Center of Mass Marker Overhaul

[Starwhip]

I find the current marker obtrusive when building small probes and other light craft. With the new dimension checks, could the marker be bound to the smallest dimension? (About 10% of the size of this dimension) It would be much more convenient like that, as I can't see my probes at all sometimes when I check the mass. This would also help with RCS balancing.

Further help would come if there were lines or axes protruding from the CoM marker, so that you have better guidance as to where to put objects so that you have balance.

[BlazingAngel665]

Currently the colored orbs that indicate the Center of _________ are about 1m in diameter. This makes any degree of precision hard to obtain. In coordination with the new engineer reports could we have the size of theses icons scale with zoom, vessel mass, vessel dimensions, or some combination thereof? It doesn't take a lot of offset on .2 mass unit probe to cause control issues, but trying to center things when the orb is larger than the whole spacecraft is quite a challenge. If the orbs got smaller as you zoomed in then you would have greater control over the precision of part placement.

[pellinor]

RCS build aid has a slider for this. I prefer custom control to auto-scaling because for large SSTOs I first want big indicators for overview, and then I tweak then very small for finetuning of dry/wet CoM.

+1 for scaling of the indicators.

[Wahgineer]

That, and have the center of thrust arrow point in the opposite direction the engines are pointing, so we can actually tell whether the thrust is going through the center of mass or not.

[smjjames]

That, and have the center of thrust arrow point in the opposite direction the engines are pointing, so we can actually tell whether the thrust is going through the center of mass or not.

Wouldnt it be less confusing to just extend those sticks that come off of the center of thrust?

[RainDreamer]

Make RCS build aid stock, and a lot of this woe is gone. The thing has been so very useful.

[SaturnV]

They really should be. Currently tiny rover design is a guess-where-this-part-is mini-game

[BudgetHedgehog]

Just a little tip, Kerbal Engineer has a 'Torque' display in the editor (not my album)

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Useful for when the CoT and CoM are too close/far apart and you don't have RCS Build Aid yet.

[DBowman]

Longer 'sticks' are a light weight change that would be very useful for seeing how things line up. With longer sticks dropping the sphere (raising it's transparency?) could help declutter and make things clearer.

[Vanamonde]

A pair of threads on the same idea have been merged.

[Vorg]

I'm sure this has been pointed out before by now, but because of the way these balls seem to float around the craft, it is very hard to make proper use of them. Just by moving you POV a little bit, They appear to be moving around the craft. And because the mas is often away from the thrust ball, it's hard to tell how they line up. They need to be translucent blades so you can see how they intersect with the craft and each other.

[PikachuNL]

It'd be handy to have a line of the CoT ball, but in my opinion they aren't hard to use.