The new UI for KSP2 - improvements and regressions from previous concepts?

[TROPtastic]

At this point most of us have probably seen the Early Access trailer - including the part where @Nate Simpson showed off the new UI and talked about the tape indicator concept. Overall, it's great that Intercept is looking to real-world systems for design inspiration, but I feel like certain elements of their current UI are a bit lacking in terms of readability and usability (and in fact, could be improved by leaning even harder into modern real-world flight UIs). I thought this thread would be good to summarize some of the comments from the announcement thread and share my own thoughts, including the good parts of the new design!

 

Readability of atmospheric indicator

This one was brought up by @poopslayer78, who commented that "the rocket is very tall compared to each atmosphere layer indicator, which makes it ambiguous where layer you're in." You can see the current implementation below:

The devs are already working to improve this, which is sweet. Previous concepts below for posterity:

Spoiler

I agree (is altitude measured from the center of the rocket? the window? the bottom of the nozzle?), and I think the following concepts are better since they tell you exactly where you are in the atmosphere. The first one is poopslayer's nice AI edited one, and the others are my attempts in Photopea:

It would be nice as well if there was an indicator LED or symbol w/ text to say "You are in space now! No need to worry about drag!" like poopslayer mentioned in their comment, since the topmost box of this UI suggests that there is still some atmosphere with the pale blue dots. Alternatively, KSP1's atmosphere indicator did a great job of indicating that you were in space since the last region of the indicator had no colouring at all:

Visualizing the relative depth of the different atmospheric layers as shown in a previous concept would be very cool, particularly if this could change for different celestial bodies. If not, then sticking with equal size boxes as shown is fine.

Readability of navball

This one was mentioned by @t_v, who pointed out that " the amount of lines and markers on the navball makes it hard to really distinguish specific pitch angles, and the text on the rest of the UI fades into the information surrounding it". 

I partly agree with this comment, because some views look quite readable for precision orientation (kind of like the KSP1 navball, see first image below), whereas others are definitely hard to read with a combination of dithering at the edges, pixelated numbers, and low contrast secondary numbers (see 2nd image): 

Nate said that this has already become more legible in a newer build, which is great.

The markers shown in the image are different from the KSP1-style normal and radial indicators, but that is most likely because they switch to a KSP1 style in orbit mode. Obsolete criticism below for posterity:

Spoiler

We can also see that some of the orbital orientation markers were changed between builds (no more normal or radial indicators), which is hopefully something that is changed back to KSP1 symbology since the old symbols will be easier to read when placed on the navball. Given the increased emphasis on tutorials and animations to educate players, I'm sure that learning normal/anti-normal and radial/anti-radial symbols will be simple enough.

Overly "retro" aesthetic of the UI

This is perhaps the most subjective opinion, but it's one that I share. @The Aziz said in a post "the pixely font and icons just don't work for a civilization that is about to hit interstellar space. Instead, we landed in the late 90's." I think the dithering and font choice for UI elements is a big part of this, since it causes what would otherwise be a very modern interface to look rather busy, hard to read, and outdated. A bit strange for a society operating advanced jets and (eventually) interstellar technology that is decades or centuries ahead of 2022 humanity. They highlighted these SpaceX UIs which look exactly as modern as you'd expect a flight control interface to be in the 2020s:

You can see that SpaceX uses a smooth gradient shadow to indicate the 3D-ness of the navball, without any dithering or pixelation to be seen anywhere  

I actually don't think the SpaceX navball is a perfect fit for players who will be flying their crafts manually, so having more numbers like the current KSP2 concept and KSP1 is better than having fewer numbers and markings like the older concept below (and maybe like SpaceX too):

Personally, I think that something like the real world HUD below would be ideal as a working UI that is in the same style as what we have seen in the past: 

Everything is easy to read at a glance, highly legible, and uses high-contrast text and colours (even in this photo, which reduced some of the contrast). It also uses the "tape indicators" that the current UI does, so good job devs on implementing them  The main area where we could diverge is adding a smooth (non-dithered) gradient to the navball as shown in one of the team's earlier concepts, since we will make more dramatic attitude adjustments than most airliners  

 

