Counter-Strike recently celebrated its 19th birthday, a big number for an esports title. Of course, the game has seen various iterations since the original version, but the concept has remained similar throughout the years.

The CS GO developers had a surprise waiting for the community as they released the Beta enrollment program for the Panorama UI. This comes as big news, especially since the community and players alike have been waiting for further information about Panorama UI for a very long time.

Pre-release notes for today are up. We’ve shipped Panorama into CS:GO’s beta branch “Panorama UI Preview”. Full details: https://t.co/9ZHai4wO0R pic.twitter.com/JwqOIQ8OEi — CS:GO (@csgo_dev) June 19, 2018

Important Points about testing the Panorama UI

It is only available to Windows users right now

It only supports Practice with Bots and no public matchmaking currently. [ This has been updated to include matchmaking]

Valve is looking for feedback on the UI.

Panorama UI released on August 1st [edit]

You can also test it out with friends currently. The Panorama UI has been in development for over two years now. The initial release was scheduled for 2017, but it seems we are in line for a more mid-2018 launch.

The Panorama UI makes the game look cleaner and there is a visible performance enhancement when it comes to playing on the beta version. Of course, the beta only allows you to play with bots and as such requires a local server. The true test for the UI will be when public matchmaking becomes available.

How to opt into the Beta Program

If you want to test out the new Panorama UI, which we are sure you want to, check out the steps below.

Open the Steam client and navigate to your LIBRARY. Right-click on CS :GO and select ‘Properties’. Click on the BETAS tab. Select the beta you would like to opt into through the drop-down box. You will be prompted to restart your client. After restarting, launch CS :GO to play the game with its Beta changes.



Notably, this is the second Valve game to get the Panorama treatment. Valve has already updated Dota 2 with the Panorama update. Valve is notorious for the delay in pushing out new updates. So it will be interesting to see how things move forth from here. The full version for the update is not released yet and it will take some time. Meanwhile, the developers are looking for valuable and constructive feedback on the Panorama UI.

You will have to opt-out of the beta program in order to be able to play Public matchmaking once again. We leave you with a few screenshots from within the game.

There are still Problems with the New UI

However, everything is not perfect when it comes to the new Panorama UI. There are several bugs ( which is expected from the beta version). However, many fundamental features still feel similar to the previous UI.

The Demo UI does not seem to have much of an improvement. The lackluster Demo UI in the stable version of the game is troubling for players and professionals alike. Valve has improved the Demo UI, it now features a tick rate of 64 ticks. This is a big improvement, but there is much more that needs to be done. For a premier game like Counter Strike, it is important for the UI and the overall feel to keep up with the times.

The new UI also does not completely fix the Alt-Tab Problem. However, it has significantly improved the time delay while pressing Alt-Tab. When a player wants to switch out to the desktop or another application, it takes an inordinately long amount of time in the stable version of the game. The Panorama UI does improve tremendously upon the previous times, but it’s not perfect.

The UI is still in the beta version and there will be improvements as we come nearer to the final release. We hope Valve is able to address some of these crucial features.

Sources:

Opt-in to Beta

Valve announcement