What kind of radar display do you think is best in a space game. the 3-d style of X3, the front and rear style of the x-wing series, or the single 360 degree single circle style of freespace. Or is there any other ideas I should consider?

There's also the kind of frontier: elite II which is kind of cool.

and for other variations, it doesn't necessarily have to be a circle.

I use a rectangular one in my space game:

Radar sweep Sphere. Andromeda displayed stuff like that fairly well for a TV show.


Basically you draw a sphere, or a few of one, place your ship in the center. Draw your radar pips on it, and highlight them by sweeping something around so you can see where things really are in the display sphere.

Include different settings for how far out you are viewing, and an audio cue for things that are getting near and what type they are. (The sound of you about to ram a VLSO (Very large space object) and the sound of a torpedo trying to run up your tailpipe should be different. The closer you are, the more urgent the sounding)

Depends on the game. I generaly don't like haveing to take my eyes off the action to peek at some little radar display off in the screen corner. Rather superimpose it over the entire screen, using the screen edges and different pointer colors to indicate where objects are (red behind me, orange to the side and green somewhere ahead but not on screen. with closer objects haveing bigger pointers and the pointer shape indicateing the object type).

X-Wing was good for it's low usage of screen space but my favorite was the radar in Elite. It was a full 3D perspective of everything in the vicinity and I'm sure it could be improved upon with modern technology (the game was released in 1985).

Radars have always been an issue for me, so I'm glad you ask. More often than not, I find radars to be generally unhelpful, either not giving me enough information (not showing vertical position or not showing a far enough range) or being tucked away where they simply aren't convenient to use.

My suggestion is pretty much Talroth's, but I'll specify a few more details. For one, units should be detectable when they're out of the sphere's range, or the sphere's range should invariably contain the entire level. To accomplish this, you could simply represent the pips on the edge of the sphere when they're out of range, but if the units are below your ship they could clutter the radar. Instead, you could include the entire level by using a non-euclidean sphere sort of thing. That is, the middle of the sphere represents your ship's location, while the edge of the sphere represents infinity, rather than a fixed boundary from the ship, and radar pips will get smaller as they approach infinity. While it doesn't do much to distinguish up from down, but it certainly does a bit to show if a blip that's a couple millimeters from the middle of the sphere is really that close. Now, to resolve the up versus down issue, the pips can be shaded different colors based on which hemisphere they're in, or even create a topographical system for them, but that might cause issues if you're color-coding the blips for other reasons. There are other ways of doing it, but this method is the best I can think of for dealing with the most enemies on the largest maps.

Oh, also, to deal with the radar being uselessly off to the side, you could simply enlarge it and lower its opacity a bit so it wouldn't be obtrusive. Unfortunately, unlike airplane HUDs, you can't have the image perpetually projected over your windshield where you can just change your focus between the HUD and sky while still having a vague idea of both, but perhaps there's a creative workaround for this.

EDIT: MSWs concept looks like it has potential, and to be honest, I think I'd rather have big cues on the edge of the screen than a little radar. Besides, a radar is actually kind of redundant.

Easy toggle key to switch between focus?

One thing to consider is, when dealing with things that are close in, it will usually mean you don't care what is 30 or more seconds away if average combat engagement time is 10 seconds.

When dog fighting, show your radar as the stuff that is close and what you care about. If there is nothing on the radar for you to engage or need to worry about, have it automatically zoom out to give you a large field view.

Also if you want to take your game and go a little above and beyond, design it so it can be configured on multiple screens! I would love it if more games did multiple screens, I actually hauled an old monitor home from school simply because SupCom supported dual monitors.

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Original post by david_watt78 What kind of radar display do you think is best in a space game. the 3-d style of X3, the front and rear style of the x-wing series, or the single 360 degree single circle style of freespace. Or is there any other ideas I should consider?

If you want more intersting play then besides a short range omni-directional display, you also have a directional beam which has limitations about how fast it can be re-aimed so that it requires decisions as to its use.

Longer range or more/special detail, or limited duration ....

Aspects like having it on makes you easier to see/target etc...

Sensor drones which give you a limited targetable coverage...

I think the 3D (X like) radar is more for hardcore gamers (persons that easily understand 3D), the 2D ones (both freespace and xwing) are more casual (because you just know witch direction to turn to face an enemy).
I like the idea to switch between the two modes.
I think the sphere like radar is even more hardcore than the 3D one.
However, in modern games, the radar somehow lost it's usability (see freelancer) because you can add HUD items for all relevant targets (and when offscreen, you can add small pointing arrows).
I am also developing a space sim, and I've opted for 2D freespace like radar, but in 3rd person perspective it was somehow overlapping the 3rd person model so I've removed it and kept it only for the first perspective. I was surprised to see that all the casual gamers who tested it, played the game without problems, most of them didn't noticed the missing radar.