Summary of likes and dislikes with the new UI

Since we were kindly asked to share things we like as well as what we don't like (thank you Fernanda), here is a list of what I think the new UI does well compared to previous concepts:

Great stuff

• The rolling tape indicators are a great way to show critical altitude, speed, and heading information at a glance, and having the indicators scroll based on rate of change will be super cool and engaging.
• The button outlines on the altitude and speed tapes make it more obvious that you can change between different modes, compared to the older concept I showed above.
• The mission time is super legible compared to a previous UI concept, and the button makes it obvious that you can switch between MET and UT.
• Having UI section "titles" like SAS.CONTROL and TIME.WARP = 1.0X will be useful for new and returning players alike
• The throttle indicator suggests to players that you can adjust your throttle smoothly (including by dragging the handle), which is great for people who may have thought that you can only adjust it in 5% increments or what-have-you.
• Putting a separate and legible rate of descent indicator right next to the navball is genius, and will probably help a lot of people to not slam into the ground (accidentally, anyway). Hopefully the warning and danger zones update based on local gravity and the strength of your landing gear.
• The numbers on the pop-out tape indicators are easier to read than the 8 segment style digits of the previous UI and the pixelated numbers of other parts of the current UI.
• The amount of interval markers on the navball makes it easier to burn at a specific angle and heading compared to a previous UI concept and kind of like the KSP1 navball.
• The navball will be movable to the centre of the screen to match KSP1's position (source: ShadowZone's October UI video).
• The radial/anti-radial and normal/anti-normal markers are replaced with North/South and up/down (?) markers when the navball is in surface mode, which is cool and useful (source).
• At a glance apoapsis and periapsis info is presented well.
• The map view shows spheres of influence for celestial bodies and more readable icons for when you get in them, which is awesome! (source1, source2)
• The staging diagram is on the same side of the screen in both the VAB and in flight.
• The GO button is solid green!

And a summary of what was said in the sections above, with some additions:

Areas for improvement

• The previous concept (shown under the aesthetic section) had a very tasteful and legible style of dithering, probably because dithering wasn't used for any elements that were intended to be read. If the team would like to stick with dithering instead of smooth shading, that is probably the way to go.
• Units should follow SI capitalization consistently to avoid confusion (ex. lowercase "m" for meters", "km" for kilometers, "Mm" for megameters (millions of meters), etc.) - thanks shimmy00!
• The text on the tapes themselves is a bit hard to read because of the pixelated font.
• The text in the UI section titles is  hard to read because of the pixelated font combined with its small size (the size would be fine if it was used with a normal minimal-serif font).
• The atmospheric indicator doesn't show neither exactly where a craft is in the atmosphere (KSP1 style) nor the relative depth of the atmospheric layers (older KSP2 concept style) - precision improvements in development
• The atmospheric indicator implies that a craft is still experiencing partial drag even when it is at its darkest colour due to the chosen dithering.
• The hinting of where other orientation markers were in a previous UI was very cool (appropriately futuristic) and useful, and that is missing from the latest UI.
• The removal of normal/anti-normal and radial/anti-radial markers is a step back in terms of rocketry education and general legibility KSP1-style markers are still there in orbit mode!
• The current navball is hard to read wherever dithering and pixelated numbers interact with attitude lines and oblique view angles (ex. flying straight up from the surface) - more legible in a newer build
• Having pitch/attitude marks and labels only on the cardinal heading lines like KSP1 would make the overall navball more clear.
• Because of the dithering on the RCS and SAS buttons, it is not obvious that they are enabled if they are both on.
• Subjectively, everything pixelated and dithered in the current UI looks too outdated for the level of polish the rest of the game will have.
• The fuel and oxidiser gauges for engines could get out of hand for a lot of engines (think Soviet N1 level), but hopefully the engine group button lets us collapse all the individual fuel gages into one overall, representative gage.
• The stage number on the GO button is harder to read compared to a previous UI due to the choice of font and the green on black colour choice.

Overall, I know that we're commenting on "pre-alpha" footage and that things could have already changed, but since we're approaching early access, I think its better to get this feedback out now so that we can ensure the best possible reviews at KSP2's EA launch  . Thread updated with some of @ShadowZone 's  info from his comprehensive summary video, which you should definitely check out!

