I have overhauled the framebuffer code, and now it can update the screen considerably quicker. So quick in fact that it's faster than the screen actually displays. I was thinking a parallel connected screen would be needed, but not now.
It has also given me more processing time to do other things, like support hundreds of aliens, fancy colour changing blobs, etc.
You'll probably have noticed the distance display is just text pasted over the background image ;) I have new custom background images on the way at different rotations, so when I have those I can start working on the rotation ability, and also look at better numbers (probably bitmap graphics) for the distance display.