Move the camera's point of focus from the center of mass to a selected part.

[zentarul]

When building big stations or off-world colonies (with USI and KAS) it can become very hard to position the camera in order to select some parts, especially if you have put them inside of a container module.

It would be very nice if you could hover a part with the mouse and then press a key on the keyboard to change the focus of the camera from the center of mass to the center of that part. You could then move from part to part until you have the view you desire. Press an other key and the camera gets re-centered on the center of mass.

I know we can go into free camera mode and use the middle mouse to pivot the camera, but it doesn't quite suffice when you have a very large craft and you want to get an angle pointing inwards from an offset position.

Cheers!

UPDATE

I made a mod that does exactly that! However, I still believe this behaviour should be stock as my implementation is a bit wonky and just overall a HACK!

Edited October 7, 2015 by zentarul
fixed it myself!

[zentarul]

To illustrate my problem with a simple case, I built a big rocket with a Service Bay near the top that holds a couple of Fuel Cells that I would like to active before launch and without assigning them to an action group.

Here is what my rocket looks like:

If I try to zoom on my rocket, I inevitably loose sight of the top of the rocket because the center of mass is at the bottom. Even if I use middle mouse button to pivot my camera towards the top, I don't get to see much:

And by playing with the free cam, this is the best I get if I want to interact with my Fuel Cell:

While this is the view that I would like to have:

http://imgur.com/gallery/th6en

[OmniscientQ]

Oh, yes, yes. A thousand times, yes. I frequently build rockets in which I need to swap control at launch from the rear-facing command module to a probe core buried underneath a fairing at the bottom of the stack... And trying to maneuver the camera is a huge pain.

[CaptainTurbomuffin]

Always been a problem

[klgraham1013]

I agree with this.

[zentarul]

Okay, so, I didn't turn my thumbs waiting for magic to happen and I asked myself: how hard can it be to make a ksp plugin? Turns out the answer is: not that hard, but not that simple. Anyway, I'll update the original post as I have made a plugin that does exactly what I am describing.