Docking Alignment on Navball

[allmhuran]

No no, please reuse whenever you like.

The only way to completely solve the problem with instrumentation is to provide a view along another axis. The navball view is always looking straight out through your nose, which means the instrument cannot display any depth information. To get a perfect solution would require the involvement of another instrument, like a horizontal situation indicator. But I don't think we need to go that far... the iconography in those images I think accomplishes enough to solve any problems, although the specific graphics to use might need tweaking to improve clarity.

Edited July 30, 2013 by allmhuran

[innovine]

The purple target icon could easily have a little stick on it, indicating the roll of the target.

The purple target icon could also expand or contract to indicate distance, but I'd prefer a little range-to-target numeric display off to one side.

This might confuse things more than it helps, but what if the brown/blue equator on the navball could be set to lie in the orbital plane, wouldn't there be enough info in the current system to then dock (besides roll, which is not essential)..? ie if I know my target port is pointing straight up (orbit normal) and I'm pointing straight down, the offset of the pink marker tells me how to translate to get aligned, right? Works already like this in equatorial orbit, the problem to me seems like it's the more general case of inclined orbits causing the confusion (thanks Yourself for the long and enlightening post)

[filami]

Humm...I just had a though! When the attitude mode goes from Orbit to Target, doen't the navball rotates as well? Or does it keep aligned to the center of the planet? The North Pole could become the Par+ and the 0. dregree orange line could become the up vector of the docking port. No need for additional icons and you even get more information. Also, the Target relative speed could have a second line telling the distance to that target. That way you need nothing else other than the navball to make any type of docking (which is probably what pro astronauts do in space for reals).

[mic_e]

I support this to be in stock KSP.

[Aphobius]

Oh my god, when I see these threads. Seriously, whats wrong with docking? I can dock anything, small, big, unbalanced, 1 docking port, 7 docking ports ... anything and I can do it very fast.

Maybe you can't, but what do you want? To play a game and be able to do everything after 1 hour? There are enough stupid games like that on consoles, that doesn't require any thinking. Do you want to dumb down this game too?

Docking is working perfectly fine in stock game, you can dock anything without any difficulty, you don't miss any required information or indicators or anything, you've got enough "data" in the stock game to be able to dock anything. If you are not able to do it and you don't like learning new things, there are enough addons that gives you all the indicators you want or even do it for you.

PS: Your suggestion is not terribly bad, although you can dock anything in the stock game right now, the "instruments only" information is not complete. But I think the game, as it is now, makes people to understand much better whats happening with the crafts during the docking, makes you to think a little about vectors, forces etc. If we would be able to do it instruments only, people would just learn some simple procedure and would do it without any thinking, without understanding what really happens with the crafts. I'm just a little upset because people ignored my thread about SAS, while spamming useless threads and useless suggestions.

[Bel_Riose]

I support this suggestion, it will be useful.

Edited October 20, 2013 by Bel_Riose

[boomerdog2000]

This would be very nice to have, one of the only reasons I used mechjeb to help with docking was because it a setting to make your craft align with the docking port, then you translate it into position.

[Superfluous J]

Oh my god, when I see these threads. Seriously, whats wrong with docking? I can dock anything, small, big, unbalanced, 1 docking port, 7 docking ports ... anything and I can do it very fast.

Very good for you. I am not quite there but I'm working on it.

I had a huge initial hurdle though, that I suspect many others have that you didn't seem to. My brain just could not process and categorize all of the information (and there is a lot) no matter how many times I tried.

Then I installed Docking Port Alignment Indicator, which gave me that extra piece of info that allowed me to concentrate on what was important, I started to be able to dock consistently.

Then - and this happened just recently - the DPAI became extraneous. I didn't need it any more. I actually found the navball easier to use. When 0.22 came out, I never bothered reinstalling it and while I haven't docked yet, I doubt I will install it considering I was just dragging it off to the side and ignoring it.

But I truly don't think I'd have gotten to this point without it. I needed that alignment indicator. Once I had it, everything else fell into place.

[Tuareg]

I think you are entirely wrong. adding one more vector to make docking look more precise and decreasing the magnet force to don't make the whole station wobbling cos you docked a 5 kilo craft would not dumb down the game, it would make it even more difficult but sensible.

[allmappedout]

Docking instruments are 95% of how astronauts actually dock. This needs doing, if only for completeness.

[Kasuha]

I would be unsurprised if this has been suggested before, but my cursory glance did not reveal it...

A feature that seems lacking is the inability to determine axial alignment of docking ports when attempting to rendezvous. While the ports and velocities can be well aligned by virtue of the indicators on the navball, orientation remains unknown. I would like to see this remedied in some fashion, be it a 'gunsight,' inverse-normal, etc. At present, users have to make do with the functionality found in the Lazor Docking Camera mod (subset), or comparable.

I believe it should be remedied by a working and actually useful docking mode. The one which is already in the game is rather impractical.

Extending the navball by the rest of icons (normal/antinormal and radial in/out) would also help a lot as that would allow you to orient the docking port in a direction where it won't rotate with the orbit. There's a mod for it but it should definitely find its way to the core game.

[MrPopcup]

Nice suggestion, but meanwhile use Lazor docking cam, or docking indicator, those are really useful mods, I myself use Lazor, it just feels awesome to dock with a cam, specially if you can reach and understand the numbers on the right side of it, you can get 100% perfect docking!

[mic_e]

I just wrote a mod to provide this marker: http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/navball-docking-alignment-indicator/

Feedback is welcome.

[Superfluous J]

I just wrote a mod to provide this marker: http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/navball-docking-alignment-indicator/

Feedback is welcome.

You should make a thread for that, so we can more properly bestow our thanks on you.

Also, the standard is to have a folder inside your zip. Some people even make a GameData folder, and then a folder inside there. That way we can just drag the folder from the zip into our GameData folder.

I want this so bad though I'm willing to do the tiny bit of extra work

[Blue]

I also support the notion of having such an alignment feature being stock.

And this is coming from someone who managed a quadruple large-port doing before the SAS Improvement of v0.21.

[mic_e]

You should make a thread for that, so we can more properly bestow our thanks on you.

It's here: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/54303-0-22-Navball-docking-alignment-indicator

Also, the standard is to have a folder inside your zip. Some people even make a GameData folder, and then a folder inside there. That way we can just drag the folder from the zip into our GameData folder.

Actually, you don't need to place the DLL in any kind of subfolder, just put it into Plugins or GameData.

[EatVacuum]

Why not just switch to the other craft and turn the docking port the right way?

First because we should't have to. Second, what if it isn't manned?

We all know we can get around it if perhaps inconveniently. But one reason for making the requests is to make it more user friendly, especially for people who are new to the game. When this goes into it's real release a lot of people who try it are going to expect it to work well out of the box. They won't want to download a bunch of addons to get basic functionality.

[KwirkyJ]

mic_e, well-done! Pretty much what I was after when I started the thread.

Regarding distribution structure, while not necessary, it is customary to wrap your plugin in its own folder. Even though not provided as such, I've put (well, symlinked) the dll in /GameData/NavballDockingAlignment/Plugins.