The briefing room learns to read the room: mission text sized to fit, and to be read

2026-08-01FEATURE COCKPIT

The briefing room learns to read the room: mission text sized to fit, and to be read d570d06

The Mission 1 briefing screen with the description text now set substantially larger — the full brief fills the panel in clear green phosphor type above the PRESS ENTER TO FLY bar

The mission briefing is the last thing you read before the catapult fires — and it was set in fixed 15-pixel type on a canvas the browser then stretches to fill the screen. On a desktop monitor that was genuinely hard to read, and the complaint was justified.

The type now sizes itself to the window and the length of the brief. Short briefs — the early training hops — read large; the marathon twenty-five-line strike packages shrink just enough to fit, and nothing ever renders smaller than the old fixed size. At a common desktop resolution the Mission 1 brief is up by a third; short briefs on a big monitor gain over half.

Mission 1 briefing as it was — fixed 15-pixel type floating small in the panel — Before — fixed 15px, whatever the window.

Mission 1 briefing now — type sized up to fill the panel — After — the same brief, sized to read.

The Amiga original kept its briefs terse enough that one size fit all. Hornet Bay’s longest run to twenty-five lines of waypoints, tankers and radio calls — the type now works for the brief instead of against it. Eyes on the text, then eyes on the sky.