Can we talk about accessibility?

[The Aziz]

This is a serious topic, and unfortunately, KSP2 fails on all fronts here. And I can only talk about problems with interface, but I'm sure there's plenty more things that can be improved. Plus, if anything, the 0.1.4 made it worse.

Look at this

Let's start from the top left. The "hamburger menu". Known to exist in most mobile apps, but absent from most desktop applications, except some browsers. Alright, it's a good idea to have a button AND a hotkey (Esc), just like staging does, but does it have to be an actual icon of a hamburger? Probably a snacks joke, haha. Okay, it's there but... it only works one way. There's no button to go back from the menu. Not very intuitive, is it? Meanwhile, a button with similar function (opening a menu of options) in App bar looks entirely different.

Next stop is on the right, the GFORCE window. Or is it a Gforce window? Maybe it's crew portait window? And if it is, why does it show empty seats? Where's that cyber Kerbal dummy that devs have shown us ages ago? Anyway, what matters is that the name has a hard time explaining what it is, because the GFORCE only applies to that thin strip on the left.

And I think another issue are the window names. Not only they're 8 pixels tall (at 1080p screen), very inconsistent in letter shape - look at any two same letters close to each other, they are not identical because the whole thing is badly compressed, but also inconsistent in letter size and style - for example, the resources window has the title made of 7 pixels, but also the separator isn't a dot, but a hyphen. And the whole theme makes it look like it's some placeholder codename, not an actual thing. Why is it ORBITAL.INFO, and not Orbital Info? Why is it TIME.WARP and not Time Warp? There's no reason to have it like that in a product that's not a prototype available only for the dev team.

Font choices. On that one screenshot I counted 12 (Twelve) different styles, including changes in font size. That is the opposite of unified interface, feels more like a bunch of different bits made by 5 different people, glued together to make a UI. We've got window names in two (at least) sizes, orbital parameters (also at least two sized AND styles), the navball there you can find another 3, timewarp window with 2 more, the resource window with another new size, and staging with at least two more.

Iconography. There isn't much here but there are two identical radiotelescope icons that do different things. One shows radio connection, the other is Tracking Station. That can be confusing. Also, all planets in the top left list have the same icon of Kerbin. I know it's an icon for "planet" but it's the same for moons.

 

The Navball. Oh the navball. I should explain that I am slightly visually impaired. Wearing glasses, short sighted, astigmatism, recently fighting (without effects) focus/contrast issues in my right eye. And there's no other way of saying this, the new dark mode of the navball looks like crap and is unreadable for me without leaning in and squinting. The tiny, very densely packed numbers blend with the background, the center bird blends with the background lines, the SAS icons can be barely seen against what's behind them. You could say to increase the size of the UI - but I don't think I should. I'm not that blind because, in KSP1, with roughly the same size of the ball, I had no problems reading the numbers. Here though, it's a complete blur.

Honestly, the most readable thing in this whole screenshot, is the FPS readout.

[MechBFP]

I agree completely. I actually didn't even notice things like the "gforce" text or the "sas.control", etc, text because my brain just completely ignored them because of their overall illegibility.

I can appreciate wanting to have a unique art style, but if the player can't easily read it then don't even bother putting it there or just change the font to something intended to be legible on computer monitors.

Edited August 31, 2023 by MechBFP

[chefsbrian]

Agreed, there's legibility issues, consistency issues, and the UI does a relatively poor job of using color and contrast to bring attention to important things - its instead used to highlight interactable elements, which leads to the buttons you usually don't press having permanent focus over the regularly relevant information. Highlighting them with color is good, but not exclusively over everything else.

That being said, I do think its on the right path - It needs work, but I like the general layout, Parts manager excluded. It just needs more time in the oven.

[AngryBaer]

I can't seem to agree with all of this. Stylistically I like everything about this KSP2 UI better. I have no trouble with the pixel style or the dot separators at all, though the compression artifacts I can agree on. I also love the nav ball colors but I can appreciate that I seem to be an odd case.  There was also a mention of color blindness in another thread which should be taken into consideration for sure. The inconsistent fonts and dot vs. hyphen cases can work if there's a consistent thematic reason for it, e.g. windows that close vs. windows that are permanent or constant values vs. variable ones.

