Space is Just a Bunch of Rooms? Let's Fix the Skybox Navigation with an AR Overlay!

EVE Technology and Research Center Player Features & Ideas
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Hello, fellow capsuleers!

I’ve been thinking a lot about how we perceive the universe in EVE Online. For veterans, navigating New Eden is second nature. But for newcomers and mid-level players, the vast cosmos often doesn’t feel like a continuous galaxy. Instead, it frequently feels like a series of isolated rooms connected by stargate portals.

Right now, the beautiful skybox is mostly static. To understand where we are, we have to constantly stare at flat 2D/3D maps (like the in-game Map or Dotlan). This disengages our natural spatial reasoning. As elite pilots plugged into advanced neural interfaces, our ships’ sensors should be projecting critical data directly onto the space around us.

I propose introducing an Optional Augmented Reality Skybox Overlay that visualizes data normally invisible to the naked eye. This would transform the background from a pretty wallpaper into a functional navigation tool.

How It Could Work (Examples):

  1. True Spatial Awareness: Players would look out of their headers and immediately realize: “That bright cluster over there is the safe trade zone, and that dark, flickering nebula is dangerous null-sec.”
  2. Curing the “Room-by-Room” Syndrome: It visually connects systems together, making the galaxy feel like one massive, living, breathing ecosystem rather than isolated bubbles.
  3. Lore-Friendly Immersion: Capsuleer AI interfaces are supposed to be the most advanced in the galaxy. Projecting tactical and economic heatmaps onto the cockpit view perfectly fits the lore.

Crucial Note: 100% Optional

To protect the preferences of purists and veterans who prefer a clean, cinematic view, this should be a toggleable feature (e.g., “Enable Tactical AR Skybox Layer” in the graphics settings).

What do you think? Would a visual, spatial representation of the map directly in the skybox help you feel more connected to the scale of EVE? Let’s discuss!

UPD: The prototype - Starframe.

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Have you ever noticed how your route through space is projected on the skybox as lines between the real locations of the neighbouring stars, seemingly forming constellations in space?

All the stars in your region are visible there.

If you pay enough attention this detail of direction can even tell you which system a capital ship just jumped to, simply by knowing which star on the skybox their ship disappeared towards.

Have you ever noticed how nebulae you see in space get closer or further away depending on the region you’re in? Some regions are even surroundedby nebulae, while others can see the nebula from a distance.

EVE has a strong sense of direction in 3D, it just can take some time to notice it.

P.S.: Please stop with the AI posts.

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Eve Online Nebula Map

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DMC
o7

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know idea what you said , but the post was a great come-back to the AI whinnying …

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Translation

You can do without AI. It’s even more convenient for me that way.

I had guesses about the nebulae. But even with that knowledge it doesn’t help to get oriented.

The route looks nice in the background, but it also doesn’t help you feel where you are. Where north is and where south is.

These are good features, but more is needed. So that it feels like moving through an open world, like Elden Ring. You see a castle in the distance and understand how to get to it.

DMC
o7

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While I agree castles are cool (I’m a big fan of anything machicolated), I’m not quite sure it’s a great fit for EVE aesthetically.

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Even if you could see a ‘castle in the sky’ in EVE, you wouldn’t know how to get there unless you could find the castle on the map.

You cannot simply burn that direction, or even warp there.

EVE has three methods of travel where only the slowest method (burning with AB/MWD) allows you full freedom to fly in the direction you want, but it is insufficient to get anywhere distant and is only practical for distances of up to a few hundred or thousand km. Warping is significantly faster but requires you to lock on to a location in the system to warp to, and yet even that is insufficient to travel to a star or nebula you see on the skybox. It would take hours to travel to a neighbouring star at warp speed, if it were possible at all, which isn’t practical either.

To get to other solar systems you see on your skybox you need a third method of travel, at an even larger scale. And you need to know which system that is. And unless you have a ship with a jump drive and a cyno in that system, you also need to know how your system is connected to that other system, in a web of jump gates between neighbouring star systems.

In other words, you cannot simply ‘fly north’ at the small scale to get to a location you see north of you on the skybox, even if you could see where north is and what’s there north of you.

(And fun fact, you can tell which side is north and what is north of you, because routes and nebulae are visible on your skybox.)

You would have to find a route first. Then you need to warp to the next star gate on that route, which could be south of you, jump through, then warp west for the next star gate, jump, warp south for the next star gate, jump, warp north east, jump, warp south again, jump and then finally arrive at your destination north of where you started.

Does that sound unintuitive?

Sure does, if you do not yet have a feeling for how EVE travel works.

Solar systems are light years apart, you cannot cross that with a mere warp drive so you need a jump drive or use connected jump gates.

Within those solar systems you can find the jump gates in any location around the sun, with no correlation between location of the jump gate and it’s destination.

Take for example my home system, UALX-3:

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Top-side view of UALX-3 system zoomed in and star gate locations visible, with New Eden in background. North is up/forward

Connected by a jump gate in the west to Y-ORBJ, which is in the south east.
Connected by a jump gate in the east to 3L3N-X, which is in the south west.
Connected by another jump gate in the east to DT-PXH, which is north west.