 

 

Edited November 1, 2022 by TROPtastic
revised with info and more "Great stuff" from ShadowZone's video

[Strawberry]

I dislike how flat the current navball looks, the old spherical nature of the navball makes it much clearer to read out where you're at

[darthgently]

Very good feedback here.  But at the risk of breaking out of the thread frame, my ideal UI would allow dragging UI elements, like the navball to other monitors if available.  And what I really want is a real navball that plugs into a USB port and is natively supported by KSP2 (Kickstarter idea?)

[TROPtastic]

8 minutes ago, Strawberry said:

I dislike how flat the current navball looks, the old spherical nature of the navball makes it much clearer to read out where you're at

I agree: the KSP1 navball looks naturally spherical, so it's immediately obvious that you're looking at a 3D surface:

Spoiler

I feel like with the current navball UI, we have a somewhat awkward mix of mostly flat colouring, text & markers that are curved as if the navball was a sphere, and dithering at the edges to add some retro shadow aesthetics.

2 minutes ago, darthgently said:

And what I really want is a real navball that plugs into a USB port and is natively supported by KSP2 (Kickstarter idea?)

If such a thing existed and was compatible with KSP2, I would be tempted to make a very questionable financial decision 

[leopardenthusiast]

I don't think the number of markings on the navball are the problem - rather, it's the colour and size.  If the navball itself were made larger and the markings on the blue side of the navball were white, I think it'd be a lot more readable.

The current navball is smaller than the KSP1 navball, despite the navball cluster being larger overall, which I don't think is great.

[darthgently]

8 minutes ago, leopardenthusiast said:

The current navball is smaller than the KSP1 navball, despite the navball cluster being larger overall, which I don't think is great.

I agree.  I would like to see the navball scale be adjustable separate from is surrounding UI elements.  When I look at the navball, 99% of the time the navball is all I'm interested in.  During a burn, the burn info is interesting, but other that target relative velocity I rarely used any of the other info. But I use KER and kOS for most of that stuff.  Still, having option to adjust the relative size of the navball itself in relation to the surrounding stuff would be great

[shimmy00]

A perhaps minor nitpick, but some screens there show "km" as "KM" and "m" as "M". That's actually not right either - the SI unit system standard says those symbols must always be lowercase, i.e. "km" and "m". That matters even more because the next step is "Mm" (and then "Gm" and "Tm" and so on), and "MM" could be read either either "Mm" or "mm", and those are literally and exactly a billion times different from each other. Also and technically, "M" typically stands for "molar concentration unit", though obviously that has no meaning here. This is a regression from the KSP1 UI where, except for the altimeter which showed "k" as "K", the proper SI capitalization conventions were followed. It was also a bit hard to tell that the "AP" and "PE" readings were actually in hundreds of thousands (of meters), too, as that comma looked close enough to a period to fool me and I was wondering "why the heck is the orbit so low?!" for a while there. FWIW, SI also has an answer for that: you don't use commas to separate thousands, but spaces - thin spaces, actually, so the two groups of three digits should be only slightly separated from each other and more separated from the unit symbol. Of course, "in real life" everyone sloppily ignores this, but technically, that's the correct way to write any metric measurement.

Edited October 24, 2022 by shimmy00

[The Aziz]

I wear glasses. Sometimes on my phone I have to really look closely to see if the battery % says 50 or 30 because it has this weird "flat top" 3 design. Same goes with the pixelated font and you can see it on the navball. Is it 130⁰ or 150? I can't tell because there's like 3 pixels of difference.

People are still playing on 1366x700whatever laptop screens, this is going to be very hard to read.

And something I brought up about the earlier design - no to LCD screen font. Do I know if it says D or 0? Look at the timewarp panel.

If there's anything about GUI I know, it's make it as readable as possible. Forget the fancy details and stylized design if it comes at cost of readability.

Speaking of which... Many games these days come with a lot of accessibility options. Overly specific design (that works for pilots because they have these screens right in their faces) is the opposite of that.

I said it before, it turned in right direction when it comes to feature visibility, but then it's spoiled by the same features being hard on the eye.

[leopardenthusiast]

To show the smaller navball, here's a somewhat nasty looking comparison I made:

Ignore the markings on the KSP1 navball - all of the screenshots I had on hand have a replacement texture for it.  This is just meant to show the sizes of the two navball clusters.