As for the hamburger menu... I'd miss these things if they made the game more serious. Just fix the one way issue.

[mattihase]

Yeah, UI wise I get what they're going for aesthetic wise with it, but tbh all KSP2's UI has done for me in practice is made me appreciate how good a job KSP1's UI did in presenting information and options to the player in a readable and useful way. Icons and text are easy to pick out against backgrounds, relevant information is readily available next to where it's needed, right click menus/tweakables make good use of spacial relationships to distinguish different parts to the point where having multiple on screen contributes towards readablity rather than hurting it.  KSP1 runs laps around the UIs of RCT2/TTD rather than feeling like an evolutionary step backwards from them.

Obviously it had its problems and weirdness still, and frustrating map mode click lag  but I miss it.

[mattihase]

And to be clear: I don't have any disrespect to the designers of the new UI: I get what you were trying to do, i respect the ideas and I respect that you tried to make something new with them, I just don't think its turned out all that good in practice and that kind of thing happens all the time in software development, so no shame about it.

[Bej Kerman]

1 hour ago, mattihase said:

Yeah, UI wise I get what they're going for aesthetic wise with it, but tbh all KSP2's UI has done for me in practice is made me appreciate how good a job KSP1's UI did in presenting information and options to the player in a readable and useful way

I would not call putting the speed on the opposite side of the screen from the altimeter a very useful arrangement.

[The Aziz]

Let's not talk about the UI overall layout, that's entirely different conversation. KSP1, while obviously not very ergonomic to use, had all the information on the screen as clear as day. KSP2 went full on early LCD and let's face it, that era did not bring us improvements in readability. That was a compromise we accepted for getting more space, as the screens became flat. But it left us with small letters in weird shapes. The 1st gen console-style ain't helping either.

Of course, feel free to discuss other accessibility elements other than the interface.

Edited September 1, 2023 by The Aziz

[mattihase]

is the everything makes a noise when you hover over it creating a sensory overload nightmare a sound design issue or still just an interface issue?

i've had to turn most of the sound in the game off because so many elements of it are a nightmare and there's not enough granularity in sound options to get rid of the sounds that are the issue. Some "reduce clutter" tickboxes next to each volume slider would be sorely appreciated.

There Is some really nice sound design in the game, but I can't experience it because everything else is yelling at me constantly.

[The Aziz]

That is a valid point and yes sound generating sensory overload is related to accessibility. But, thankfully, it can be turned off, though as you point out, there could be more options.

It doesn't bother me much personally, although sometimes I hear blips not knowing where they come from.

[Periple]

I don’t like the pixelated UI style! It would be better with normal, more legible fonts and higher contrast. 

This is one area where options would be easy to do, at least for color themes! There could be an a11y mode with higher contrast and maybe bigger fonts, but I think the pixels would have to be ditched first.

[PDCWolf]

I just gotta say, it's infuriating to me when I'm inside submenus or even just pause menus and escape doesn't actually escape. THAT'S THE WHOLE POINT OF THE KEY, GET ME OUT OF HERE, GET WHAT'S IN FRONT OF MY FACE OUT OF IT.

In game > escape opens pause menu and stops the game > if I press escape again I ESCAPE THE MENU BACK TO THE GAME

Not even sure if it's the case with submenus, just wanted to vent.

Edited September 2, 2023 by PDCWolf

[Alexoff]

For me, the biggest mystery is these numbers around the navball. Why are they in the game? In real life, for some reason, pilots probably need them for orientation, but in KSP2 this just take up a huge amount of space on the screen. What should we do with these numbers in the game? Navball could have been made twice as big without them

[PDCWolf]

16 minutes ago, Alexoff said:

For me, the biggest mystery is these numbers around the navball. Why are they in the game? In real life, for some reason, pilots probably need them for orientation, but in KSP2 this just take up a huge amount of space on the screen. What should we do with these numbers in the game? Navball could have been made twice as big without them

In real life, most people found out that keeping things compact and short helps, not overly exploded elements all over the place.

