of ship HUDs) instead of provide us with a simple solutions like:
- increasing opacity (or an option to do it yourself)
- adding a black outline to the text
Either of those things would fix majority of the issues with readability on any background. And let's not forget about the fantastic idea of using a ghosting effect which makes the UI less readable for people with some sight problems.
I understand the difficulties of game (or any other) dev and I really appreciate all the improvements they're working on but it really feels like they are completely unaware of decades of progress on accessibility within the games industry.
OK, that's not entirely true. They did acknowledge the need for such accessibility options in regards to the dynamic crosshair if I recall correctly so I hope they'll transfer this awareness to other aspects of the UI as well. Maybe now, as they're porting the rest of the UI to the new system and are slowly moving towards polishing it for SC42 this will be something that'll finally see some attention.
Sorry for the rant, CIG's aversion towards simple solutions can be really frustrating at times.
Lots of places even on their showcase were the text becomes almost unreadable. Not just on the star map even in the standard mobi glass windows. i.e. against the illuminated store logo. Why is CIG so vehemently opposed to readable UI? At some point legibility has to come before the coolness factor of blue holograms.
Finally. The old starmap is such an abomination.
I currently don’t play SC but 3.23 seems to be such a big update I might just check it out.