Nav Ball Frustrations

[GWedge]

Please put a sign on the relative target velocity when in target mode.  There are also too many symbols on a relatively small display, it's hard to tell the difference between orbit directions, target markers and nav plan especially when they are all closely aligned. Perhaps some different colors in addition to a larger display would help. 

 

[BechMeister]

But deosnt it already show that?



Here you can see i am going 26.1 m/s relative to the target? - Is this what you were looking for?

Edited January 31 by BechMeister

[hatterson]

If by "sign" you mean + or -, then it's not really something they can do since going +26.1 m/s relative to the target has no no real meaning different than going -26.1 m/s relative to the target.

The only way that + and - would be meaningful would be tying them to vessel and/or target orientation, but that is near impossible to properly translate to three dimensions and spinning your ship would lead to wildly oscillating relative velocities which would be very confusing.

I can understand that on a small display seeing the difference between target markers, target relative velocity markers, and maneuver markers can get confusing, but I think the only real option there would be to allow resizing the nav ball independent of the rest of the UI to give you more visual detail

Edited January 31 by hatterson

[BechMeister]

14 minutes ago, hatterson said:

I can understand that on a small display seeing the difference between target markers, target relative velocity markers, and maneuver markers can get confusing, but I think the only real option there would be to allow resizing the nav ball independent of the rest of the UI to give you more visual detail

In flight of Nova a your prograde, retrograde, normal anti-normal, radial in/out are all visible in space around you. I think that gives you a lot of clairity. You also have a "local" "Anti-local" which shows the relative movement of the target.. but relative speed is, as far as i remember, just always shown in 1 number. Maybe it goes negative.. its been a while since i played it.

I love that system in that game.. but I am not sure I feel it has a home in KSP

[hatterson]

Just now, BechMeister said:

In flight of Nova a your prograde, retrograde, normal anti-normal, radial in/out are all visible in space around you. I think that gives you a lot of clairity. You also have a "local" "Anti-local" which shows the relative movement of the target.. but relative speed is, as far as i remember, just always shown in 1 number. Maybe it goes negative.. its been a while since i played it.

I love that system in that game.. but I am not sure I feel it has a home in KSP

Translating the nav bal into a HUD would be a cool system to give additional clarity.

[BechMeister]

25 minutes ago, hatterson said:

Translating the nav bal into a HUD would be a cool system to give additional clarity.

I think this is a good showcase on how they've solved it in that game:

 

[Poppa Wheelie]

20 hours ago, hatterson said:

If by "sign" you mean + or -, then it's not really something they can do since going +26.1 m/s relative to the target has no no real meaning different than going -26.1 m/s relative to the target.

 

I think it would be very useful to use positive and negative to indicate if your distance to target (at the indicated relative velocity) is increasing or decreasing.

[hatterson]

40 minutes ago, Poppa Wheelie said:

I think it would be very useful to use positive and negative to indicate if your distance to target (at the indicated relative velocity) is increasing or decreasing.

I think that would be better resolved by having a distance to target item with a little up or down arrow for increasing or decreasing, especially since the +/- wouldn't apply to other nav ball modes like surface or orbit.

There also be confusion about what +/- means. If + relative velocity means that you're getting closer then if you're at a standstill and burn away from the target, your relative velocity would decrease, which would feel weird. If - relative velocity means you're getting closer, then if you're approaching and burn retrograde you'd see your relative velocity "increase" (going from say -100 to -50) which could feel weird and I think would increase the likelihood of someone being confused between burning away from a target to kill velocity vs burning retrograde to kill relative velocity.