UI / UX Feedback Megathread

[Vl3d]

• I can't stand the dark NavBall anymore! I hate it. I like how the colorful blue / brown one looks like. At least make the dark NavBall colors a little brighter / better contrast (they look like dirt).
• And please fix the pixelated bitmap graphics (icons).
• The engine icon in staging looks like a championship cup - why not use the same icons as in the parts catalogue?
• And there are too many fonts.
• And I miss how sharp the map view looks in KSP 1.
• SOI enter / exit splashes are too big when zooming in.
• Panning is difficult and buggy. Zooming is not smooth.
• Wings need procedural gizmos.
• In VAB the craft is not centered on the absolute coordinates, not on the visible screen space excluding the parts catalogue.
• I want to be able to press >>> again in the Burn Timer so it goes down to 5 seconds from 30 s.
• Abort / Science / Parts Manager could use their own hotkeys (to perform actions and quickly close PM).
• Move Abort button to the top of the Vessel Actions bar.
• We really need a precision controls tool for maneuver nodes.
• Ablator is not displayed in the Vessel Resource window.
• Displaying available monoprop delta-v would be useful.
• Don't change the stage display mode from detailed to minimal when closing the Delta-V Tool in the VAB.
• Make the stage display mode bar be clickable up to the right edge of the screen (extend its click area to the right).
• I have issues when dragging stages to change their order. I have to drag on top of another stage, not between them. It doesn't work properly sometimes.
• We need an inclination change reference point relative to the CB equator.
• I hate the fairing designer tool - it's clunky. Please add auto-shaping smooth / aerodynamic fairings.
• We cannot select / switch to planted Flags in the Tracking Station.
• Pause the game when pressing ESC.
• Pause tutorial videos using SpaceBar.
• Pan the tech tree using left-click + drag anywhere.
• Add a part / engine comparison tool to the Parts Catalogue in VAB.
• Add a way to rename our space agency / change its flag.
• Improve the Workspace Save / Load workflow - it is still very confusing - eg. why do I need to name both the workspace and the vehicle? Generate the workspace name from the vehicle name or vice-versa. Or better yet - why can't I save more than one named vehicle in a Workspace?
• Add folders to the Save / Load in the VAB.
• Display hotkeys in the pop-ups while hovering the mouse over buttons in the VAB (eg. symmetry / snap).
• Fix the blurry Center-Of spheres.
• Add ability to write notes / add check-boxes in the engineer report.
• Make the delta-V map tool accessible from map / tracking station / flight view.
• In flight view allow middle click to center the camera on a vehicle component like in VAB.
• Mission objectives tool should be accessible in VAB.
• Display how much fuel tanks have in the Parts Manager.
• Reduce time warp when entering new SOI.

Edited December 29, 2023 by Vl3d

[Poppa Wheelie]

5 hours ago, Vl3d said:

why can't I save more than one named vehicle in a Workspace?

This!

[Sp1f]

The flight report has buttons to link to the training center and  KSC. Why not mission control too? If I complete a mission, recover the vessel and get the nice flight report popup, it would be nice to just 1 click straight to Mission Control to submit my report.

Specific rover testing track at KSC. Is that an UI thing? Probly not, but I suggest it anyway. People have always tested rovers around KSC on runways and the grasslands ang hills in the area. Why not a dedicated track with slopes, obstacles, jumps, etc. People would do races and challenges on it too. Make it happen devs, I have believed in you from the start.

[MechBFP]

The camera (oh dear god please fix that abomination as soon as possible, it is insufferable) followed by an actual transfer planner for interplanetary missions.

[Mister Spock]

I like the game, but the UI is sometimes hard to read. Specific issues:

1. The navball's altimeter and speed readouts block the compass headings at either side. I can't figure out which way is East when I launch. Can these readouts please be moved?

2. In map view, as others have noted, fonts are too small and hard to read. I have to squint to see what the AP and PE height are. 

