How to Improve selectability of branches? Increase angle in un-rooted view?

[corneliusroemer]

Context
When browsing the SC2 tree for interesting phylogenetic developments, I often try to see what mutations occur on a branch. Unfortunately, it's often very difficult to select the correct branch by mouse, since the branch density is very high on SC2 trees. As a user, I'd like it to be easier to distinguish branches visually. There should be a better way.

Description
I would like us to think about ways to increase the visual distance between branches to make browsing UX friendlier.

I've recently discovered, that unrooted view has currently the best separation of branches. However, the distance could still be improved by increasing the angle at which branches shoot off. Maybe this value could be set manually? When I browse, I can set angle to a higher value than default?

Examples This is how the unrooted tree looks like at the moment, it seems like the angle could be increased to make the user's life easier, in other words: there is a lot of wasted screen real estate that's just white screen.

[corneliusroemer]

Actually, the combination of time (removes large distance outliers) and unrooted is good. Not sure whether it's easy to do any better.