2 months to release and the game feels like pre-alpha and is a letdown. Please delay the release.

UI will get some layout changes and several additional functions like minimap, planet menu and split view, beside those I don't expect much with their limited time and budget.

Neutrino was the lead technician of SupCom, which has horrible performance until many patches after, hope he can do better this time with the experience he got.

I NEED this thread's title changed... at least that. it is a basic gut need. I need that title to be changed or this thread to be closed.

We are already using a projection, planar projection.


If you haven't noticed, units at the edges already ARE scrunched up.


and you may not have noticed, but whatever in the center of your projection is almost 100% accurate.
So as you rotate and pan the world in the projection, everything will become accurate near the middle.

Have you guys been assuming that you can't pan a projection?

This was because of P2P.
I have no idea why that model was chosen, but Uber has acknowledged that issue and moved onto the client/server model.
Plus, 64-bit native means we can actually make good use our hardware.

Okay, let me show you the reason we have globes as well as maps, because we use a globe in PA atm, but you never look at Australia on a globe while having Africa facing your direction (unless you are looking at land elevation)

As you see below, a large base on "Africa" would look like a handful structures, while a small army on "Greenland" would look like an army the size of your Africa base. Imagine having artillery on both, one would cover all of Greenland like 1/8th your visible map, while you would need 6 to cover the land mass of Africa, both appearing the same size.

Irrelevant. You will know it will be stretched.

Don't underestimate the capacity of your brain to adapt seamlessly. It's done by thousand of people working in 3d/post production every day.

Also, seeing fast moving/stretched armies is still 10000x time better that not seeing it at all.

What is tiresome is people thinking stretches will be a problem. You are not trying to plan a route for your next field trip AFAIK.

The early SupCom actually runs more smoothly in multiplayer than singleplayer somethimes, with the same unit count.
And like someone said earlier in this thread, client/server model has its own problems.

I don't think anybody wants Mercator
Mollweide or Robinson would work well.



What we currently have is a 3D sphere projected onto your monitor.
It seems like it's Tangent Planar Projection.



If you haven't noticed, everything that is not at your focal point right now is already skewed right?
Just look at the density at the edge of the projection.



But you don't care right?
Like Zep said, your brain already adapted.

You already instinctively pan what you really care about to the center of your screen where there is almost 100% accurate.
Everything else is just there for context.

Errr... People are complaining that a 2d view will have stretch, but they are for another kind of 2d projection that has even more stretches. Okaaaaay....

How is, when we can actually have a round visualization of a map, it better to have a flat one, given the problems?

Give someone 2 screens on each side of the planet is better. Making them interactive where you can still click through them is better. Making them where one could rotate it slightly if it helps is better. Making a flat map will in fact get people killed. People playing will lose bases in Greenland to armies they saw coming from Africa, will get shell'd from Greenland when they didn't think it would reach the Great Lakes of North America, and will get completely surprised by armies coming across from Russia to South America. I believe you could probably even shell from Russia to South America. You know how ridiculously small Antartica is compared to maps demonstrating it?

The appeal to a globe, is that you can rotate it to where your focal point is right in front of you. I wouldn't even mind them mildly stretching your focal point if selected as an option in the menu. I do mind doing that to the whole planet. As long as I can get rid of that POS minimap in the options menu, and use multiwindow instead, I would be fine. If it comes mandatary, ill tear files apart to remove it. If they didn't make one at all and just made a miniwindow the default way you download the game, I doubt we would hear any more about this issue.

As demonstrated by Culverin, your "round visualization" is extremely stretched near the borders (way more than ANY other 2d flat projection will be), and half the planet is just not visible.

So yes, a 2d flat map will be better in every way, just because your solution has the same problems amplified, and some others added to that.

Why the guy wouldn't be able to center the 2d projection on Africa? There is nothing undoable on a 2d flat map that you don't already do right now, except that you see both side of the sphere on the same view.

If you have a second viewport aiming at the other side of the planet, everything at the border of these two views will be horribly distorted.
If you think people will misinterpret an small army in Africa on a 2d map, they won't even see a army with your solution (just a few dots pilled up).

This is pretty much it. I don't think me reinterating this a third time will do much good. You don't get bad information at the edges of a sphere laid out, you get no information. That is exactly what you said, you get no information. If you don't get some form of panning, and learn to rely on the center of what you have panned, as the only accurate information, you won't have accurate information. That is why I will stick to using windows.

It isn't like I can be forced any other way. As far as I am concerned, they will either listen and put in a minimap, or wont and will stick with windows. If they do either, nobody will complain.

I will use multiple windows with multiple focal points. It will be more trouble for me to use a flat minimap with magical ending at the edges, than for me to go into the files and start backspacing over the code.

I hope they make a hologram pop out your computer monitor showing the rotating planet with realtime updating units. That's the only way to please every side. When we discuss hologram support, I will repost here. You guys enjoy sponsoring your flat map.

Stretching on the edge of a sphere is accommodated by our brain as it is an affordance of spheres - the very shape of the object visually dictates and indicates the distortion. A flat map, on the other hand, has the affordance and expectation of uniformity, because there is no visual clue as to the nature of the distortion (and while putting lines on a map can indicate the presence of distortion, they don't do a good job of describing it). In this case though, you have a flat map that isn't uniform, which is why it would be jarring. Imagine playing Sup Com and your units appeared to move 100x faster on the edges of a map, or physically grew in size depending on their location. A bullet that you expect to go straight appears to curve for no reason. You can no longer mentally draw straight lines between things, because "straight" is no longer displayed as such.

I agree, there should be no limited minimap, RTS has evolved beyond that.
It should be the player's choice to see the world how he wants.

1. Tangential Planar Projection = What we have now.
   
   
   
2. Pseudocylindrical
   

It should really be just a simple toggle.

So you can have
Window 1 = Like now
Window 2 = Mollweide


What you see in game already is a projection.
If Uber opens up the code for that, then we can slice and dice and change the maths to project into different shapes other than a circle.

Now your talking holograms kind of. I agree they should open the code for how the screen stretches it, for sure. That would be fair area for modding.

If they had in the options for different window views, how far they stretched in which places, to accommodate more accuracy or more vision, then that would be something customizable.

People have suggested "hologram" planet...





I'm assuming that's just really simple for the modders...
Assuming the engine can handle it, it would be playing with the transparency levels of the planetary terrain assets.

It's probably going to be one of the first mods we see....

I can't imagine anything more confusing than being able to see both sides of the planet at once....

transparent hologram maps look cool in movies and the actors in them sure look like they know what they are doing but really its confusing as hell to look at especially the parrallax between the front and back of the map.

Unfortunately it's not that simple due to backface culling (the back of the planet is not rendered at all, making the front transparent won't change that).