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Top down zoomed out view of UALX-3, showing only connections. North is up

No relation to travel directions of jump gates and their locations within a solar system means you cannot feel like you’re traveling north by taking only northern gates, and your idea doesn’t go up.

I wouldn’t mind if FCCP made the skybox even more dynamic so you see shifts in skybox and nebulae even within a region, but that’s a big thing to ask.

But the thing you’re asking for just doesn’t work in EVE, because you cannot feel like you’re traveling north in the small solar system scale when you travel north in the large regional scale because the two don’t line up.

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I do however like your idea of an option to project map data on the skybox.

You have my support!

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Well, in this game, every star really is like a separate location, although i was also puzzled by the question of, for example, where in space Jita is when i’ m in Ammar. I determined where it is using a direction finder, i set a narrow scanning range on it and turned on the galaxy map, then by rotating the camera and simultaneously looking at the map and space, i by observing the change in the position of the cone around the ship’s axis and the change in view around the ship, determined the approximate location of Jita from my home system. And after that, i set north-south, east-west foe myself.
What interests me more is, have you noticed that the space around you consists of squares, well yes, hence probably the name “skybox” - a celestial box. It would have been a nice addition if the “skybox” hat turned into a fully visual and extensive space.

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what this guy wants… is the visual real time graphic that you get in Elite Dangerous…

never going to happen.

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I realize that navigation in EVE is incredibly complex. Everything you described is a genuine issue, and I think it’s solvable, though I’m afraid we’re drifting off-topic a bit. What I’d really like is a sense of place—to be able to look around and say, “I’m in the middle of nowhere, but right next to the Tiger constellation,” and actually see the silhouette of a tiger on the skybox.

That’s another idea for refreshing the skybox. Here on Earth, we have constellations—2D images representing animals or legendary heroes. We could do something similar in EVE; I know the constellations would be different, but I think the concept fits well.

We could come up with a visual motif for each EVE constellation, turn it into a 3D silhouette, and project it onto the skybox—showing only the nearest ones. The silhouette would look different depending on your viewing angle.

It also reminds me of the Astronomican from Warhammer 40k—a navigational beacon. We could introduce something like that to EVE, specifically on a visual level. We could design beacons; real space has pulsars, which serve as excellent beacons, but we could create artificial ones too.

Getting back to the navigation issue: this might be a superficial observation, but I have a strong feeling that the stargate map doesn’t reflect the actual logic of how they would have been built based on the economic structure of the ancient society.

What would building stargates look like in reality? We’d start on Earth, fly to the nearest star, and build a gate. Then we’d fly to the next star and build another, and so on. Eventually, economic hubs would emerge and build “trunk-line” gates that duplicate the old routes—much like our highway systems. But I don’t see that in EVE. The developers likely didn’t consider this when they created the system, and there’s very little chance it will change. Which is a shame.

P.S.: I can’t do without AI after all. If I continue writing in my native language, it will be less convenient for all the readers. Please forgive me for this.

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We already have navigational markers, the nebulae.

Having an “AR overlay” of constellations, regions, systems etc is nowhere near as helpful as you imagine it would be, because like you put it in the title, space is a bunch of rooms, and the stargates that connect them are located randomly in a system. A gate that connects to a system up-north-west from the one you’re in could actually be in the down-south-east of a system, and as you move around your camera will swing to all sorts of directions. Try setting a path to a system far away from you, you’ll see lines in space connecting various stars, but odds are they’ll form a weird and unhelpful shape. When you move through a system, you’re rarely travelling further than 50AU. Systems though will be several lightyears apart. That’s several thousand times as far. The human mind needs parallax to perceive motion on a screen, but any navigational marker in another area large enough to be reasonably visible in one system is so far away that even in a travelceptor you wouldn’t notice any relative motion.

Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space

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The problem with constellations is that most constellations in EVE have random names and also look different from every angle. So even if you could see where those stars are on your skybox (which you can when your route is set), you wouldn’t recognize them as the ‘Tiger constellation’.

Constellations as we know them on Earth only work from our perspective on Earth.

It doesn’t work when the stars making up the constellation are the nearest stars you see, and travel past them and see the same cluster of stars from all different directions while you play.

There would be no sense of familiarity.

We have artificial navigational beacons in EVE too!

Cynosural beacons are seen far through space, visible on the map and are what allows ships with jump drives to jump directly to another system where the cyno is in.

This brings up a fun idea:

What if we could see current non-covert cynosural beacons lit in the skybox?

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love the ida like your realy in the ship miny d scan with alarm , mouse it to inlarge,

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I’m working on a prototype. ChatGPT is putting up a massive fight, and I’ve completely burned through all my tokens. But I’m holding the line. Just a little longer—maybe a week or two. It might actually turn out beautiful.

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I was just thinking - AR could actually be sold like skins in free-to-play games. :grin:

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The prototype is ready - Starframe.

Key features:

  • You can jump between star systems
  • Glyphs of nearby constellations are displayed in the sky (the proximity calculation algorithm isn’t perfect)
  • Ship jumps within a star system are displayed
  • Ship explosions in other star systems are displayed (you can fly to them and see more details)

The source code is open; I invite everyone to experiment.

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AI is garbage and your prototype is built on a foundation of trash. Get that weak mess out of here.

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Don’t worry, this isn’t for you.