[mcwaffles2003]

First thing, we are seeing a lot of iterations of the navball and it is hard to tell which is the most recent iteration.

Readability of atmospheric indicator

Of the designs presented in the OP, I think a mixture of these 2 would be best

Keep the ship inside, slim down the orange indicator, but also cut the color indicator in half with a thin bezel and have the ship move inside along the outer segment and get rid of the color indication along the ships side. This would keep the UI mor compact and make the indicator easier to read, while keeping some cartoonish charm by leaving the ship symbol. We could really get red of the black dots though and really just go for soldi colors to make it less noisy looking and cleaner.

I like the space indicator idea though.

Readability of navball

I agree the new Navball looks too cluttered, they should just get rid of the half hash marks and stick to every 10 degrees. 

Also, the compass above the navball to me seems redundant and takes up space. I understand its inclusion may be helpful for non-space craft for more precise 2D navigation, but the navball is already a compass, so maybe just keep the text indicator. Heck give out 2 number (Alt,Az) for a more precise read out of what the navball is displaying. It would be more compact and very helpful.

I would also like to point out that the ORBIT and delta GND_LEV are really clunky and the readouts entirely cover the below analog scales making them effectively pointless while also slightly obscuring the thrust indicator,  barometer, and delta V_z.

Overly "retro" aesthetic of the UI

As I mentioned at the start, it's hard to tell which navball is the most recent iteration but I think the retro 90s LED text is of the more out of date versions. I prefer the more modern text as it looks cleaner and more legible to me.

Finally, as far as sybols go, I'd prefer they stay the same, though switching the normal/anti normal to N and S could do well. Radial in and out should stay as they were though as the lines point intuitively in the direction you want to go.. radial in = lines point in, radial out = lines point out.. easy.

[RealKerbal3x]

A small bit of attention to detail I noticed in the MET/UT readout was that the years section has three digits:

In KSP1 this usually wouldn't matter as 'normal' mission lengths often don't even make use of two digits, but now that we're going to be going interstellar, it's entirely possible that mission lengths could be measured in hundreds of years.

[whatsEJstandfor]

As a counterexample, I just want to say that I love the retro pixelated look of the PFD so, yeah, it must just be subjective

[regex]

5 hours ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

I genuinely love the new look of this navball.

Critiques and agreements:

• Numbers on the navball should be larger.
• The throttle indicator is incredibly huge, there's really no need for that. Maybe it's just me as an old RO player griping but the throttle is going to be in two places (0% and 100%) except when I'm landing, and when I'm landing what I care about is the rate of descent, not the throttle.
• The atmosphere indicator should definitely be finer.
• I don't see a need for the exact heading number myself, seems pretty superfluous.
• It's amazing to get AP and PE info outside the map screen, that should have been there from day 1 in KSP1. I'd love to have some inclination information as well.

[Pthigrivi]

One other thing, Im really happy to see the maneuver planner show the time till the start of the burn and the time till the end rather than to the node itself. This should make alarms on long burns much easier, and of course I won't have to divide by two every time. I'd absolutely love if they included Better Burn Time's automatic burn times when rendezvousing and landing. Another thing I've brought up in another thread but seems like a no-brainer is being able to snap maneuvers to Ap, Pe, An, and Dn. 

Edited October 24, 2022 by Pthigrivi

[t_v]

30 minutes ago, regex said:

It's amazing to get AP and PE info outside the map screen, that should have been there from day 1 in KSP1. I'd love to have some inclination information as well.

If you want Ap and Pe in KSP 1, the orbital information is in the bottom left corner. There are a few tabs, one of them has what you need. 

[regex]

1 minute ago, t_v said:

If you want Ap and Pe in KSP 1, the orbital information is in the bottom left corner. There are a few tabs, one of them has what you need. 

That must have been added after I stopped playing, which is totally fair. My frame of play reference is from 0.17 to right around when Making History came out.

[Vanamonde]

The pros and cons of unit systems is irrelevant to KSP2. A lengthy digression about that has been removed from this thread. Please confine the discussion here to the new UI preview. 

