An unselected satellite was a four-pixel dot with a one-pixel white edge, and
the basemap decides whether that is visible at all: a pale marker vanishes into
pale terrain, a grey one into a dark ocean, and the operator can switch between
the two in one session. So: a dark halo under a white ring around a larger dot.
Two rings, because no single colour reads on both.
The ones above the horizon now carry their name. Not all of them — a dozen
labels is a map nobody can read — but the two or three an operator is choosing
between right now, which is what saves hovering each grey dot in turn to find
them.
Hovering said "name · elevation · altitude", none of which decides anything.
What decides whether to reach for the radio is how long is left, how high it
will get and where to point, so the tooltip now carries the pass: elevation and
azimuth with its compass point, distance with an arrow for closing or receding,
rise and set with a countdown and a direction, and the peak. A bird already in
view shows its SET countdown instead of its rise — that is the number that
matters at that moment. No pass in the window says so, because a blank reads as
a fault. It costs no extra prediction: the pass list on screen is indexed by
name, and the first entry for a name is its next pass.
The tooltip also had to stop closing itself. The layer is rebuilt every five
seconds as the birds move, and a rebuilt marker is a new marker, so the detail
being read disappeared mid-sentence. The map now tracks the pointer and reopens
the tooltip of the dot it is still on — that one only, so nothing hangs open
once the mouse has moved away.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
rouggyandClaude Opus 5
543550c716