Commander view

Commander view is a screen available only to a team's commander in certain Battlefield games. It appears in place of the squad screen while the commander is alive.

Elements
Commander view gives a pseudo-satellite view of the map, along with regions that are marked off-limits to ground and air forces. From here, the commander can use special tools to alter the flow of battle. The map functions like a regular soldier's Map view, but with an additional real-time view that can show a small region of the battlefield.

Spotting
The commander can spot any enemy on the battlefield, even those inside buildings or cloaked. Like regular spotting, the markers will briefly track the enemy.

These spotting benefits do not apply to a commander's first-person view.

Assets
At the bottom of the screen, commander resources are given their own button and two meters indicating their health and cooldown status. Supply drops, which cannot be disabled by the enemy, do not have a health meter.

Pressing a button will bring up a targeting reticule for the asset. Primary fire will deploy the asset; secondary fire will cancel the action.

Squads
A shelvable squad screen appears in the upper left corner. Hovering the cursor over a squad shows its members, their kits, and any vehicle they may be occupying as icons.

Clicking on a squad or pressing the number keys on a keyboard selects a squad for issuing orders, and shows their current objective as an icon and a line between the squad leader and the objective location. A star icon appears for commander orders, and disappears when the squad leader accepts, rejects, or ignores the order.

Special icons appear when a squad leader requests orders (question mark) or assets (icon for asset).

Commander view in Battlefield games
The commander role and view first appear in Battlefield 2, and functions the same in Battlefield 2142.

Trivia

 * A commander can use spotting to quickly check an unwatched area for enemy presence.
 * It may be difficult to place orders or assets at the boundary of a map, or near the squad and text chat areas. Zooming in with the mouse scroll wheel helps with this issue.
 * The in-game camera used for real-time view is actually located some distance above ground, making it impossible to see air vehicles above this level. These vehicles can still be spotted.
 * The real-time camera may "pedestal" up and down in response to tall buildings on a map. Such movement is not possible with an actual satellite view, which is effectively locked into a certain orbital altitude, and cannot move without expending valuable and limited impulse thrusters.