Traveling across a 'beach' sector reveals all 'ocean' sectors to the left of it. As the player character travels, the sectors visited appear bright, while the sectors in the immediate vicinity of the ones visited appear dark. In the beginning of each game, the world map starts completely black except for the starting sector. A common feature on the world map screen are the indicators for current time, date, and year, as well as a list of special locations already visited, clicking on which automatically changes the player character's course to that location. In Fallout 2, the player character may be given a description of the encounter and the opportunity to avoid it, the probability of which is determined by their Outdoorsman skill. If the roll is successful, the player character gets forced to leave the world map screen to face the situation. The player character's speed may be increased by possessing the Pathfinder perk, or in Fallout 2, driving a Highwayman.ДЄbout every 24 hours of travel, the game 'rolls' a check for random encounters. 'Mountains' are the slowest, and 'ocean' sectors are impossible to travel across. 'Desert' and 'ruins' sectors are the fastest to travel across. Travel speed across the world map is determined by the sectors it's comprised of. In Fallout Tactics, the player character's location is marked by radiation trefoil, and no tracing is available.

The length of these lines indicate the player character's speed - the longer they are, the more time it takes them to travel through that particular sector. In Fallout and Fallout 2, the player character's location is marked by a red cross icon, and the path is traced by line strokes. To move the player character across the map, they have to click at any area they not currently at.

When stationary, the player character's location is marked by an icon in an inverse pyramid, clicking on which takes them to the location they are currently at, which does not have to be a specially designated location - the player character can make stops anywhere on the map to perform actions such as exchanging or selling equipment, changing or reloading weapons, or administering drugs to themself or one of their companions. In Fallout Tactics there is a total of 26 locations and 29 random encounters. In Fallout 2 there is a total of 21 locations. In Fallout there is a total of 12 locations. When they leave a location with intent to travel to another one, they are presented with the world map. The world map's primary function is to enable navigation for the player character's travels. In Fallout, Fallout 2 and Fallout Tactics, the world map is a top-down view of the landscape, divided into a matrix of square-shaped, equally sized sectors.

New vegas world map