Navball question

[Mister Kerman]

Hey guys. This topic might be in the wrong section, but I have a question about the way the nav-ball is oriented.

I think your alignment point is always on the part of the ball relative to the angle the face of your selected command pod it's facing, and the orange portion of the ball always rests closest to the pull of gravity; but why does north on the nav-ball appear to be facing south, while east is to the right like normal.

The only conclusion I can come up with is that it's not North, east, south, and west oriented. It's more like an X, Y graph representation or something, since the longitudinal rotation never changes, your ship's orientation rotates around it instead... I'm starting to confuse myself!

Can someone explain this crazy thing to me?

[RenevB]

It's because you're looking up. Imagine a compass rose painted on something transparent, put that on the ground pointing in the correct direction, then lift it up and look from below. Depending on how you turned your head North-South or East-West will have switched.

[vidboi]

This should be in Gameplay Questions and Tutorials, but I'll answer nonetheless.

Basically, you're thinking of a traditional compass which is designed to show you the direction to other things. However, the navball shows you the direction you're pointing in, which is slightly different, and so East and West are swapped. (You only notice this as North and South because the default orientation on the launchpad is East) Some orienteering compasses are designed like this for exactly the same purpose.

Also, the Orange half points radially down (as in towards the planet you're oribiting) and the blue half up, as simple as that.

[Kasuha]

The orientation of the navball corresponds to a compass.

Standard compass is a device which you hold in your hand and you look at it from above. When you're facing East, you have North on your left and South on your right. That's exactly what you see on Navball when you look at it while facing down.

When launching a rocket, you usually face the blue center of Navball. That way it's like if you're looking at a compass from below. The order of directions gets reversed.

Navball is drawn from the perspective of the Kerbal sitting in his command pod. Here he is basically facing up, lying on his back. He has East on his right hand and North is therefore under his feet. And that's exactly what the Navball shows.

Edited June 10, 2014 by Kasuha

[Mister Kerman]

Yeah that's what I mean. Your nav ball's orientation in regards to E & W doesn't change in relation to Kerbin, only your position relative to the ball's does. So I guess it must represent an your angle relative to a fixed position on Kerbin..?

I might have to figure this out myself. This isn't something easily explained!

My problem is that if you head to the right (I think 90 degrees?) You head (Edited:) EAST like normal. The big N ought to go south in relation to that, but it's labeled North. At least I think it stands for North, which might be what's confusing me. I've been playing for about a week and I still can't use the nav-ball to orient myself at all. I rely completely on visuals with the map, and indicators on the nav-ball. Because of this I can't make changes to my flight path on-the-fly.

* I took too long too reply. More posts to help me out haha! Thanks guys. I might re edit this post after I read those to reflect my new confused understanding of the situation, unless by some miracle you guys are magical wordsmiths and somehow teach my thick self a thing or two!

*AH Frig! I made a small/HUGE mistake in my oost. I'm editing it again. I'm making it incredibly hard to help me right now. I meant 90 degrees takes you East!

Edited June 10, 2014 by Mister Kerman

[Kasuha]

Center of blue half is always "away from center".

Center of brown half is always "towards the center".

Horizon line is always "perpendicular to the vertical", i.e. along constant altitude.

The North line is always towards the northern half of the planet's rotational axis.

The South line is always towards the southern half of the planet's rotational axis.

[Mister Kerman]

OMG thank you. I'm dumb. You guys have no idea how much trouble you saved me. Kasuha, that image and explanation was exactly what I needed to see! It will still take getting used to, but I think I get it now. The ball is concave, not convex. The instrument is just convex because it's impossible to design a concave ball. I'm seeing those readings from the inside out.

[Kasuha]

Here, an explanatory picture.

[Mister Kerman]

Yeah, it's basically like the ball is the command pod, and I'm on the inside of it looking out. If I look down towards the pull of gravity it looks like a normal compass. If I look up away from the pull, everything is reversed kind of, depending on which way I turned around to orient myself to face upwards.

[Red Iron Crown]

Kasuha, what's going on with the "OVR THR" light in the second navball pic?

