The first world map was a placeholder picture. On September 11 it became a live overhead render of the real playable area, then 512 by 512 meters, with pan, zoom, rotation, waypoints and markers taken from actual ore deposits.
A live map costs rendering work, so it redraws at most ten times a second while moving, twice a second when idle and not at all when closed. A temporary test object placed in the world confirmed that the map really follows changes rather than showing a stored picture.
The honest result was a little uncomfortable. Styled after a concept image, the map instead revealed a flat, brown, sparsely planted area that looked nothing like the concept. That is what a live map is for. Drag jitter reported afterwards, and empty categories with nothing in them, were left for later passes. There is no fast travel or exploration system behind the map yet.
