NAV-Ball Guide

[jebowlin72]

Has anyone thought of doing a tutorial on the NAV-ball and "How-To" read the fuel guadge, I've gotten most of it figured out myself for the most part and thought of doing a tutorial myself, but my PC is not up to the task, litteraly, it runs KSP mostly fine, but if I add the stress of a video capture software on top, my PC will vomit its OS, or it tries to.

I know that I enjoy the informative tutorial video every now and then (especially when things go horribly wrong) and I believe this is needed to understand some of the game mechanics, or I'm just way off the mark and guessing will just have to do.

[pebble_garden]

An attitude indicator tutorial is the very next item in my to-do list, Jebowlin.

Though I'm not sure what 'fuel gauge' you're referring to. The staging queue?

[Cykyrios]

Version 0.17 now features tutorials, one of which explains how to use the navball. If you are playing the demo, the basics are as following:

- Yellow circle is your prograde vector - the direction you're moving

- Yellow crossed circle is your retrograde vector - the opposite direction

- Purple markers point to KSC (and KSC 2, apparently)

Other than that, you just have to read the coordinates, but that won't tell you what you have to do in which situation, though.

[jebowlin72]

i meant throttle guage, not fuel gage. sorry

[jebowlin72]

Version 0.17 now features tutorials, one of which explains how to use the navball. If you are playing the demo, the basics are as following:

- Yellow circle is your prograde vector - the direction you're moving

- Yellow crossed circle is your retrograde vector - the opposite direction

- Purple markers point to KSC (and KSC 2, apparently)

Other than that, you just have to read the coordinates, but that won't tell you what you have to do in which situation, though.

the co-ordinates part is what i wnat to know more about actually I knew about the reticles, both yellow(self-explanitory) and purple(not so intuitive) long before Ksp came out I know avery little about the nav-ball, but want to know more. I guess i cant really explain what i want, but anything will help at this point.

[pebble_garden]

The attitude indicator shows your craft's orientation relative to the ground directly beneath you.

The ladder-like horizontal marks show degrees of pitch above or below level flight, and the vertical lines show your heading, relative to the planet's north-south axis.

The instrument was originally developed for aircraft flying in poor visibility, and recreates the unseen horizon. But because spacecraft fly so high above the ground, the horizon you see doesn't match the one in the instrument. It doesn't take altitude into account.

If you point your ship's nose directly at the ground, you'll see the brown half of the ball. The heading lines radiating from that center dot are analogous to what you'd see looking down at a compass.

Now if you fly level, so the ball is half brown/half blue, and you turn to put the orange line in the center of the ball, you're facing north, just as if you were standing on the ground, facing the horizon, looking north. Turn 180 degrees (with the horizon still showing), and you're facing south.

Imagine a globe of the Earth. Draw a line from the north pole to the south pole. Imagine a line of people standing on the ground at every point along that line. Tell them all to look north, and they'll do so facing their local horizon. But because the Earth is curved, people at different latitudes will be looking north at slightly different angles. The most extreme example is someone standing 1 mile from the north pole. Her idea of 'north' is almost exactly 180 degrees in pitch DIFFERENT than another person standing 1 mile from the south pole. But on a flat map, they're both looking north.

I wish this was easier to explain, but it's hard to do so without pictures.

Edited October 6, 2012 by pebble_garden

[jebowlin72]

The attitude indicator shows your craft's orientation relative to the ground directly beneath you.

The ladder-like horizontal marks show degrees of pitch above or below level flight, and the vertical lines show your heading, relative to the planet's north-south axis.

The instrument was originally developed for aircraft flying in poor visibility, and recreates the unseen horizon. But because spacecraft fly so high above the ground, the horizon you see doesn't match the one in the instrument. It doesn't take altitude into account.

If you point your ship's nose directly at the ground, you'll see the brown half of the ball. The heading lines radiating from that center dot are analogous to what you'd see looking down at a compass.

Now if you fly level, so the ball is half brown/half blue, and you turn to put the orange line in the center of the ball, you're facing north, just as if you were standing on the ground, facing the horizon, looking north. Turn 180 degrees (with the horizon still showing), and you're facing south.

Imagine a globe of the Earth. Draw a line from the north pole to the south pole. Imagine a line of people standing on the ground at every point along that line. Tell them all to look north, and they'll do so facing their local horizon. But because the Earth is curved, people at different latitudes will be looking north at slightly different angles. The most extreme example is someone standing 1 mile from the north pole. Her idea of 'north' is almost exactly 180 degrees in pitch DIFFERENT than another person standing 1 mile from the south pole. But on a flat map, they're both looking north.

I wish this was easier to explain, but it's hard to do so without pictures.

and that is why i was requesting a tutorial. but everything you explained is what i had guessed at.