Amazing New Discovery --- Portrait Mode

[DMagic]

So, whilst playing around with my monitor's new desk mount arm I had a bit of an epiphany; why don't I try KSP in portrait mode. I mean, the game is rather vertically oriented; it has rockets, you go up, the stages are arranged along the side, it even has a vertical assembly building. After a quick settings.cfg file change I was ready to go. Let's compare the old landscape mode with the new portrait mode.

Cue the

; wasted space on the sides, and it can barely fit this wimpy thing on the screen:

And now the portrait version:

It goes on forever, and, oh my god,

Maybe it's not always practical; menus are bit wonky, the map view isn't ideal, and a lot of buildings are cut off at the space center, but still, just look at it. And the VAB seems to work fine, this might even be a much better arrangement; you can see your rocket easier and the part list won't have so many pages.

[RobSan]

it's easier to see the entire build without scrolling up and down all the time.

[Vector]

Very nice. Would also help if the navball and altitude indicator were not right in the center.

[Johnno]

Sure it looks useful for construction and launch, but how do you feel that it works in orbit / space?

[DMagic]

I tried it out for part of my Eeloo mission last night. I already had a small probe lander in orbit around Eeloo, so I just landed, took off, and rendezvoused in orbit again. It worked out pretty well, even though I was using very small crafts. Setting up an intercept for docking in map view took a little getting used to, but it worked fine. And it's nice to be able to fit the entire Engineer window on screen at once, with all four sections open.

I'll keep doing it this way to see how it goes.

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Oh, no no no. I was looking for an excuse to buy a new monitor... now I have one. You know, I NEED one with a good mounting mechanism... crap.

[CatastrophicFailure]

Hmmmmmmmm now how to mount both without that "Kerbal gaping up at the ceiling" neck strain.....?

[Xorth Tanovar]

Too bad we don't have multi-monitor support yet. Having my 22" run the instruments and show the map display while the 32" gets mounted portrait-style for "rocketry view" would be....AWESOME.

[Jeb Kerm�an]

Too bad we don't have multi-monitor support yet. Having my 22" run the instruments and show the map display while the 32" gets mounted portrait-style for "rocketry view" would be....AWESOME.

Jebediah Kerman approves this statement.

[DMagic]

Too bad we don't have multi-monitor support yet. Having my 22" run the instruments and show the map display while the 32" gets mounted portrait-style for "rocketry view" would be....AWESOME.

I was just thinking the exact same thing. The extreme setup would be three screens. One for map, one for the main view and one for IVA.

[jduchock]

I am eagerly awaiting Oculus Rift support (http://www.oculusvr.com/)

Buddy of mine has it and it is amazing...the space demo was breathtaking...

[DMagic]

Here's an example from the next part of my Eeloo mission using very small crafts. These are uncropped screenshots stuck together in PS.

You can see how map view can be a little cramped, but I was able to rendezvous for docking pretty easily. It takes some getting used to, but I think I like it. I play in a 1050*1680 window on a 1920*1200 monitor, so I can make the window wider. 1200*1680 might give me a little more room on the sides.

[allmappedout]

Too bad we don't have multi-monitor support yet. Having my 22" run the instruments and show the map display while the 32" gets mounted portrait-style for "rocketry view" would be....AWESOME.

It's the dream. Honestly, as soon as multi-monitor happens, KSP is going straight into my TV. Massive map screen in 42" glory, proper Mission Control Style, and of course the laptop, on its side

[CatastrophicFailure]

Here's an example from the next part of my Eeloo mission using very small crafts. These are uncropped screenshots stuck together in PS.

You can see how map view can be a little cramped, but I was able to rendezvous for docking pretty easily. It takes some getting used to, but I think I like it. I play in a 1050*1680 window on a 1920*1200 monitor, so I can make the window wider. 1200*1680 might give me a little more room on the sides.

Do you rotate your monitor back & forth as needed (vertical for ksp, horizontal for other things) or is that a dedicated setup? How bout a pic of the whole thing?

[CatastrophicFailure]

Technically nothing's really being lost in the map view, it's just different.

[DMagic]

Do you rotate your monitor back & forth as needed (vertical for ksp, horizontal for other things) or is that a dedicated setup? How bout a pic of the whole thing?

Because I'm using a mount arm my monitor doesn't automatically switch between landscape and portrait layout. I need to setup a hot-key for that since it can be a little awkward. But for now I just rotate it to portrait for KSP and then back for everything else. It's a 27" monitor, which makes it a bit too high for regular use for me. I'll get some pics later today or tomorrow.

[OrtwinS]

Very interesting.

The map view one needs to get used to. Mostly because our 'normal' eyesight is horizontally oriented.

Nothing misses, and everything seems to work...

I'd try this out as well, if I weren't playing on a Notebook...

[Leveller]

I use 3x 27" for gaming. Not KSP thou. Just other flightsims and stuff. Tried playing KSP in 7060x1080 or something. Was awesome but... odd.

[DMagic]

Do you rotate your monitor back & forth as needed (vertical for ksp, horizontal for other things) or is that a dedicated setup? How bout a pic of the whole thing?

I found out how to setup Catalyst Control Center to switch between landscape and portrait with hotkeys. Now I just need a way to get KSP to switch resolutions on the fly (the in-game settings panel won't work for putting it in portrait mode). I have an Ergotron MX mounting arm, which is a bit expensive, but it's heavy duty and can hold up my Dell 2709w with ease (this is an old fluorescent backlit, 16:10, 27" monitor, which is a lot heavier than the new LED versions), it looks nice too. It's very easy to switch between landscape and portrait.

I found that putting it at 1195*1650 works pretty well (1200*1650 doesn't seem to work in windowed mode); it's still very tall, but wide enough so that map mode works a bit better. You can see how it cuts off some of the space center, but you can rotate the view; it works great for my unbalanced SAS tester rocket.

And here's the standard mode.

[allmappedout]

Awe. Some.

I am in awe. It's just exactly how KSP should be played! If only they had multi-screen support too!

[Flowz0r]

You know what would go amazing with this? Proper multi-monitor support.

So you could have the regular view on the portrait mode screen, and the map view on another, regular monitor at the same time.

[Amram]

You know what would go amazing with this? Proper multi-monitor support.

I'd settle even for the game permitting more than one window for display functions letting us divide up our displays, be they x, 2x, 3x, 6x, or 9x.

Has the advantage that the game need not care whether there is 1 or 20 displays, it just creates new windows on demand and lets them show whatever they wanted to show. Windows itself can full screen a window to whatever screen its on.

Though I do agree, multi-monitor support itself would be great, and either would compliment this so much.

[SpaceSphereOfDeath]

I too am in favour of multi-monitor support

[AGTMADCAT]

I'd settle even for the game permitting more than one window for display functions letting us divide up our displays, be they x, 2x, 3x, 6x, or 9x.

Has the advantage that the game need not care whether there is 1 or 20 displays, it just creates new windows on demand and lets them show whatever they wanted to show. Windows itself can full screen a window to whatever screen its on.

Though I do agree, multi-monitor support itself would be great, and either would compliment this so much.

This! No need to program specifically for multiple monitors - just give us multiple windows, and we can sort out their placement ourselves. I would actually probably be willing to rig up my gaming PC to my living room TV, to get that "mission control" feeling.

[DMagic]

I'm not sure that multi monitor is a problem. I think most solutions just pretend that you have one high resolution monitor stretched out over several actual monitors. Then you can just set KSP at a very high resolution and stretch it out over multiple monitors.

The multiple windows thing is a Unity limitation though. I agree it would be great, but I wouldn't hold your breath.