3. As others said, we really need a more precise alternative to the gizmo arrows. A text editor for maneuver nodes, say.

[ADarkHorse]

Fresh in my mind, as in it just made me quit in frustration, is that the maneuver node is still unusable:

• Why can you not plan a maneuver while paused? I end up fighting the maneuver node controls and then miss my burn.
• The pinning of periapsis and apoapsis is unreliable, they seem to randomly unpin. Also please show the values by default, don't make me open them up and pin them one by one. Or at least make it so that pinning one pins the other.
• Let us see and modify what the number values for the maneuver are. As others have said it's very difficult to notice or revert an accidental change.
• Moving the maneuver node is still difficult to do without accidentally dragging one of the directional modifiers. Perhaps have a "move" icon outside of the node that you can click to drag it so that it's not an awkward space in the centre which ends up overlapped.

 

I second that the pixellated style is just awful on 1440p. Icons are unrecognisable, text is unreadable, even the "Launch" button, which you would want to be iconic in a way, instead of having a neat array of dots has a - | - | - | - pattern due to the way they are stretched  and interpolated, in terms of presentation it's very bad, and I don't know anyone who doesn't use 1440p+ these days, even on laptops. In the short term (I don't know if it's practical, and sorry for making a suggestion) but could the UI rendered at the same scale it would be rendered at in 1080p as a debug option? I know it'll look tiny, I can live with that, but at least it would be sharp?

Please, please ditch the pixel font and use proper aliasable monospace fonts which can scale up and down correctly.

[Vl3d]

10 hours ago, MechBFP said:

The camera (oh dear god please fix that abomination as soon as possible, it is insufferable) followed by an actual transfer planner for interplanetary missions.

I would argue you do not need a transfer planner for interplanetary missions. Having "next / previous orbit" buttons (not yet added) combined with moving the maneuver node around the orbit and checking the 1A:1B / 2A:2B encounter distances (added in KSP2) should be enough to easily get any transfer right.

[MechBFP]

2 hours ago, Vl3d said:

I would argue you do not need a transfer planner for interplanetary missions. Having "next / previous orbit" buttons (not yet added) combined with moving the maneuver node around the orbit and checking the 1A:1B / 2A:2B encounter distances (added in KSP2) should be enough to easily get any transfer right.

I would argue that you do, because the game specifically tells you that to get to Duna you need a 45 degree phase angle, and the only way to accomplish that is to hold a protractor up to your screen in order to measure that. That is of course ridiculous to do more than once so the game should, at a bare minimum, show the current phase angles between planets.

Edited December 22, 2023 by MechBFP

[The Aziz]

6 hours ago, ADarkHorse said:

and I don't know anyone who doesn't use 1440p+ these days, even on laptops.

69% of steam users are on 1080p or less. And believe me...

6 hours ago, ADarkHorse said:

could the UI rendered at the same scale it would be rendered at in 1080p as a debug option? I know it'll look tiny, I can live with that, but at least it would be sharp?

On that resolution it looks like excrement. In comparison, 1440p screenshots I've seen look twice as sharp.

[hikerchick29]

22 hours ago, Vl3d said:

• I hate the fairing designer tool - it's clunky. Please add auto-shaping smooth / aerodynamic fairings.

On this note:  Why is it seemingly impossible to build a midships payload fairing?  I'm stuck stacking my lander on top of my command module because constructed fairings cannot snap to other parts like they could in the first game.

[DigitalEva]

Everybody has mentioned almost every other window in the UI to death, so I'm not going to mention it again, other than in passing (I'm near-sighted, using glasses). Where it is a huge problem for me is in menus like the Key Bindings. The font used for the keys is basically illegible on a 32" screen (Using a RCA TV), and is just a couple of pixels on my laptop screen.

And I'll definitely throw my support behind unifying the fonts.

[kurzninja]

Maybe this isn't strictly UI/UX, but when you create a maneuver node and you get the burn time window that pops up, the information in the window does not update if you change the engine's thrust limiter. The only way I was able to make the info display update was to go back into map mode, open up the maneuver node's controls and click on one of the controls. This doesn't alter the maneuver but it's necessary to make the calculations update. In KSP1, the times would update to match the current engine thrust limit immediately. 

