Poll: Orbit line fade, trailing or leading?

[Fwiffo]

KSP 1.1 added a nifty new feature where orbital trajectory lines are faded to indicate the direction your craft is traveling along them.  This gave rise to some heated debate as to which way the line should diminish, so Squad obliged us with the ability control it ourselves:

Now that we've had some time to play with it, I'm curious which choice is winning out with fans of the game.

Edited April 28, 2016 by Fwiffo
Fix images

[Fwiffo]

I didn't want to taint the first post with my own opinion, so here are my humble thoughts on why I prefer the "reversed" option:

• More intutive, since the visual cue prompted by a faded line is generally that the faded end is further away (in this case, further away in time)
• Easier to see the terminus of suborbital trajectories, especially on green planets (e.g. Jool)
  Spoiler

  Here are some user-posted pictures illustrating how the default option can become obscured:

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I do recognize it can make it slightly harder in some circumstances to place maneuver nodes in the far future.

[JedTech]

Just now, Fwiffo said:

 

I didn't want to taint the first post with my own opinion

 

Haha, well you already did with the green radio button selected in your first post.

[nli2work]

I guess I'm in the no difference camp...

Edited April 28, 2016 by nli2work

[Fwiffo]

Just now, JedTech said:

Haha, well you already did with the green radio button selected in your first post.

True, but if it's any defense I did wait until someone else had voted the other way!  Thanks for voting :-).

[Alshain]

1 minute ago, nli2work said:

set it however you like in settings.cfg

ORBIT_FADE_STRENGTH = 1
ORBIT_FADE_DIRECTION_INV = True

Or the easier way... in the graphics settings dialog.  Personally, I like it reversed and full strength

[nli2work]

yar. I mis-read the OP.  Now that I think about it... suborbital trajectory would be better with solid line like pre-1.1 to better see where you might land/splash down. orbital is okay with trailing.

Edited April 28, 2016 by nli2work

[pandaman]

I use reversed with 100% fade at the moment.

I get the logic of trailing, and it looks more intuitive when looking at orbital bodies etc, but in use in the game reversed works best for me overall.

[Armisael]

I'd like to see suborbital trajectories project entirely forward from your position (the same way intercepts work), but I like the current system. The comet trail analogy is much more intuitive to me.

[suicidejunkie]

Trails are great when you're observing and the future is not your problem.

Projections are critical when you're controlling, and the immediate future will be all your fault.

 

Thus, I would have to say I have a slight preference to see trails in (for example) youtube videos (as long as it doesn't cause the player to do badly - incompetence is irritating), but I will only use the reverse/projection or solid lines when playing personally.

[Brotoro]

"Trailing like a comet" is not a correct explanation. Comet tails do NOT trail behind comets. Comet tails are blown away from the Sun by radiation pressure and solar wind, independent of whether the comet is approaching or receding from the Sun.

[klgraham1013]

5 hours ago, Brotoro said:

"Trailing like a comet" is not a correct explanation. Comet tails do NOT trail behind comets. Comet tails are blown away from the Sun by radiation pressure and solar wind, independent of whether the comet is approaching or receding from the Sun.

 

Oh, snap!

[RocketSquid]

I use normal for orbital, and reversed for suborbital.

[Kepler68]

Seeing As the poll is split almost 50:50 you could simply add it as an option so everyone is satisfied

[suicidejunkie]

It might also be worth noting that the "Loading o)" animation on scene changes has the "reverse" leaders, rather than trails.

[eddiew]

An actually interesting poll   I'm with the 30%, I prefer a good prediction rather than a pretty jet trail - especially when trying to land on a waypoint.

[Superfluous J]

I reversed the lines the moment it was available and never looked back. I also played with fade settings and 90% seems good, though I'm going to go back to 100% to see if I like that better.

[steve_v]

Reversed, WRT the default, as I want to see where I'm going. But dialed so low it's almost no fade at all, so I voted "I dislike fading and prefer the pre-1.1 behavior". IMO the time spent on this "feature" could have been better spent on bugs.

[lttito]

Althought I prefer reversed, I think the most intuitive way to show the direction of movement will be to use the Pe and Ap markers pointing on that direction (they are currently arrows). Something like this:

[HebaruSan]

As the contributor of problem screenshot #2, I want to emphasize that the direction of the fade is not the important thing. I realize people have differing opinions about that, but it wouldn't even come up as a question if the core problem was acknowledged and addressed head-on.

Fading to transparent is simply the wrong approach. UI elements intended for inspection and interaction should not trend closer and closer to invisible at any point in their expanse. If we fail to see this, and assume that some part of the UI must be near-invisible, then we'll be stuck in pointless back and forth debates about which use cases should be made unusable, and no one will be persuaded to give up their preferred example. There are valid reasons for wanting to see every point on an orbit clearly, and that should be the goal.

But I do like the look of the stock behavior (it's true that it's not comet-like; "motion blur" is closer to the actual visual metaphor being invoked). It just needs to fade to black instead of transparent. Then on a zoomed out solar system starscape, it would look the same as current, preserving the intended "wow moment" of a cool looking diagram (at just about the only time when the faded portion of the orbit actually is pretty unimportant). Near a planetary body, a black line would be far more clearly visible against the surface. I suggested this in the original thread about this issue, but instead we got the ability to create mutually incomprehensible screenshots via configuration (remember that a consistent community experience is a primary reason we don't have procedural planets or incremental improvements to parts).

tl;dr: Let's fix the invisibility problem first, then see if we even still care about the directionality.

[Brotoro]

I don't think that "fade to black" is a desirable solution because it's not just visibility against planets that is a problem -- I've also run into visibility problems when trying to adjust an orbit to touch another orbit (which was hard to see against the background of space because, well, space is black).

But I'm perfectly happy with the adjustable orbit shading that Squad gave us. I set mine to reversed, but with 50% fading...so I get essentially solid orbits like the good ol' days, so I'm a happy camper.