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And here’s a fascinating Wing Commander I behind-the-screens story I had never heard from Denis Loubet! We alluded to this in our big post about how radar works, but never reported on the original anecdote:
LOAF: Is there anything more thrilling than the Wing Commander I box art? Despite the claim that “what you see is what you play” it’s not a screenshot but a digital piece carefully composed by the incomparable Denis Loubet!Loubet: I invented the radar display as a super-quick way to know which direction to turn to bring a target into view! I think it worked really well.
LOAF: Wow, I had no idea! It felt so natural to me, I could never go back to the Elite-style radar.
Loubet: I had to do some fast-talking to get it in the cockpits! I’m glad I did!
The idea sprang from an idea I had for a flat 360 degree display, where the image got more and more compressed and distorted toward the screen edges until the edge pixels were all directly behind you.
It sort of simulated peripheral vision, where the motion of pixels near the edge of the screen let you know which direction to turn to bring whatever it is into view.
The evolution of the radar display!
