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

[Nate Simpson]

This is a great thread. Just wanted to add the tidbit that the overly-crowded navball is something I was experimenting with in my free time, and it has already been significantly de-cluttered since this capture was collected (I went back to 45 degree increments and it immediately got much easier to parse).  The atmosphere indicator was also already being revised to make clearer exactly where the indicator is pointing (and it's quite validating to see that need called out here).  I hope you all will keep the feedback coming as these changes go in!

[DeadJohn]

30 minutes ago, Nate Simpson said:

This is a great thread. Just wanted to add the tidbit that the overly-crowded navball is something I was experimenting with in my free time, and it has already been significantly de-cluttered since this capture was collected (I went back to 45 degree increments and it immediately got much easier to parse).  The atmosphere indicator was also already being revised to make clearer exactly where the indicator is pointing (and it's quite validating to see that need called out here).  I hope you all will keep the feedback coming as these changes go in!

Can you post an image of the latest version, so our new comments will be more relevant?

Will we be able to add customized stats to the orbital info display? In addition to Ap and Pe these things would be helpful without having to tab through the KSP1 lower-left display or map view:

Orbital Period: for geosync satellites

Time to Ascending Node: for liftoffs to rendevous with inclined stations and planets

Inclination

Current Biome below orbit, and maybe predicted landing biome: for more precise landings

That all might be too much for the info window, but maybe scrolling, or letting us shrink the text would let us customize it the way we want.

 

Edited October 24, 2022 by DeadJohn
fixed "a test" -> "latest"

[Strawberry]

All that info seems more fitting for the zoomed out planetary view.

[Ryaja]

22 hours ago, TROPtastic said:

 

Personally, I prefer this design o er the new one. It just feels more 3d and is a little bit smoother, I remember seeing someone combine this one with the older one, I really liked that design.

Edited October 25, 2022 by Ryaja

[Pthigrivi]

1 hour ago, Nate Simpson said:

(I went back to 45 degree increments and it immediately got much easier to parse). 

I feel like 10 degree tick marks along the major axes might be the sweet spot. Especially on  ascent, spaceplane reentry,  and landing aircraft l like to be able to set benchmarks in my mind for pitch/ altitude/airspeed (for instance holding a spaceplane at 60 or 70 degrees until Ive descended to 40km, then pitch slowly down to 10 degrees, etc.) It makes maneuvers like that much easier to refine and replicate.

Speaking of which an SAS option to hold angle to horizon would also be amazing… but now Im getting greedy.

[t_v]

15 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

I feel like 10 degree tick marks along the major axes might be the sweet spot. Especially on  ascent, spaceplane reentry,  and landing aircraft l like to be able to set benchmarks in my mind for pitch/ altitude/airspeed (for instance holding a spaceplane at 60 or 70 degrees until Ive descended to 40km, then pitch slowly down to 10 degrees, etc.) It makes maneuvers like that much easier to refine and replicate.

Speaking of which an SAS option to hold angle to horizon would also be amazing… but now Im getting greedy.

I think that the tick marks that we have in KSP 1 are actually a sweet spot, where the cardinal directions have tick marks (not all labeled either) while the 45 degree directions are just simple lines. I could always tell what pitch angle I was at even along the 45 degree directions by looking over at the 90 degree directions. I've been thinking about why I got the impression that the nav ball was too cluttered, and I now think that a big part of it was all of the tick marks that were blurring the main lines at certain angles. 

[shdwlrd]

@Bej Kerman I figured it would be easier to draw a diagram to help explain what I have pictured in my head. This is what you would see just as a plane starts to fall after a vertical stall. (Also works for a tail landing.) The green bar with the triangles is your roll angle or rate. You will see that you still have your pro/retrograde marker. (The normal and radial markers would be floating off to the side somewhere.) There maybe another triangle or line above or through your bank indicator to show your slip/yaw rate. (I've only seen this on the fighter planes, not on commercial/GA planes. (Maybe shown, but I've never noticed it.)) The velocity marker would move to the absolute direction you're drifting. The bank indicator will dip whichever direction you're rolling. The yaw indicator will shift to show which way your nose is pointing. I favor this as it's cleaner and less ambiguous as the navball. I can clearly see my pitch angle, roll direction/rate, and my yaw direction/rate with a high degree of accuracy compared to the navball. With the navball, I'm always guessing what the craft is doing and how to correct it. With the ladder, I know exactly what the craft is doing and how it correct it. 

4 hours ago, darthgently said:

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?)

Color coding could be helpful. But what you would define as quick or dangerous really depends on what you're flying. A GA plane a fast decent could be only 500ft/sec whereas a commercial plane a fast decent would be 1000ft/sec. 

