Are they going to improve the steering?

[sal_vager]

Can\'t rendezvous with the navball, like you say it\'s no good for it, instead I end up sighting down my own ship like a gun barrel, it works but it\'s not intuitive.

[Ydoow]

Can\'t rendezvous with the navball, like you say it\'s no good for it, instead I end up sighting down my own ship like a gun barrel, it works but it\'s not intuitive.

It\'s what I do too, but even that becomes horrendously difficult if your ship begins to twist and roll.

Then the \'A\' key will tilt your ship down instead of left, and 5 seconds later the \'A\' key will tilt your ship to the right.

It becomes a giant, horrendous mess at that point.

Don\'t even get me started on the RCS key placement :|

[cardgame]

Remember, the enemy\'s gate is down.

[sal_vager]

I guess you could put a fuel line on the back of the ship going nowhere as a visual marker, so you can see it rolling, I prefer side mounted tanks on my ships so I see straight away if it\'s tilting over, a single fuel line shouldn\'t affect control much.

With RCS I\'d prefer a toggle key near WASD, maybe Alt?

Also, cardgame, that phrase suggests I should approach engines first so the enemy blasters only destroy my now unneeded engine bells

[VincentMcConnell]

Devs don\'t have to improve the steering... You just have to improve your piloting. W pushes the instrumention up. S pushes it down. D to the right and A to the left... Same position as they are on the keyboard. If you roll, well... Expect your instruments to change.

[semininja]

The devs have already stated that (a) display(s) will be added for docking (and potentially other things as well).

[Spoot Knight]

Devs don\'t have to improve the steering... You just have to improve your piloting. W pushes the instrumention up. S pushes it down. D to the right and A to the left... Same position as they are on the keyboard. If you roll, well... Expect your instruments to change.

S is up and W is down by default, assuming the standard flight control model.

[sal_vager]

Devs don\'t have to improve the steering... You just have to improve your piloting. W pushes the instrumention up. S pushes it down. D to the right and A to the left... Same position as they are on the keyboard. If you roll, well... Expect your instruments to change.

Actually D pushes the ball to the left and A to the right, and Q twists the ball clockwise, this doesn\'t make sense until you realize it\'s the orange center point that is supposed to actually be moving, and the ball is reacting to that, it\'s the only way the control inputs can be properly shown on a navaid like this.

[VincentMcConnell]

Actually D pushes the ball to the left and A to the right, and Q twists the ball clockwise, this doesn\'t make sense until you realize it\'s the orange center point that is supposed to actually be moving, and the ball is reacting to that, it\'s the only way the control inputs can be properly shown on a navaid like this.

By instrumentation, I mean the little orange line. If you press D, you see the orange little V go to the right.

[sal_vager]

Well, we do Vincent, and so do a lot of established players as we have trained our selves to see it that way, but someone new to the game sees the orange V remain stationary and the ball turn in a strange way that doesn\'t make a lot of sense at first.

Most people coming to KSP will be used to W being up for example, and it can be hard to unlearn that, I still get it wrong even after over a month playing.

[Misterspork]

Honestly, implementing a system where the camera determines movement would completely destroy attempts at landing, and all orbital maneuvers(Think about trying to turn pro/retrograde with this system, it would be HORRIBLE)

and this system would only make things harder and enforce bad habits in new players, and eventually cause them to leave the game.

[Spoot Knight]

Honestly, implementing a system where the camera determines movement...

To this day (This was brought up in threads from what, October last year?), I still fail to see how this would work in any flight game at all.

[Ydoow]

When it comes to making an approach to another craft in orbit, I want:

\'W\' to tilt my craft towards the TOP of my screen

\'S\' to tilt my craft towards the BOTTOM of my screen

\'A\' to tilt my craft towards the LEFT of my screen

\'D\' to tilt my craft towards the RIGHT of my screen.

I don\'t want this for the whole game. The NavBall suits just perfectly for making orbit and orbital transfers as it is now.

I understand how the navball works, and it\'s absolutely lovely when I need to determine my orientation relative to the body I\'m orbiting. But it tells me nothing about my orientation to the other craft I want to cuddle.

The problem becomes that we need visual acknowledgement of speed and 3D positioning to the second craft, which takes our eyes off of the NavBall.

I already use the NavBall to line up my craft with the second craft, but once I start having to make adjustments and movements, all eyes are off the NavBall.

Even if I had time to look at the NavBall, I\'ve twisted and turned so much the information it provides me takes a good 5 seconds to decipher in terms of relativity to Kerbin, and then my relativity to the second craft.

[semininja]

I think you misunderstand why W and S are set to their respective positions; they are set the way they are for a reason.

When your rocket is at the launchpad and you haven\'t moved the camera (in other words, when you\'re looking at the \'front\' of the rocket), W will push the nose of the rocket away from you, and S will pull it toward you.

Does it make more sense now?

[Nibb31]

When it comes to making an approach to another craft in orbit, I want:

\'W\' to tilt my craft towards the TOP of my screen

\'S\' to tilt my craft towards the BOTTOM of my screen

\'A\' to tilt my craft towards the LEFT of my screen

\'D\' to tilt my craft towards the RIGHT of my screen.

I don\'t want this for the whole game. The NavBall suits just perfectly for making orbit and orbital transfers as it is now.

I understand how the navball works, and it\'s absolutely lovely when I need to determine my orientation relative to the body I\'m orbiting. But it tells me nothing about my orientation to the other craft I want to cuddle.

