How do they intend to improve the legibility of UI elements that tend to sit over the environment, which can be very glaring, making the UI hard or even impossible to read?
TL;DRThey're exploring dynamically adjusting UI brightness to the environment, tinting in-world display glass, and possibly frosted-glass effects or subtle shadows, but this is unfinished and they'll concept options before committing.
They're looking at a few in-world solutions. The obvious thing to do is to add a drop-shadow to the UI or just make it black, but that somewhat destroys the aesthetic of it. So what they're looking at, which they started looking at with the Gladius but isn't finished yet, is having a system where it's contextually and dynamically reading the brightness of the environment and adjusting the brightness of the UI in response to that. Additionally, to make sure the HUDs look like they exist in-world, they want them displayed on actual geometry to ground it, and they can leverage that to maybe dynamically tint the geometry that the UI is on, as well as then brightning the UI if needs be (depending on the environmental conditions). This solution is ideal because of being in-world (and thus not hindering immersion) but also because it leverages the in-game elements, making it more convincing. Jared asks for clarification, and Zane specifies that it'd involve tinting the physical glass pane but then also brighting the UI, like if you have your phone on automatic brightness and go outside into the sunlight, it'll auto-adjust to make it more readable (This is a thing?! My phone must be old). He adds that it's also an issue with the eye adaptation feature (where the Player's "eyes" adjust depending on how bright it is), because the UI becomes dim when you're on a planet during the daytime, as compared to being lit by the sun in space. They could potentially also have some sort of effect in the UI rendering tech, such as a blurred frosted glass effect, that could help with readability (particularly for the visor HUD in your helmet), and the same is true for busy backgrounds and not just bright ones. Regarding a potential back-shadow, or a black highlight around the words and numbers on the UI (as often suggested by backers) it's definitely something they can consider but it'll depend on how subtle it can or can't be to work, because that might not fit with the aesthetic they're aiming for, which would therefore require them looking for a different solution. Simon adds that as with a lot of the UI, they'll concept different ideas to figure out which is the best way to solve the problem, before committing to implement something.