Focus

[TechnicalK3rbal]

What does switching focus on the map view do? It still stays on the same spacecraft, it juts centers on the other one on the map. Are there any other functions/uses?

[Smidge204]

If you're trying to plan a maneuver, for example, if can be handy to have the view not centered on your ship. (Hint: You can put focus on maneuver nodes!)

It's also handy to put focus on ships you're not controlling just to get a different view of things, either for control so you can see what you're doing from a different angle, or cinematic reasons.

But yeah, all it does is change the camera's fixation point. If you want to control the other ship, you need to "switch to" it.

=Smidge=

[maccollo]

It's very useful when you are going to Jool.

Let's say you want to encounter Tylo and use it to get a gravity capture around Jool. This means you have to encounter it on the right side of Jool. If you do the Tylo intercept burn after you've encountered Jool this can cost several 100 m/s in deltaV.

Focusing on Jool will allow you to check this. You can see if you will get an encounter with any of the moons, and you can see the encounter and escape nodes.

This allows you to make minute course corrections way before you encounter Jool so that you will intercept the moon correctly.