Finding navball markers without turning the ship

[Hupf]

Situation: in space with slow rotation authority. Wanting to point to any of the navball markers (e.g. Target, Retrograde...) manually.

On the navball, I only see the markers that are currently in front of me, so I have to actually turn the ship (sloow) to find out where the others are (i.e. to find out which direction I have to turn to).

Is there some sort of hidden feature so that I can "look around" on the navball prior to turning?

I can only think of putting parts with "Control from here" ability pointing to various directions.

[bewing]

Well, sometimes mental arithmetic can help. If you want prograde, and you are in a standard orbit -- then you want to be pointing mostly east = 90 degrees. If you want retrograde, then you want 270 degrees. North/normal is usually 0/360 degrees, and south is usually around 180 degrees. Out is usually toward the middle of the blue, and in is usually toward the middle of the brown. So you can often take a guess and start rotating that way.

If you want prograde, and you are looking at a retrograde marker on the navball, then you want to spin all the way to the other side, of course. (Directly away from the marker that you see.)

You probably just said "I know all that" -- and the problem comes when you are in a highly inclined or retrograde orbit. One other trick you can do is to turn on your SAS, and click the thingy that you want -- then immediately turn off SAS again. It'll start you rotating in something resembling the correct direction.

One last trick you can do is to turn on a manuever node, and pull the indicator that you want, then finalize the maneuver node. An arrow will suddenly appear on your navball telling you exactly which direction to rotate. Then hit the little X on the deltaV bar to kill the maneuver node.

Edited July 28, 2016 by bewing

[fourfa]

There's a mod called NavHud that would help a lot

[Alshain]

There used to be a mod called Enhanced NavBall for this but much of it was implemented into stock, and unfortunately the mod developer hasn't been seen in a while.  I tried to get it running myself with just the one remaining non-stock feature but sadly I was unable to.

There is no stock way to get what you want, it would seem NavHud is the only active mod solution.  It's not ideal though as it's very 'intrusive' depending on your personal definition of what breaks immersion.

Edited July 28, 2016 by Alshain

[Hupf]

@bewing: I actually forgot to mention that mostly this poses a problem for me when in Target Mode (and not seeing the target yet) or deeper in space.

The NavHud does exactly what I was looking for and on top of that looks ing awesome! Thanks for the hint.

[Trann]

2 hours ago, Alshain said:

There used to be a mod called Enhanced NavBall for this but much of it was implemented into stock, and unfortunately the mod developer hasn't been seen in a while.  I tried to get it running myself with just the one remaining non-stock feature...

Excitement intensifies!

 

2 hours ago, Alshain said:

...but sadly I was unable to.

Awww...

 

Ah, well.

[coredumpster]

An option I've used is create a dummy maneuver node with very slight pro/retro/normal/anti, whatever direction I'm looking for.

This will create a target icon aligned with the direction, and then you get the magic blue arrow on the navball to tell you which way the target icon is located from your current orientation.

Short of that, nope, no other way unfortunately that I know of.