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Additional SAS functionality relating to stability assist


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The way stability assist seems to work at the moment is it holds your position based on some universal plane; while this is great for orbiting celestial bodies, it is a pain in the atmosphere.

I suggest changing the plane of reference when surface mode is engaged to lock onto the current angle and orientation of the navball. If you wish to hold 20° vertically while travelling east, face east and aim at 20° then engage stability assist in surface mode. When the navball is changed to orbital mode then change the plane of reference back to its normal behavior (the way stability assist works now).

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What you're saying is you want the 'stability assist' in surface mode to keep true to your flight path, instead of to your attitude in a straight line (not taking in account the surface curvature)?

Right now, SAS in surface mode will fly a straight line when you set it to Stability Assist, however, the ground underneath you isn't straight but it's curved. So if you want to keep a constant vertical speed, you'd need to keep pitching down to correct for that surface curvature. The effect isn't really that pronounced at low speeds, but if you're going really fast (approaching orbital speeds or even beyond that) you'd need to correct for it.

I never understood the current SAS modes in the 'surface' and 'target' navball modes anyway. Most of the time they serve no purpose -- the only modes that are useful are prograde (forward) and retrograde (reverse). Normal and radial (left, right, up, down) modes make no sense when flying across the surface because they will cause you to chase your own flight vector perpendicular to your flight path, which is a good way to start flying in circles.

More sensible, context-sensitive SAS modes would be a good idea. Stab assist, Maneuver, Pro/Retro and Target modes would still make sense, but for example, in Surface mode, a 'Wings Level' mode would be useful to keep flying straight, just as much as a 'Zero vertical speed' (prograde vector on the horizon) would let you maintain altitude easily regardless of speed or heading changes.

For 'Target' modes, a mode to align the ship's nose with the target's orientation would be very useful for docking. A 'Track' mode could project a vector which would send the ship straight for the target when thrust is applied, if the player is in the ideal position for a Hohmann transfer, this 'Track' vector would coincide with prograde.

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10 hours ago, Stoney3K said:

What you're saying is you want the 'stability assist' in surface mode to keep true to your flight path, instead of to your attitude in a straight line (not taking in account the surface curvature)?

Basically yes. The desired behavior is that once stability assist has been engaged in surface mode your attitude stays locked to a single position on the navball. It may not be necessary to take surface curvature directly into account as you could just keep a certain angle and orientation on the navball, however if you did this whenever you approached a planets pole your vessel would get very confused and probably fall out of the sky.

 

10 hours ago, Stoney3K said:

More sensible, context-sensitive SAS modes would be a good idea. Stab assist, Maneuver, Pro/Retro and Target modes would still make sense, but for example, in Surface mode, a 'Wings Level' mode would be useful to keep flying straight, just as much as a 'Zero vertical speed' (prograde vector on the horizon) would let you maintain altitude easily regardless of speed or heading changes.

For 'Target' modes, a mode to align the ship's nose with the target's orientation would be very useful for docking. A 'Track' mode could project a vector which would send the ship straight for the target when thrust is applied, if the player is in the ideal position for a Hohmann transfer, this 'Track' vector would coincide with prograde.

I very much like the idea of context-sensitive SAS functions and it is something I had not considered. Although a zero vertical speed mode would be very helpful for a vessel staying in the atmosphere it would not be useful for things like SSTO's; they would need an additional mode, such as the one I proposed at the top of this thread, in order to hold a desired angle out of the atmosphere. That is not to say that I think a zero vertical speed mode isn't useful, I would find it a very nice addition.

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