Edit for clarity: This is the PFD with every possible element activated, this is what it looks like at its absolutely most cluttered worst.

Edited September 2, 2023 by PDCWolf

[Alexoff]

13 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

In real life, most people found out that keeping things compact and short helps, not overly exploded elements all over the place.

But I'm not even talking about compactness (this has been talked about a million times), but about the fact that a noticeable part of the interface is completely unnecessary information. Pilots have hundreds of different instruments in the cockpit that show something important, but this does not mean that all this is needed in a computer game.

[PDCWolf]

Just now, Alexoff said:

But I'm not even talking about compactness (this has been talked about a million times), but about the fact that a noticeable part of the interface is completely unnecessary information. Pilots have hundreds of different instruments in the cockpit that show something important, but this does not mean that all this is needed in a computer game.

Totally agree that the scroll tapes are completely unnecessary, the PFD was meant to show that you can still include them in a concrete, compact way.

[mattihase]

On 9/2/2023 at 12:30 PM, PDCWolf said:

I just gotta say, it's infuriating to me when I'm inside submenus or even just pause menus and escape doesn't actually escape. THAT'S THE WHOLE POINT OF THE KEY, GET ME OUT OF HERE, GET WHAT'S IN FRONT OF MY FACE OUT OF IT.

In game > escape opens pause menu and stops the game > if I press escape again I ESCAPE THE MENU BACK TO THE GAME

Not even sure if it's the case with submenus, just wanted to vent.

God yeah the keyboard support for UI is super patchy. There's a ton of stuff in the game we still need options for mapping and/or remapping. if we want it to be accessible in the future.

[InterstellarDrifter]

Yeah, I'm not really a fan of the 8bit computer programmer style they went for. I do dig the general shape and layout, but I think the stylization hinders a lot of potentially useful changes and visual functionality. Lower fidelity and alphanumerics really should be avoided, even at the cost of creativity, and especially when aviation is involved.

[mattihase]

I almost went with a similar old computer style for a projet but quickly rellegated the ide to optional in favour of using user-selected fonts for the sake of dyslexics.

 

 

[The Aziz]

Bringing this back because who in the world though this was a good idea

Looked at it and said yes, that's easy to read.

Lots of white lines over white lines over dark background.

[Bej Kerman]

1 hour ago, The Aziz said:

who in the world though this was a good idea

Looked at it and said yes, that's easy to read.

Clearly that designer wasn't you, cause I don't find it difficult to read. And furthermore, while your point about there being a lot of white lines might be understandable...

1 hour ago, The Aziz said:

over dark background

Since when was "bright on dark" considered an accessibility issue? The "dark background" part is a complete non-issue.

[The Aziz]

1 minute ago, Bej Kerman said:

Since when was "bright on dark" considered an accessibility issue? The "dark background" part is a complete non-issue.

There's no problem distinguishing the elements od "daytime" or rather, surface mode of the navball.  The markers have black outline and/or shadow which makes them easy to notice on a brighter background, but the outlines sort of blend in with the dark blue/brown surface of orbital mode, making the markers - at least the bird, the target, the maneuver (so, three most important markers for doing anything in space) indistinguishable from the rest of the white lines on the navball.

[mattihase]

are there mods to turn off orbital mode yet?

 

[The Aziz]

You can click back to surface mode, but that's hardly helpful.

[Vl3d]

On 9/1/2023 at 2:03 AM, The Aziz said:

Navball. Oh the navball. I should explain that I am slightly visually impaired. Wearing glasses, short sighted, astigmatism, recently fighting (without effects) focus/contrast issues in my right eye. And there's no other way of saying this, the new dark mode of the navball looks like crap and is unreadable for me without leaning in and squinting.

Unfortunately after some hours playing with the new dark NavBall I have to agree that I don't like it. It's hard to read and the lack of some bright colors is depressing. The KSP1 UI tended to make me happy for some reason.

On 9/1/2023 at 12:48 PM, mattihase said:

everything makes a noise when you hover over it creating a sensory overload nightmare a sound design issue

Yeah, the VAB hover sounds are starting to give me Tourettes.

Edited October 31, 2023 by Vl3d