Vector Velocity Indicator

    Valiant70

    That crazy cyborg
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    Right now I pretty much have to play with space dust particles on because otherwise I have no sense of which way my ship is moving, and that's just annoying! With the thrust update this may become even more critical as a lot of fast ships may use quite a bit more thrust for their forward and reverse thrust than for orthogonal thrust (up, down, left, and right). Because of this, some ships may find it harder to slow down when going sideways so being able to tell which way they're going will be more important. Right now, the only option is to turn on space dust particles to get a rough idea.

    My trouble is, I don't really like the space dust, and I'm kind of a precision person. I like to know exactly what my ship is doing and to make it do exactly what I want it to.

    The solution is to add an instrument to tell you which way the ship is drifting relative to your nose. It could be as simple as a circle with a circle and crosshair in it. The circle shows the center, and the crosshair shows the direction the ship is drifting. The crosshair changes color from white to yellow to show that the ship is moving in reverse. If the crosshair is centered in the circle and white, you know your ship is moving straight forward. If it's centered in the circle and yellow, you know you're moving straight backward. If it's on the edge of the instrument and either color, you know you're really close to moving 90* to your nose in that direction.

    Not all players will pay a huge amount of attention to this instrument, but it would benefit a lot of us, and would especially benefit certain specialized thruster setups.
     
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    I one hundred percent agree with this. An indicator of velocity vector of some kind would be extremely beneficial.
     
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    If nothing else add a arrow like the one showing the front of your ship in build mode. Since its 3d already it would also give you a clear and accurate indication which way you are going.
     

    Valiant70

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    If nothing else add a arrow like the one showing the front of your ship in build mode. Since its 3d already it would also give you a clear and accurate indication which way you are going.
    That would annoy me.
     
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    Velocity is a combination of a scalar, and a vector. So all we need for the velocity is to add two velocity angles. I'd be happy with that.
     

    Valiant70

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    Velocity is a combination of a scalar, and a vector. So all we need for the velocity is to add two velocity angles. I'd be happy with that.
    If you want to get technical, a vector quantity contains a scaler within it by definition. The magnitude of a vector is a scalar.
     

    JNC

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    PLEASE?!

    Especially now that we have bomber weapons that depend on ship velocity and vector to hit the target..... Why have we had to gauge space dust all these years to figure out where we're going, this is a space game after all right??




    Some proper HUD symbology would be super...
     
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    Jumping in on this old thead since I cannot even get a the space dust indicator to work in .138. I do like the nav ball approach, although I'm not sure if just the two indicators would be enough. May need a color matching "finder" arrow or degree markers.

    That said I already have KSP, and don't need to go hyper realistic in a shooter game. (Options button didn't work, know how to fix my space dust?)