[Bej Kerman]

59 minutes ago, shdwlrd said:

@Bej Kerman I figured it would be easier to draw a diagram to help explain what I have pictured in my head. This is what you would see just as a plane starts to fall after a vertical stall. (Also works for a tail landing.) The green bar with the triangles is your roll angle or rate. You will see that you still have your pro/retrograde marker. (The normal and radial markers would be floating off to the side somewhere.) There maybe another triangle or line above or through your bank indicator to show your slip/yaw rate. (I've only seen this on the fighter planes, not on commercial/GA planes. (Maybe shown, but I've never noticed it.)) The velocity marker would move to the absolute direction you're drifting. The bank indicator will dip whichever direction you're rolling. The yaw indicator will shift to show which way your nose is pointing. I favor this as it's cleaner and less ambiguous as the navball. I can clearly see my pitch angle, roll direction/rate, and my yaw direction/rate with a high degree of accuracy compared to the navball. With the navball, I'm always guessing what the craft is doing and how to correct it. With the ladder, I know exactly what the craft is doing and how it correct it. 

 

I'm failing to see how this is any less ambiguous than a navball that shows exactly how your craft is rotating.

[18Watt]

4 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

I feel like 10 degree tick marks along the major axes might be the sweet spot. Especially on  ascent, spaceplane reentry,  and landing aircraft l like to be able to set benchmarks in my mind for pitch/ altitude/airspeed (for instance holding a spaceplane at 60 or 70 degrees until Ive descended to 40km, then pitch slowly down to 10 degrees, etc.) It makes maneuvers like that much easier to refine and replicate.

Speaking of which an SAS option to hold angle to horizon would also be amazing… but now Im getting greedy.

Excellent points.  I would add that my needs for different vehicles is, uh, different.  I find the NavBall in KSP1 to work quite well for general maneuvers in space, but the granularity is not what I'd like for atmospheric vehicles like planes.

I'll second the need for hold horizon (or specified pitch), as well as a wing-leveler.  As a fanatical stock KSP player, I finally gave in and am now using a very basic autopilot mod for atmospheric vehicles.  I just can't fly atmospheric planes as accurately as needed with no pitch hold, wing-leveler, and the stock nav-ball.

Anyway, spot-on @Pthigrivi!  I couldn't agree more.

[Just a random person]

@shdwlrd

I agree that the ladder display might be the best one for flying planes because pitch is easily the most important of the rotational axises.

For a spacecraft, pitch and yaw are equally as important and they should be represented as such. If your lander starts tilting left/right or forwards/backwards, all of those directions affect the lander similarly (the lander's top tilts towards the horizon). I want to be able to see both pitch and yaw at the same time and the same way, which is not possible with the ladder didplay.

It will tell me precisely how much I'm pitching but doesn't really care about the yaw, which makes sense when flying a plane but not when flying a spacecraft. There's a reason why ladders are used in aircraft and navballs in spacecraft irl.

Edited October 25, 2022 by Just a random person
Typos

[NexustheNinja19]

6 hours ago, Nate Simpson said:

This is a great thread. Just wanted to add the tidbit that the overly-crowded navball is something I was experimenting with in my free time, and it has already been significantly de-cluttered since this capture was collected (I went back to 45 degree increments and it immediately got much easier to parse).  The atmosphere indicator was also already being revised to make clearer exactly where the indicator is pointing (and it's quite validating to see that need called out here).  I hope you all will keep the feedback coming as these changes go in!

Pretty Dumb idea I had but i'd like to through out the idea of a line obove the nav ball showing your orbit incomparison to the thing your orbiting. Just stops you from having to switch to the map screen.

[Ahres]

13 hours ago, Ryaja said:

Personally, I prefer this design o er the new one. It just feels more 3d and is a little bit smoother, I remember seeing someone combine this one with the older one, I really liked that design.

Now that I know Nate is watching this thread, I'll throw in my thoughts as well.

I agree with Ryaja here. As I've said on the Hype Train thread, I really liked the style of the UI shown in the PCGamer article. I know that's highly subjective, but to me it feels worth mentioning. The usefulness of the newest UI is wonderful, so having it in that older PCGamer article style would be the sweet spot for me.

[Bej Kerman]

15 hours ago, Nate Simpson said:

This is a great thread. Just wanted to add the tidbit that the overly-crowded navball is something I was experimenting with in my free time, and it has already been significantly de-cluttered since this capture was collected (I went back to 45 degree increments and it immediately got much easier to parse).  The atmosphere indicator was also already being revised to make clearer exactly where the indicator is pointing (and it's quite validating to see that need called out here).  I hope you all will keep the feedback coming as these changes go in!

