Are UI improvements coming?

Already addressed. Perspective != warping, and a perspective projection does not have the same issues that a map projection does. The 3D cues of perspective allow the brain to easily interpret position and movement over a globe, as it mimics real life. A flat, warped minimap does not. That you keep equating the two means you either fail to grasp the concept, or you are deliberately ignoring the difference.

If by consistent you mean ... not at all consistent and dependent entirely on what part of the flat minimap the icon is on? How on earth do you believe it to be consistent? And if you're just looking for an overview, how does PIP not give this to you? You can see one side of the planet, and PIP can see the other.

And a PIP doesn't do this because? Also, you're now saying that not only will the minimap be distorted, but the minimap center point will move, meaning just changing the camera will make dots move around the minimap on their own (more than just the translation of the viewpoint), and change the points that are distorted, compounding the problem.

Given you need to switch to the planet to see the minimap, this is a non-argument because with a PIP on the opposite side of the planet, switching to a planet means you see the entire planet also.

He meant the Auto Go To Last Event feature, imo.

As it seems that minimap is a too complex thing to apprehend for most of you, Let me put it this in simple words.

If you see a blob of units from the other side of the planet coming to your blob of units, you know you will be attacked soonish.

The PiP can't show you that (nothing happened yet), and you don't see it in the 3d view (it's on the other side of the planet).

The fact that the dot are distorted, don't move at the right speed, ... are entirely irrelevant.

You have a button to make the PIP automagically look at the other side of the planet, so you can watch the entire planet surface intel at any time. And see the enemy blob of units coming to yours.

Your images prove nothing else but square textures get warped on a sphere surface.
Unit positions are calculated in 3d on a 3d sphere and do not get warped. Else a factory would be quite a lot bigger at the poles as when on the equator.
You are watching at it on a flat monitor but your 3d card and the engine are rendering the object in 3D.
Waching it holografic would mean you have to turn your head around to view it in 3D.
Where in a 3D game the camera acts as your head.

About the minimap:
Games like PA and Supcom don't need a minimap that bad as you can simply zoom out and get a strategic overview.
(Even tough I liked the supcom its 2nd screen maps)
In PA it is waiting for multi monitor support so you can display each half of a planet on each screen.
May need a couple of dozen more monitors for 10 planet systems But no minimap is going to solve that issue.

Disable strategic icons for economic structures and factory's may help improving the view clutter tough.

Really, which button?

Errr.. it is?

True for supcom, not for PA.
PA doesn't have an overview, at best you have half the planet, not really what I call an overview.

Yes, if that exists, it's undocumented.

Hover the PiP to show its buttons. The one you are looking for is the last one (a planet with a pole axis).

Yeah I mentioned this earlier- there is a 'mirror' button to view the opposite side of the planet to main camera.

I know you'd like a mini map (and I don't disagree with you in principal, perhaps a modder could do something with this?) however I do think Uber have been thinking about this more than we give them credit. The PIP system is actually very powerful. If I had a choice of option I would actually opt for the ability to have *multiple PIP windows* rather than a mini map....

There used to be that mod, by Cola I believe. I think I've seen him say it's still possible and he might pick it back up.

But don't quote me on that.

The one on the right? I didn't think it did anything

I think anyone who has passed the 3rd grade is fairly familiar with how to read a map like this. So there would be no confusion about why units towards the center around a pole would be moving at a different speed than units farther from the center at a pole. The speed they're moving isn't even of concern in the 1st place. That they are moving is.

There's no misinformation. You're being deliberately dense. You might as well argue with someone for 5 hours that the piece of cake you got at a bday party isn't the same size as everyone else's because 6 more crumbs fell off when your piece was sliced versus the others. The information displayed is plenty accurate enough in this form.

It's better than PIP because you can see the entire planet at once. How is that not obvious? It's also better than PIP because it lets you move around the planet much faster (because you're also supposed to be able to move around with the minimap in an RTS).

No need to image it in your head. Spore implemented it and it works great.

No it really didn't.

Look at a map of the Earth, only upside down. Now imagine you didn't even have prior knowledge of what it looked like in the first place. And finally, think about doing this for multiple planets over a systems every game, learning the geography.

I'm sorry, but that's a terrible idea.

For the 6th time, you don't need to learn the topology of the map, but see a big blob of red units coming toward your big blob of blue unit.
Please read (and try to understand) before posting next time.

A black background should be enough actually.

A wire map would probably be the best option really.

This is a normal 3D view where things in the background are smaller as they are supposed to be ... Go check a screenshot with any object that is both in foreground and background in any other 3D engine...
If you are standing on the pole and the same objects are bigger in the background then there is warping going on.

Its alot easyer to place a object in 3D space as it is to unwrap a square texture to a sphere.

@thepilot I don't think you understand actually. The PIP has a mirror option that actually gives you complete access to the entire globe, far superior to distortion of both size and speed that occurs with any kind of flat map that is attempting to represent a sphere. I think that if you actually used a flat map it would be a lot more difficult, unintuitive, and useless than you currently imagine. Also knowing the topography of a planet (earth) allows you to understand a flat map for easier than having to learn a set of new planet's and all of their surface details every game. (Even if you do it's going to be horribly distorted) As you so rudely said to someone else in this thread "don't be so dense." Skip to 4:50


The only thing I would like in regards to UI is to have that awesome setting we had a while back that made it so all of the surface icons disappear when you are selecting orbital units. you had to zoom out to a certain distance as well. All ground icons except for orbital and commander icons if I remember correctly. That was nice when things got crowded

For the 7th time, distortions are irrelevant. Seeing a blob moving toward another is.