It does, but you have to set your roll attitude first. If you roll to have a horizontal horizon, the craft will behave exactly as you describe above.

Roll is just as important as pitch and yaw when it comes to docking.

The problem becomes that we need visual acknowledgement of speed and 3D positioning to the second craft, which takes our eyes off of the NavBall.

I already use the NavBall to line up my craft with the second craft, but once I start having to make adjustments and movements, all eyes are off the NavBall.

Even if I had time to look at the NavBall, I\'ve twisted and turned so much the information it provides me takes a good 5 seconds to decipher in terms of relativity to Kerbin, and then my relativity to the second craft.

What we really need is a docking camera with distance, alignment and speed information on the HUD, like this.

[SteevyT]

Most people coming to KSP will be used to W being up for example, and it can be hard to unlearn that, I still get it wrong even after over a month playing.

Wait, what? Any flight game I played always had w meaning to pitch down and s to pitch up.

[sal_vager]

Yeah I wasn\'t talking about flight sims, they are a dying breed

Most people will be familiar with other games where W is up or forwards, and I always got funny looks from people at lan parties when they saw I had reversed my Y axis in first person shooters.

W to pitch down only really makes sense when in the cockpit of the vehicle or in a chase view right behind it, and also in KSP when launching and the rocket is pointing straight up and facing you, even when looking at the navball W and S work different to A and D but I\'m used to it now (mostly)

What does become annoying is I and K, they really should be reversed but if I remap them the cart drives backwards

[boolybooly]

I get where you are coming from Ydoow and agree. I had a couple of ideas.

We were trying to figure out how to make it easier to steer a KSP rocket.

I was thinking red+green navigation lights would be good. Then I thought perhaps you could exaggerate that kind of visual cue using an HUD overlay showing translucent circles drawn around the ship, outer circle indicating frame of reference ie compass points and horizon/ecliptic, inner circles showing ship orientation, in effect turning the ship into a navball.

If you took that a step further you could try locking the WASD controls relative to the outer circle representing the frame of reference so no matter how much your rocket spins, when you press D in the atmosphere it steers east. Then you would be free to move your camera, but you would need two more keys for up and down, at which point imho use number pad instead of WASD.

If you fix WASD to the camera on the other hand it might work but you would have to move the camera to operate the ship, when it was aligned parallel to the screen you would need to shift your POV 90° unless you had those two extra keys again, in this context for in and out of screen, just thinking out loud there.

[Bluejayek]

There is really a lot of snobism in this thread. 'I learned to use these controls, therefore you can and are just a noob for not being able to control your ship!' (Paraphrased). This really shouldn\'t be the way we welcome new players if we want KSP to grow.

The truth is, for many purposes the current navigation system is inadequate, or at least can be improved. It is very good for reaching orbit, and orbit changes, but it is no good for rendevous, as people have mentioned. Something needs to be added to make this easier especially with proper docking coming soon.

[SteevyT]

The truth is, for many purposes the current navigation system is inadequate, or at least can be improved. It is very good for reaching orbit, and orbit changes, but it is no good for rendevous, as people have mentioned. Something needs to be added to make this easier especially with proper docking coming soon.

About the best way to make docking possible seems to be to do exactly what NASA did. Have a docking cam with a reticule you line up with your target, and distance and relative velocity readouts.

[sal_vager]

Is there anything official on how we can stop the target craft from rotating while we are trying to dock? I don\'t want to have to rely on mechjebs nailed on the side of all my rockets.

[Randox]

A thought. Something that might be nice is a way to lock the camera to the rockets orientation. I fly by navball, but sometimes I have trouble orienting in my head the navball to say the Mun. I always use the black command pod from NovaPunch because it actually has an 'up' marking on it, which allows me to orient the camera to my rocket properly (or I\'ll use an RCS burst). Might make people dizzy during a spin though.

I could also go for a camera with full rotation. The current one seems to operate in an arbitrary half sphere, and I like to be able to see whatever I am aiming at (I have had to do the initial approach to the Mun several times by instrument only, because the camera was refusing to find it).

[boolybooly]

The final piece of the jigsaw for me was understanding that the navball attitude gradations are the frame of reference. So 90° is always east for example and prograde on the ecliptic, that is how I navigate to Mün orbit today, just steer east and check the map for Mün location and burn for apoapsis 60° ahead of the Mün.

Locking camera to craft would IMHO work for space/air planes and carts in atmospheres or on or close to terrain but not rockets navigating the ecliptic so much where,like you say, I want the freedom of movement to look from any point of view, especially directly from behind to see where the ship is pointed / going. Stopping the camera at that point and also the view from directly ahead just doesnt work for me.

[cardgame]

A thought. Something that might be nice is a way to lock the camera to the rockets orientation. I fly by navball, but sometimes I have trouble orienting in my head the navball to say the Mun. I always use the black command pod from NovaPunch because it actually has an 'up' marking on it, which allows me to orient the camera to my rocket properly (or I\'ll use an RCS burst). Might make people dizzy during a spin though.

I could also go for a camera with full rotation. The current one seems to operate in an arbitrary half sphere, and I like to be able to see whatever I am aiming at (I have had to do the initial approach to the Mun several times by instrument only, because the camera was refusing to find it).

If these are toggle-able like the current camera modes I am in full support of them ;D

[boolybooly]

Exactly and why wouldnt they be? If the devs do develope new navigation and control modes surely they can add to existing modes and not replace them, so noone loses, everyone is happy, what could possibly go wrong with that ?