Nate, you want to think about going back on "no procedural solar panels" yet?

[Spaceman.Spiff]

On 10/23/2022 at 10:10 PM, TROPtastic said:

Overly "retro" aesthetic of the UI

This actually gives me an idea. 
Maybe it’s a pipe dream, but what if the Navball/UI changed and modernized as you advance down the tech tree?  
It wouldn’t make sense for a brand new program using a Mercury-esque capsule to have a digital readout, but as you get towards an Orion or similar modern design, the displays may become more digital or informative. 

[Ashandalar]

One point I'd like to see addressed in the new UI is in how atmospheric pressure is displayed. It never seemed right to me that the atmosphere indicator at the top of the screen looks identical on the surface of Duna as it does on the surface of Kerbin, despite the huge gulf in pressure. It would be nice to actually see the pressure figure in kPa on the UI in a cleaner way than pinning the output of the PresMat Barometer part, if that even exists in KSP2.

[Ahres]

39 minutes ago, Spaceman.Spiff said:

This actually gives me an idea. 
Maybe it’s a pipe dream, but what if the Navball/UI changed and modernized as you advance down the tech tree?  
It wouldn’t make sense for a brand new program using a Mercury-esque capsule to have a digital readout, but as you get towards an Orion or similar modern design, the displays may become more digital or informative. 

Probably a major headache for the devs... but we can dream. This is a fun idea.

 

36 minutes ago, Ashandalar said:

One point I'd like to see addressed in the new UI is in how atmospheric pressure is displayed. It never seemed right to me that the atmosphere indicator at the top of the screen looks identical on the surface of Duna as it does on the surface of Kerbin, despite the huge gulf in pressure. It would be nice to actually see the pressure figure in kPa on the UI in a cleaner way than pinning the output of the PresMat Barometer part, if that even exists in KSP2.

To simplify this for people that aren't sure what a kPa even is, it'd be cool if the atmo indicator that we have in KSP1 and now similarly in KSP2 "morphed" depending on which atmosphere the vessel is in. Meaning the atmospheric density, as it's shown in the indicator, is thickened or lessened depending on the body. May as well have the indicator change color to match that of the respective body's atmosphere too, so on Kerbin it's blue, on Duna it's now orange, etc.

[The Aziz]

I believe what @Xelo crafted looked like the (almost) best compromise.

A combo of the old and the new

Also, there was a discussion about SI system, (not that I want to get back to it) but it shows well why case matters. M vs m.

[mcwaffles2003]

5 hours ago, Ahres said:

To simplify this for people that aren't sure what a kPa even is, it'd be cool if the atmo indicator that we have in KSP1 and now similarly in KSP2 "morphed" depending on which atmosphere the vessel is in. Meaning the atmospheric density, as it's shown in the indicator, is thickened or lessened depending on the body. May as well have the indicator change color to match that of the respective body's atmosphere too, so on Kerbin it's blue, on Duna it's now orange, etc.

To expand on this, maybe have the color associated with bodys atmospheric pressure at the surface. Maybe green could mean 1atm at surface, deep red could mean 20 atm at surface, and a light blue could be .02 atm at surface.

Cause if the meter were to be truly consistent the surface of Duna would show the same atmospheric height as Kerbin at 15km up and Eve would break the meter.

19 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

I feel like 10 degree tick marks along the major axes might be the sweet spot. Especially on  ascent, spaceplane reentry,  and landing aircraft l like to be able to set benchmarks in my mind for pitch/ altitude/airspeed (for instance holding a spaceplane at 60 or 70 degrees until Ive descended to 40km, then pitch slowly down to 10 degrees, etc.) It makes maneuvers like that much easier to refine and replicate.

Speaking of which an SAS option to hold angle to horizon would also be amazing… but now Im getting greedy.

Not to nitpick but I think 15 degrees could be ideal. It would be less clutter but still hit 30, 45, and 60 and I believe eyeballing 10 degrees between 0 and 15 wouldnt be too hard

Edited October 25, 2022 by mcwaffles2003

[TROPtastic]

22 hours ago, Nate Simpson said:

This is a great thread. Just wanted to add the tidbit that the overly-crowded navball is something I was experimenting with in my free time, and it has already been significantly de-cluttered since this capture was collected (I went back to 45 degree increments and it immediately got much easier to parse).  The atmosphere indicator was also already being revised to make clearer exactly where the indicator is pointing (and it's quite validating to see that need called out here).  I hope you all will keep the feedback coming as these changes go in!