[Strawberry]

I like the retro asthetic personally, I think its neat. The north and south indicator seems confusing and not super useful, as north and south depends on the poles, and for when you need to go north or south you can just look at the navball for it. Using north and south instead of normal/anti normal seems really weird as well because north and south are relative  to planets, but normal/anti normal are relative to the trajectory you're on. While I get that normal/anti normal arent as clear for new players what they are, if you do something similar to ksp1 to where you arrange them to give the illusion of different depth and heights and have a little ship, it should make it much more clear what those symbols mean.

[shdwlrd]

I do like the new flight UI. Everything is in one place, they way it should be. Like everyone else, I do have some gripes.

The Navball; I've never liked the Navball. I've always found it confusing to read in crucial situations. I'd like to see the standard ladder style display for pitch like in modern aircraft as an option.

Numeric displays for pitch and roll angles; Not truly necessary in all situations, but can be handy to know when for takeoffs and landings.

Numeric displays for sink and climb rate; I'm someone who will get a better feel with seeing numbers instead of an arrow pointing up or down.

The compass direction; That really should show to the hundredths of a degree. That small of an amount can lead to a large error when traveling several hundred km. Imagine how much the error will be over several lightyears. 

Fonts and text colors; I'm not having issues reading the fonts themselves. I'm having trouble reading the tape markings. There needs to be more contrast between the tape color and the markings on it. I also know that fonts and colors is highly subjective. Maybe a way to change up the fonts and colors as a personalization option.

[Bej Kerman]

14 minutes ago, shdwlrd said:

The Navball; I've never liked the Navball. I've always found it confusing to read in crucial situations. I'd like to see the standard ladder style display for pitch like in modern aircraft as an option.

Ladder displays work in aircraft because they're not as commonly seen in situations where the nose is facing directly upwards. A ladder display would be nigh unreadable while landing on anything but a mountainside. That's why spacecraft use navballs.

[shdwlrd]

7 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

Ladder displays work in aircraft because they're not as commonly seen in situations where the nose is facing directly upwards. A ladder display would be nigh unreadable while landing on anything but a mountainside. That's why spacecraft use navballs.

I've never had an issue with a ladder display, including flying vertical. I've always had issues with a Navballs. It's a personal opinion. You may not think it's an issue, I do think it's an issue. 

[Bej Kerman]

15 minutes ago, shdwlrd said:

I've never had an issue with a ladder display, including flying vertical. I've always had issues with a Navballs. It's a personal opinion. You may not think it's an issue, I do think it's an issue. 

Every ladder display I've seen flips out when trying to hold 90 degrees.

[shdwlrd]

1 hour ago, Bej Kerman said:

Every ladder display I've seen flips out when trying to hold 90 degrees.

Yes, I've seen ladders that flip out at 90°. I've also see ones the don't. Most of the ones that don't freak out at 90° were used in dedicated space based flight sims. (Think like the old X-wing or Tie fighter games.)

Let me clarify, the ladders that don't flip out at 90° only reflected your pitch angle, not your roll angle. The roll angle was represented with another element within the display. The ladders that also represented your roll angle, those are the ones that flip out at 90°.

Edited October 24, 2022 by shdwlrd
Clarifying my observations

[Bej Kerman]

1 hour ago, shdwlrd said:

Yes, I've seen ladders that flip out at 90°. I've also see ones the don't. Most of the ones that don't freak out at 90° were used in dedicated space based flight sims. (Think like the old X-wing or Tie fighter games.)

Let me clarify, the ladders that don't flip out at 90° only reflected your pitch angle, not your roll angle. The roll angle was represented with another element within the display. The ladders that also represented your roll angle, those are the ones that flip out at 90°.

Would it be easy to tell that the nose of your lander is drifting left as opposed to down?

Again, in 99% of use cases, navballs are more practical than ladders, regardless of the aesthetics.

[darthgently]

3 hours ago, shdwlrd said:

Numeric displays for sink and climb rate; I'm someone who will get a better feel with seeing numbers instead of an arrow pointing up or down.

I like numerics in general but want some easily read visual element that reflects how fast they are changing and in what direction, like hue and brightness of the font perhaps (greenish for increasing, reddish for deceasing, brightness for rate of change?)

Edited October 24, 2022 by darthgently