[Alshain]

Kasuha, what's going on with the "OVR THR" light in the second navball pic?

Looks like a Terminal Velocity warning mod of some kind. Not sure which. Assuming that means Over Throttle.

[Kasuha]

Kasuha, what's going on with the "OVR THR" light in the second navball pic?

I just used first reasonable navball picture I found on internet as I did not have one handy. "OVR THR" is the "overthrottle" indicator that used to be on navball in old releases. It was used when you were using more throttle than nominal. But without any ill effects so everybody was flying with full throttle anyway.

[cantab]

If you ever use a star map, you'll be used to east and west being "reversed", because they're done as though you're looking up at the sky not down at the ground. It's the same idea on the blue part of the navball.

[Oafman]

I always try to think of the navball as concave rather than convex. So you're looking at the inside of the ball, and the point right in the middle is furthest away.

[problemecium]

Also - the ship on the launchpad (assuming you didn't rotate it in the VAB) is "upside down" relative to the orientation of the Orbital camera (and thus Kerbin); the top of the ship is facing South and the bottom North. If you roll the ship over 180 degrees before maneuvering in space, it makes the directions make a lot more sense without having to use Chase cam (which can get dizzying if you like to turn around a lot).

[Frederf]

I always found it helpful to think that I was trapped inside the ball looking outward. Looking up I was looking through the dome lid to the ball. Looking down I was looking through the floor of my spherical cocoon.

[Duke23]

I was just wondering about this same thing the other day until it dawned on me that if you're in a plane or rover the navball is correct so you must just be looking at it "upside down" in a rocket pointed up.

[RoboRay]

It will still take getting used to, but I think I get it now. The ball is concave, not convex. The instrument is just convex because it's impossible to design a concave ball. I'm seeing those readings from the inside out.

Exactly. It's as if your chair is in the center of the ball and you're looking out. Those are the readings you would be seeing.

[Claw]

Now that you've almost figured that out...

The thing that really messed me up for a while is that the map always shows an orbital line, and not a flight path line. So if your navball is in surface mode and you're traveling straight north in a high flying, fast airplane, the map line will show you going north and a little east. The map takes Kerbin's orbit into account. This causes the headings to look wrong on the navball, but it's because of relative surface direction vs. orbital path. The orbital path is predicting where the airplane will be relative to Kerbin's core, but Kerbin's surface will rotate to catch up under the flight path. Relative to the surface, you will go straight north.

If you try to make that map line go straight north, then you actually end up going slightly west over the surface. This caused me all kinds of navigation problems when I first started because I did a lot of airplane and surface operations.

[asb3pe]

Kasuha, what's going on with the "OVR THR" light in the second navball pic?

I was curious... and I think I found the answer. See post from Mr. Orion at bottom of page 1 here: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/9793-Does-anyone-renember-0-9

It did...?

I\'m around about 95% sure it doesn\'t, I\'ve not got any change in thrust from 0.10.1 (which had the OVR THR), and 0.11 (which had RCS there instead).

So it appears version 0.10.1 had OVR THR and then it changed to the current RCS. That's a real old image of a navball!!! Google search for the win. hehe

P.S. This thread was very helpful to me, as a noob. Good explanations from everyone. The navball always working "backwards" on one axis confused me, why it was doing that...

Edited June 11, 2014 by asb3pe

[Red Iron Crown]

I was curious... and I think I found the answer. See post from Mr. Orion at bottom of page 1 here: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/9793-Does-anyone-renember-0-9

Nice find! Also: LOL at a KSP nostalgia thread in 2012.

[Kasuha]

P.S. This thread was very helpful to me, as a noob. Good explanations from everyone. The navball always working "backwards" on one axis confused me, why it was doing that...

Honestly, it took me forever to get used to navball.

I still hate it whenever I need to use it during landing (e.g. on Mun) because then it gets twice as confusing as when launching.

[Claw]

What really messes me up now is if I mess up and put the contol body on rotated 90 degrees, so that yawing right on takeoff points north. Usually followed by a "Revert to VAB" a little after.