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.
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.