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Ho hum, since you're working on this for better or for worse... this might be an out of place feature request, but I think when cloaked, proximity warnings on the tactical overlay would be a good addition for objects within 4km (whether the bracket for them is enabled or not).

Some things show a different distance on XY plane, which is really annoying. For example, if you undock from a gallente outpost, the cloning service says it's 24km away, the tactical overlay shows a dot at 30km

Ok, after thinking about it for a while, I will add a couple more things about why I now think that the paradigm shift in how information is displayed is worse in my opinion. And I may meet Rek and what he said about what the improvements focus should be for the tactical overlay.

First let me clarify that except for some things others and I mentionned previously, it's visually much better as far as colors and readability and all that jazz compared to the old one, and that's great.


The first question we have to answer, before deciding whether or not the new one is better as to how information is displayed, is why are we using the tactical overlay today.
The answer to that question is of course really subjective, I'm only offering my own answer to that question and it will differ from player to player.

(1) I've always had some trouble grasping the 3d aspect of eve online, because the game is how it is and when you zoom out I just see a blurb of icons; I have to move my camera around a lot before understanding where things are around me in space.
That's the first and main reason I'm using the tactical overlay today, as it simplifies that process a lot and I need a lot less camera moves to see where things are and whether or not they're moving towards me.
(2) The same issue arise when trying to grasp distances from things visually.
That's the second reason I use the tactical overlay, because distances are written down, and because of the range bubbles, it helps a lot understanding really quick how far away things are from me.
(3) Related to the previous one, having a quick glance at my modules optimal range / fall-off is really useful as well.

So that's the 3 main reasons why I'm using the tactical overlay today. Let's see if the new tactical overlay improves anything there.
To build up on my previous post, let's just remind ourselves that for most things more or less within the XY (horizontal) plane, nothing really changes, but it changes a lot for things below or above. And let's keep in mind as well the other remarks: speed perception and how the new one skews that a bit, some new things I may need to get used to, etc.
I'm not sure those are the correct terms, but let's use perpendicular projection (the old one) versus radial projection (the new one).

(→1) That's the main thing for me, and I'll argue that it's not better and may be worse in some situations.
I don't think I need to explain why it's easier to understand where things are in 3d environment like eve with the perpendicular projection.
There you could argue that it's about getting used to it, and it's partially true, and I'd argue that you'll need a lot more time to get used to the radial projection compared to the perpendicular one, and the radial one doesn't help make it easier even after getting used to it.
If you only have a couple of things in space around you, it's not that hard to get where they are even with the radial one. When there are a lot of things around, especially directly above or below you, it's way harder imo. It's just a blurb of curved lines going in every direction and not helping readind the position of things in space.

(→2) What the radial projection succeed at doing, is giving an accurate read on distances of things around you, which on paper sounds super cool.
Unfortunately, I would argue there again that it's not much better and maybe worse in most situations.
First reason: The old tactical overlay already allows a quick read and estimate at distances (because when you zoom out and you see the 50km, 100km rings, you can tell if things are more or less at that range even with things directly above or below you) and when I want an accurate read of distances today (and tomorrow) I can look at the overview.
Second reason: building up on (→1) and realizing that understanding where things are around you isn't made easier and even made harder when there are a lot of things on grid above and below, having an accurate read on distances on the tactical overlay itsefl doesn't help because it's harder to tell which ship it belongs to (curved lines ... same arguments).

(→3) It's related to the (2) really, and even if the read on optimal / fall-off isn't harder (and maybe even better because as I said at the beginning, the new one is less clutered and unobstrusive), because of (→1) and (→2) it's not much of an improvement in the end.


What I think would be a good improvement, is working on the tactical overlay to make it easier to, first, pilot your ship and see where you're going, and second, estimate the speed and direction of things around you, things the new one doesn't do at all (see my previous post as to why it's even worse for speed imo, even if the old one wasn't great either).
As Rek said previously, vectors would be nice, but maybe hard to implement?

Well that's my 2 cents anyway.

TL;DR: Radial projection doesn't make things better: for things above and below you, it doesn't improve spatial awareness nor speed perception, sometimes worsens it. The only good thing it does is giving accurate distances, which you can already do with the overview and partially estimate with the current perpendicular projection.

He was talking about the ranges of modules and weapons nothing to do with a target or distance from it.

Indeed, giving an option to switch between the old and new projection would be nice.
We have 3 cameras now, I'm sure the 2 kind of projections for the tactical overlay can cohabit.

Is it possible to get a Speed / direction vector arrow for the locked targets? To visualise the velocity and direction of other ships?

This is being worked on, we hope to have an update to this mechanic on sisi next week.

This is something we really want to do, but will probably not be able to finish for the Citadels release.

o7
CCP Turtlepower

And now that I can again sit in a Citadel after the mirror, I see that the ranges start from the edge of the "ship" rather than its center. Very nice, thanks!

If the new overview icons introduced some time ago made my life really worse and forced me to use workarounds to make the overview somewhat usable again, it was nothing compared to how miserable my EVE life is going to be with this new, non-optional tactical overlay.

I can't express how terrified I am about this. Seriously.

The radial projection is so much worse compared to what we have now. Objects not projecting a dot-connected-with-a-line on the XY plane my ship is in is a disaster for me (insta bookmark making and all).

With the only real advantage of the new overlay being accurate distance information (arguments presented by earlier posters), make it an optional tactical overlay mode. If someone finds it useful, let him/her use it. But don't take the current tactical overlay away, it's got very important features that are simply not available in the new version.

The current tactical overlay enhances the 3D view in a way that makes the 3D easier to "see" (for me anyway).
So much easier that I have it on almost all the time.

The new tactical overlay does not.

I can only seem to get this to work with carriers hire do you manage on other ships