[HebaruSan]

On 12/21/2023 at 9:48 AM, Tallenn said:

In KSP 1, I only made the grossest changes to a maneuver node by dragging the icons on the node itself. It's just too easy to grab the wrong icon, and minute changes are near impossible. I always used to just use the node icons to get the node "somewhat close", then fine tune it with the maneuver gizmo.

Even back then, I often found it easiest to perform the rough burn, then flip on the RCS and fine tune with HNIJKL, which conveniently also cuts out issues with engine power and throttling.

[TROPtastic]

From the perspective of a new KSP2 player and someone who only has a dozen hours in KSP1:

Tutorials:

Changing the "Continue" button to "Restart" when you fail a tutorial would add clarity. When I accidentally failed a VAB tutorial and was told to "Try again", I clicked on "End Tutorial" since that was more intuitive to me than "Continue". My logic was that I wasn't sure what I would "continue" with. Clearly not the tutorial, since I was told to try again, so would clicking "Continue" keep me in the VAB to mess around freely? Turns out that no, you need to "continue" to restart, which is strange.

Maneuver plans:

UI elements like the Kerbin PE and celestial bodies can block maneuver plan gizmos, and the gizmo itself can be hard to position on an orbit because the "gizmo arrows" also count as adjustment handles that take priority over the gizmo location (yellow). This can lead to some very unfriendly click zones and conflicting behaviour (shown in purple where the pink and blue click zones overlap):

Curiously, this only happens while the game is unpaused, with the gizmo handle highlighting correctly when the game is paused (which is unfortunately not helpful). The bad behaviour could be improved by making the gizmo location handle always have priority, but it would be better to get rid of the clickable lines entirely and rely on the intuitive, clear orientation handles for manipulation. This makes the click zones simpler and easier to use:

However, I would suggest making the yellow location handle the size of the full maneuver plan icon, rather than smaller as it is now.

Being unable to adjust a maneuver plan while paused is mildly annoying. I imagine this is because the game is completely paused rather than being a technically-complex Microsoft Flight Simulator-style "live pause", but it would still be nice to have the ability to pause and plan maneuvers.

Also, you can't create maneuver plans within a sphere of influence until you actually cross into the SOI, which adds to the number of actions necessary to make capture burns. Compare "complete escape burn -> timewarp -> create capture maneuver -> timewarp -> complete capture burn" (the current situation) to "complete escape burn -> create capture maneuver -> timewarp -> complete capture burn". Getting rid of one "timewarp" stage saves multiple clicks and reduces stress by allowing capture maneuvers to be planned much earlier.

The AP and PE not being shown on maneuver plans makes planning burns more difficult than they need to be since you always need to "adjust, pause, mouseover tooltip to check PE, repeat" rather than getting instant visual feedback of the planned maneuver's AP and PE. The KSP1 maneuver node adjustment had everything you needed to see and adjust a maneuver precisely.

Orbit trajectories:

The AP and PE should always be displayed in the map view on orbit trajectories since those are always useful when trying to move in space. Mousing over them to display them is an extra step that takes time away from anything else the player could be doing, which is important when a predictably-Kerbal accident happens and you need to react quickly.

Text legibility:

Removing the "serifs" from the middle of all "zero" characters would greatly improve the ability to distinguish at a glance between 0 and 8. On this forum, imagine if 0s had small dots or lines in them. I understand that in situations where an O and a 0 could be close to each other, the serifs could be useful, but given the numbers-heavy experience of KSP it's better to maximize the legibility of the number characters among themselves.

Edited December 25, 2023 by TROPtastic
updated image links to hopefully not expire

[ArmchairGravy]

I am playing in 1280 resolution, so the entire navigation  UI is pretty much illegible. The nav ball is a blur with a red line and the Apo/Peri numbers are too small and blurry to see.

[ArmchairGravy]

Here's an example of bad UI: The box color with the text color means I can't see what's being typed.

