EVA Tutorial

[carlorizzante]

I tried few EVAs in the past days, and I've never been able to get back to the ship. It got quickly frustrating and I was hopelessly lost in space... :'(

There is any tutorial that explains how to properly navigate while in EVA? I searched here on the forum and found none. I found some on YouTube so I'm starting from there.

If you have any advise about how to EVA, however, I'll be grateful if you'd like to share

[Snark]

2 hours ago, carlorizzante said:

I tried few EVAs in the past days, and I've never been able to get back to the ship. It got quickly frustrating and I was hopelessly lost in space... :'(

There is any tutorial that explains how to properly navigate while in EVA? I searched here on the forum and found none. I found some on YouTube so I'm starting from there.

If you have any advise about how to EVA, however, I'll be grateful if you'd like to share

The main thing to keep in mind on EVA is, be gentle.  Seriously, baby-touch gentle.  Unless you're a pro at it, you never ever want to be drifting more than a few centimeters per second.  Slow slow slow.

If you want to go forward, up, down, left, right:  just tap the thruster.  The quickest, lightest tap you can manage.  If one tap's not enough, you can tap again as needed.  But tiny taps only, and don't get going fast.

As long as you go really really slowly, and use very light taps on the EVA thrusters, it's pretty easy to manage.

That said:  it's hard to give more specific advice without knowing just what kind of difficulty you're running into. an you describe in a bit more detail just what you're running into?  What's the "bad thing" that's happening (or failing to happen) that's frustrating you, exactly?

[marcushouse]

Yep. It can be a bit tricky. I've just done up a video showing EVA's in rescue missions. Interested to know if this helps you at all. You want to first hit the R key to enable RCS, then point your mouse in the direction you want to go. Then you use WASD keys with Shift & Ctrl... As stated by others, just little tiny bursts.

 

[carlorizzante]

Hej, thank you for the tips and for your feedback. I guess that EVA just takes practice, yesterday I gave it a go once again, and I finally managed to get back to the ship.

The most frustrating thing while in EVA for me is orientation. I don't exactly get how to face a specific part of the ship, it seems that changing the camera affects how the Kerbal behaves in EVA: sometime as soon as I change the camera I can in fact re-orienting pressing W. A bit pressure forward change the direction the Kerbal is facing. But a second later that's not possible any longer and my cosmonaut gets back to simple translations.

Well, if it were simple we wouldn't like it

 

Edited April 25, 2016 by carlorizzante

[Plusck]

35 minutes ago, carlorizzante said:

Hej, thank you for the tips and for your feedback. I guess that EVA just takes practice, yesterday I gave it a go once again, and I finally managed to get back to the ship.

The most frustrating thing while in EVA for me is orientation. I don't exactly get how to face a specific part of the ship, it seems that changing the camera affects how the Kerbal behaves in EVA: sometime as soon as I change the camera I can in fact re-orienting pressing W. A bit pressure forward change the direction the Kerbal is facing. But a second later that's not possible any longer and my cosmonaut gets back to simple translations.

Well, if it were simple we wouldn't like it

I never use the mouse to change view - only ever the arrow keys - with the exception of really tricky angles in map view.

So it's become almost second nature on EVA that if I move the view with the arrow key, I automatically give a blip sideways (S or D) to the Kerbal, so that he/she lines up to camera. I think I do this because any movement following a camera movement will make the Kerbal correct on his/her own, so it's easier to force it consciously and predictably rather than wait and be surprised

By far the worst thing though is when you're just at the edge or orbital/suborbotal flight. In orbital flight, the head faces north and the feet south. In suborbital it's head radial-out and feet radial-in. When trying to catch a diving spaceship before it hits the atmosphere or ground, this can be a nightmare as you just have to let go of the controls until the orientation sorts itself and you can see where you're going.

[marcushouse]

Yes I have another thread about this on reddit. 

Switching view using the V key works as you say the first time. But you cant try to press W immediately. You need to wait until the camera stops moving after pressing V before you attempt to move forward with W. That then seems to re-orient. As you say, rotation around the X axis just doesn't seem to work, whereas rotating around the Y axis works quite fine.

Almost seems like a bug to me. Someone mentioned something about a click drag option. But I haven't tried that yet.

[N_Danger]

2 hours ago, carlorizzante said:

Hej, thank you for the tips and for your feedback. I guess that EVA just takes practice, yesterday I gave it a go once again, and I finally managed to get back to the ship.

The most frustrating thing while in EVA for me is orientation. I don't exactly get how to face a specific part of the ship, it seems that changing the camera affects how the Kerbal behaves in EVA: sometime as soon as I change the camera I can in fact re-orienting pressing W. A bit pressure forward change the direction the Kerbal is facing. But a second later that's not possible any longer and my cosmonaut gets back to simple translations.

Well, if it were simple we wouldn't like it

 

You can turn the setting off in options that forces the kebal to orient to the camera if you want(somewhere, I don't do that so I can't say where in options) and I always switch the camera view to chase or free when on EVA. Leaving the camera on Auto causes problems for me.