TL;DR
Remote View loses meaningful screen real-estate to the left sidebar (Surfaces/Platforms), easily remedied by having the sidebar be collabsible (like a - button that becomes a + when collapsed).What?
Remote View is amazing! And in Space Age, we're spending a ton of time in it. So much time, that we might be playing for hours bouncing between remote views and not even moving our character.Playing on a smaller screen, the lost real-estate from the "Surfaces" sidebar has been bothering me. It would be one thing if Remote View was a more limited feature. But it genuinely feels like a primary way to play the game. Space, for example, is 100% Remote View.
Here's a look at my screen:
- A view of the UI on my macbook pro screen
- Factorio Remote View Screenshot.png (12.11 MiB) Viewed 304 times
My suggested proposal is to have a - right next to the "Surfaces" (or maybe a triangle pointed down). When you click -, under "Surfaces" should then only be the active surface, like
- Screenshot 2024-11-11 at 9.11.32 PM.png (10.62 KiB) Viewed 304 times
Why?
Remote View is a primary view. But it feels worse (for me) after many hours of switching back and forth from standard view and Remote View. On a laptop in particular, it feels like I lose important screen real-estate. The lost real-estate feels unnecessary because much of the time, I don't need any of it: the arrow keys allow navigation between all the views. Only the active surface being shown is relevant much of the time. A collapsible menu would allow seamless, focused gameplay, and still support quick surface switching via the arrow keys. For players wanting the sidebar, they would only now have a very small icon next to "Surfaces". That would be the only impact.Because we can have many Platforms, we also lose more real-estate over time.
For laptop players (me), this would be a meaningful change.