[ArmchairGravy]

There is currently a massive lack of information for new users to be able to really effectively play the game. You've simplified the UI by discarding the ability to access the deeper knowledge of the game. I would like to know my latitude, longitude, eccentricity, inclination, and angles of peri/api because I'm able to use this information because it was there for me to learn how it matters. New players shouldn't have to access the web for a transfer window calculator. That should be in the tracking station and it should show the math. Not force you to learn it, but be there so you can. But first it has to be there, somewhere and not as a mod.

There is too much clutter on the map screen. Icons need to be toggled off. The persistent Apo/Peri markers should be replaced by colored dots. Green for apoapsis, red for periapsis. If I mouse over the marker, then expand the dot and let me lock it. We need the station/probe/rover icons back so we can tell at a glance what's where.

The flight cameras are wonky, to say the least.

[Arguswastaken]

I don't hate the new pixelated font but I want the ability to choose a smoother, better defined font to replace it. I'm not sure which I would prefer yet, because I'd need to try both to figure that out, but in general I think a lot of people would appreciate having that option. Personally I find a lot of the UI in this game to be really hard to look at, partly due to the font, but also because they tend to just be big boxes cluttered with text.

Especially the new science menu. I just don't like it. I think it's too dense with text and numbers that I don't really need. I always did like reading the flavour text in KSP 1 and I see that it's present now too, but it strikes me as unusual how small and insignificant it is in the menu and that I have to expand it to read it all, as if it's some kind of bespoke data that you're rarely ever meant to look at.

[Vl3d]

Oh and by the way.. how do you like this clutter? Spoiler: it only gets worse from here.

Edited December 25, 2023 by Vl3d

[MechBFP]

4 hours ago, Vl3d said:

Oh and by the way.. how do you like this clutter? Spoiler: it only gets worse from here.
 

 

My solution:

Oops! All destroyed!

[ArmchairGravy]

7 hours ago, Vl3d said:

Oh and by the way.. how do you like this clutter? Spoiler: it only gets worse from here.

Compare to KSP1

The only information on the screen is the stuff I need to know now.

Edited December 26, 2023 by ArmchairGravy

[Vl3d]

5 hours ago, ArmchairGravy said:

Compare to KSP1

The only information on the screen is the stuff I need to know now.

The lines in KSP1 look cleaner, better contrast.

[karstux]

I've played a few hours of For Science! now, these would be my main frustrations regarding UI/UX:

VAB:

• Loading/Saving of crafts is confusing as hell.  But I think you know that already.
• CoM/CoT indicators are too imprecise. When designing asymmetrical craft, it's hard to align engines precisely under the center of mass. Make those textures crisp!

Maneuver planning:

• when adjusting a maneuver node, let me see the orbital parameters of the resulting orbit. I'd like to know at least apoapsis, periapsis, inclination and orbital period of the new orbit - live and permanently visible, without having to hover or click any labels. 
• we need! a maneuver node editor separate from the node gizmos. A text-based window that allows changing the node values over different orders of magnitude, like in KSP1.

Map view:

• where's north?  Maybe it's just me, but to make sense of the navball heading values, you have to know where 0 degrees north is pointing to. I found this surprisingly hard. 
• target orbit ground track. When launching to intercept a craft in orbit, or to Minmus, I'd like to know when the launch site is "below" the target orbit, and what my launch heading should be. Right now I can only roughly eyeball it. A ground track projection would help a lot.

[Superfluous J]

Haven't seen this one but sorry if it's in here already.

In addition to all the other vessel/workspace saving confusion and issues, once I name a vessel and a workspace, every other time I click save, the game should just save the ship/workspace.

You don't need to confirm with me that I want to overwrite the same file over and over and over.

..and over.

Edited December 28, 2023 by Superfluous J

[kurzninja]

One other thing that I find I'm sorely missing is the ability to see my tracked missions while in the VAB.  I hate having to exit the VAB and go back to Mission Control just to review my tracked mission requirements/goals.