Thank you for being open to feedback and reading through our comments here! From the sounds of it, the new navball will have markings closer to KSP1's style, where the heading lines are in 45 degree increments without attitude markers but the cardinal (0°, 90°, 180°, 270°) pitch/attitude lines are still finely spaced (to 5 degrees), as pointed out here by @Pthigrivi and here by @t_v. I know I found the labelled 10 degree pitch marks to be super useful while following Mike Aben's tutorials on how to get to orbit efficiently. Especially now that we have a heading callout and tape, we probably don't need more than 45° intervals for heading.

I can second some of the other comments asking for up to date UI images and videos, since that will steer our feedback in directions that are more useful for the team. Could be a good topic for a future dev diary in the next couple of months?

[Xelo]

21 hours ago, Ahres said:

Probably a major headache for the devs... but we can dream. This is a fun idea.

 

To simplify this for people that aren't sure what a kPa even is, it'd be cool if the atmo indicator that we have in KSP1 and now similarly in KSP2 "morphed" depending on which atmosphere the vessel is in. Meaning the atmospheric density, as it's shown in the indicator, is thickened or lessened depending on the body. May as well have the indicator change color to match that of the respective body's atmosphere too, so on Kerbin it's blue, on Duna it's now orange, etc.

y e s.
(bar on duna)

now higher quality mockup.
I also think it should retract and disappear when there's no atmosphere, but that's probably just me.

Edited October 26, 2022 by Xelo

[regex]

Also, I can't stress it enough, the throttle quadrant is absolutely massive. I love everything about the latest UI except that.

[Wubslin]

17 hours ago, The Aziz said:

I believe what @Xelo crafted looked like the (almost) best compromise.

A combo of the old and the new

Also, there was a discussion about SI system, (not that I want to get back to it) but it shows well why case matters. M vs m.

I think it would be really cool if we had the option to switch between the top two designs here. I just love how clean the right one is, even if the left one is more useful. Also this might just be my KSP 1 experiences talking, but I think having the graduations and numbers on the navball be universally white on both the sky and ground hemispheres looks nicer than having them be dark on the sky hemisphere.

[Luriss]

1 hour ago, Xelo said:

y e s.
(bar on duna)

now higher quality mockup.
I also think it should retract and disappear when there's no atmosphere, but that's probably just me.

Ooh, I really, really like this, but seeing this mock up makes me question what information the bar really indicates to you and if its really that useful.

• Displaying the atmo as a percentage of Kerbin atmo is nice, but what useful info does the really convey to the player? Knowing the atmosphere percentage relative to Kerbin's doesn't really help me fly my craft - I probably already know the atmo I'm expecting before I start flying.
• Knowing what section of the atmo you're in is also nice and useful for getting a rough idea of where you are, and in the case of KSP 1, whether new experiments are available or not. But can't we use the display to convey more?
• The little arrow indicating your exact position, what info does that really give you beyond removing ambiguity?

Hence the following:

• Should the bar also be used to indicate the altitude where air breathing engines will flame out? Some horizontal line indicating this point perhaps? (This also makes the arrow more useful imo).
• As an extension of the idea above, displaying max Q might be nice too.
• Showing pressure seems a bit pointless despite being a nice QoL thing. It's info I don't think will be used and will just clutter the display as a result.
• In place of pressure, maybe a read out displaying the craft's terminal velocity/maximum speed would be useful.

Edited October 26, 2022 by Luriss

[Xelo]

1 minute ago, Luriss said:

Showing pressure seems a bit pointless despite being a nice QoL thing. It's info I don't think will be used and will just clutter the display as a result

I actually would have found it quite useful in ksp 1. Originally i thought duna would have the same atm pressure as kerbin fsr, but if that bar was there then I wouldnt have spent a day wondering why the parachutes werent working as well... also I do enjoy the lines idea immensely. As to the clutter, I forgot to mention that the extended stats (like pressure, and w/e )should only be visible (as in toggled) when you click on the bar itself, otherwise its just a regular old bar.

[Luriss]

10 hours ago, Xelo said:

I actually would have found it quite useful in ksp 1. Originally i thought duna would have the same atm pressure as kerbin fsr, but if that bar was there then I wouldnt have spent a day wondering why the parachutes werent working as well...

In all honesty I didn't really consider that. I figured it was obvious what the atmosphere of a given body would be like; that's not really a fair assumption to make, especially for new players.

 

11 hours ago, Xelo said:

I forgot to mention that the extended stats (like pressure, and w/e )should only be visible (as in toggled) when you click on the bar itself, otherwise its just a regular old bar.

Ooh, I really like that idea!