KSP Loading... Preview: New Altimeter Toggle!

[Superfluous J]

16 hours ago, Wallygator said:

"sea level altitude" means nothing except during VAB construction.  During a mission, ACTUAL data is relevant.  Whoa wait... you could actually show both bits of data at the sane time you know...

Why does it matter in the VAB?

It matters in flight for several reasons, including knowing when your air intake will fail, and nailing an accurate orbit. If you want a 90km orbit do you really want to wonder how tall the mountain you're over is?

Edited March 12, 2019 by 5thHorseman

[pincushionman]

I’m late to the party, but please consider ditching any lights or icons or AGL/ASL text and indicate the mode by switching the display from black-on-white numbers to white-on-black (or even better, white-on-red or yellow-on-black).

I know that’s not a thing a real mechanical display can do, but it would be unambiguous and apparent to the user even when not looking at the display that they are in one mode rather than the other.

[Tweeker]

Fantastic,

I am greatful to see that this is finally being addressed,

But, I would much prefer to see a proper Rad Alt display,  I have suggested in the past, the idea of clicking the VSI to swap it with a Rad Alt,

an AGL altimeter would be somewhat unrealistic, this is not something that is generally used in aviation,

A radio altimeter, which is widely used does not display until approx. 2500 feet. They are less accurate above this distance,

I do like the idea others have put forward of swapping the atmosphere readout for a radio altitude when close to the ground.

I made a mock up of what that might look like.

Edited March 19, 2019 by Tweeker

[Deddly]

4 hours ago, Tweeker said:

 

Looks really nice, but you forgot to flip the blue colours around

[Tweeker]

44 minutes ago, Deddly said:

Looks really nice, but you forgot to flip the blue colours around

Thanks, 

    I wasn't really sure what to do with the colors, 

I thought about having start at brown, and fade out as the altitude goes up, 

But flipping them  could work just as well

[Superfluous J]

8 hours ago, Tweeker said:

I made a mock up of what that might look like.

I'm a super fan of this, even though it will take a willful disregard of the 5+ years of training I have in completely ignoring that section of the display.

[Thygrrr]

You should make this read "Above Sea Level" and "Above Ground Level" instead of "Altitude Mode: XXX" It will be much more transparent for players and more different letters mean easier to spot what mode it is in. ASL / AGL would only work if the S and G difference was very prominently featured, e.g. with a fat flip switch.

 

But I dislike skeumorphism so just have it say the one or the other.

[Tyko]

21 hours ago, Thygrrr said:

But I dislike skeumorphism so just have it say the one or the other.

haha...the definition of Skeumorphism is "Skeuomorphism is where an object in software mimics its real world counterpart."

If you don't like it, how do you play any simulation game since the whole game is trying to mimic real world counterparts??    

[Thygrrr]

17 hours ago, Tyko said:

haha...the definition of Skeumorphism is "Skeuomorphism is where an object in software mimics its real world counterpart."

If you don't like it, how do you play any simulation game since the whole game is trying to mimic real world counterparts??    

That flip switch would, in that form, not exist on any space craft; and there are many simulations that offer a plain UX rather than a skeuomorphic one. I also think the Altimeter is borderline unusable, and in reality mechanical digital displays do not switch easily between orders of magnitude (m, km, Mm)

Also, KSP is a game, not a simulator.

 

Anyway, I am grateful you corrected my spelling on this one. 

Edited March 23, 2019 by Thygrrr

[Nightside]

23 minutes ago, Thygrrr said:

That flip switch would, in that form, not exist on any space craft; and there are many simulations that offer a plain UX rather than a skeuomorphic one. I also think the Altimeter is borderline unusable, and in reality mechanical digital displays do not switch easily between orders of magnitude (m, km, Mm)

Also, KSP is a game, not a simulator.

 

Anyway, I am grateful you corrected my spelling on this one. 

Thanks for teaching me a new word. 

I agree with you in general- like why does every software use an image of a floppy disk for the save button? Nothing has been saved on a floppy disk for 25 years!

That said I like the KSP UI well enough, but I wish it was more user configurable.

 

Edited March 23, 2019 by Nightside

[razark]

57 minutes ago, Nightside said:

why does every software use an image of a floppy disk for the save button?

Because it is familiar.  We all know what it does, even without needing the button to be labeled.

[Tweeker]

9 hours ago, Nightside said:

I aree with you in general- like why does every software use an image of a floppy disk for the save button? Nothing has been saved on a floppy disk for 25 years!

       Not entirely true, a lot of legacy systems still use floppy discs 

For example a lot of aircraft systems have their software updates on floppy disc 

[Nightside]

2 minutes ago, Tweeker said:

       Not entirely true, a lot of legacy systems still use floppy discs 

For example a lot of aircraft systems have their software updates on floppy disc 

I didn’t know! 1.44MB FTW.

[micha]

On 3/6/2019 at 4:00 AM, SQUAD said:

Coming to Update 1.7, we are including a long requested quality-of-life feature that will allow you to toggle the altitude mode from Above Sea Level (ASL) to Above Ground Level (AGL) by simply clicking on the altimeter box. Hopefully this will help Kerbals avoid some crashes!

Much needed, thanks!  Given the information was always in the IVA it's not really adding anything new (ie, "cheating"), just making it more accessible.

On 3/6/2019 at 4:38 AM, The Aziz said:

Yes, I like the idea (duh) but I think a little change in design would be nice - now you created a bit of unnecessary grey space below the vertical speed gauge, and that looks off. I suggest widening the whole thing and put a short button on the right side of the altimeter or something like that.

+1 to this. Make the display slightly wider, not taller, to accommodate the changed functionality.  All it needs is a little Ground icon instead of the full text bar. Everything else is an indicator light/button - cuts down on localisation, allows it to be "lit" when active, and makes for instant recognition

EDIT:

As I'm reading through the thread, there's more and more excellent suggestions on changing the UI.
Here's a new one: skinnable UI.  Have the game ship with the default one, but provide an easy way for modders to replace any/all of the UI elements. That way all bases can be covered. Not sure how integrated the HUD is into the game-code though; this could be a major effort for little gain to the majority of players.  I'm assuming only a small percentage use these forums and mod their game.

Also reading @Maxsimal's excellent write-up of the dev/design process, I do strongly wonder why they settled on a text-based UI addition rather than icon-based, especially since he mentioned issues with the text in several languages.  Icons don't have many of the issues text has: legibility (especially on small/low-res displays), localisation (which I already mentioned above), etc.

Edited April 1, 2019 by micha

[The_Arcitect]

This will be very helpful...