Whilst playijng the trial (and I'll subscribe as soon as I sort out my love/hate relationship with my bank manager!) I felt the HUD could do with an indicator indicating (duh! ) direction of side/vertical travel + speed. With tha lack of fixed reference points and an opponent travelling on a similar plane, I found it very easy to become disorientated.

Also, any chance of making roll rate having momentum, in the same manner as strafing?

Thanks,
Rich

With tha lack of fixed reference points and an opponent travelling on a similar plane, I found it very easy to become disorientated

Welcome in space.

There's no UP or DOWN.

The only planar indication we could use is the galaxy plane (aka, the spiral plane) wich isn't really useful at all or relevant. Besides, the only thing you need to know is that... you fly upside down. Just ask RelayeR.

Roll inertia would be nice though.

I appreciate what you're saying, I just feel it would be useful to have an indication of travel direction, even if it is only relative to yourself. After all, if you can have an indication of forward speed, then the leap from there to other planes of travel seems (to me, anyway) perfectly valid.

It needn't clutter up the HUD, either, a highlighted arrow top left/right would be just as useful.

Just turn on space junk, multijoy. Little specks of, well, space junk, drift around you and then you can get a good idea of how you're moving, how fast, and in which general direction.

heh. The low tech solution to the hi tech problem! I'll give it a go, assuming my account ever updates!

/me votes for an RoC-priority targeting method

various forms of attatude indicators have been peropsed before, and while most of the comunity seems to think they would be usefull, no one can seem to agree on exactly how it should be displayed. often the discussions end with "hopefuly in the future the HUD will be more custamizable and we can designe our own indicators".

roll rate does have inertia, but in mouse look mode your view has no inertia whatsoever, including your "roll" angle. If you start rolling in mouselook, then turn it off (; key), you'll see your ship has inertia and is trying to match up to the "up" direction in your view.

mgl_mouser: The galactic plane is NOT the only fixed reference that one could use to create an indicator.

The ecliptic is a much more relevant indicator, as it is the plane that contains the orbit of a reference planet (in the Solar System's case, the Earth). In VO, the ecliptic is indicated by the fact that the map is looking "down" on the ecliptic from directly above the central star.

Of course, knowing this, we can figure out that the universe is indeed, upside-down.

So it's not impossible, just not necessarily terribly useful for exact positioning, although it would be more useful for relative positioning. Your HUD could project a ring that indicates what's parallel to the ecliptic, an arbitrary "north", and a second ring perpendicular to the ecliptic and aligned with the nose of your ship. So as long as you know your starting point, and your orientation from that starting point, then you could easily follow a set of directions to get to a specific heliocene rich asteroid.

Sol planes change from one place to another. It'd be more complicated to compute/adjust sol planes than having one general (aka, natural game space) galactic plane.

But I also concur that space junk offers that benefit: enhanced spare orientation. I used it a lot for a while until I realized it was hampering long range views when you're trying to acquire visual on one who's farther than 3km.

That general plane of reference would be much like the one employed in Homeworld 2.

I, for one, prefer the freedom provided by the system in place, since it does not preemptively influence your decisions. Fights would get a lot more predictable if there were a plane of reference introduced. You would not do it consciously, but you'd adjust to the 'horizontal' automatically, since it's what we are used to orient ourselves towards (humans are horizontal beings).

Proof? Only personal experience: In Wing Commander III an IV, the latter more so than the former, planetside missions were introduced. I found it hard to cope with the fact that there suddenly exists a plane of reference (I oftentimes found myself approaching the carrier upside down).

This is a dupe of an idea that's already been posted. I've been wanting to see this forever, and it seems really easy to do.

http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/10604?page=2

And I want it for all ships. I think it's even more important for combat ships. Yeah, it's easy to nudge them to go in the direction you're looking, but I often don't want to do that. I want to use the thrusters to change the direction they're moving in without having to point anywhere in particular, and to do that accurately you need a good attitude indicator like the pitch ladder idea in the post I link to.

The reason why space junk doesn't work as a reference point is because you can only orient yourself when you already have an idea of what's been going on in the last 2-3 seconds. That doesn't do much good, because I can simply feel my way through space, assuming that all my directions go according to plan. When an "attitude indicator" would become useful is when things don't go according to plan; when that unexpected flare disorients your ship, or when you crash into a 'roid well trying to backroll away from some stray fire. In these situations, you don't *have* 2-3 seconds to squint for some space dust, and kind of trace the general direction and speed it's travelling across your screen. (It takes these seconds, because the screens lack depth perception, so one has to mentally factor in ship speed and angle of the particles to get an accurate 3-D direction.)

Is this what you are asking for?

http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/1573?page=2#176162

I think he means bearing and carom, like in Battlestar Galactica.

Something as simple as an X-Y-Z 6 point compass rose like the kind used in 3d software would do the trick.

Have it always point to galactic north and orient the Y to galactic "up" and you're good to go. It would even allow people to navigate like an orienteer, so they could find rocks they mined before and other stuff without the need for the hard coordinate system people are so averse to.

For combat, you could have the 6 points resize or lengthen to indicate how much velocity you have in each direction, and the sum vector velocity listed with it.

As far as the actual issues megamynt beleives this would resolve, I have to disagree. I don't think an indicator would be very helpful in the heat of battle. If I get spun by a rocket, I find my way back to the target instinctively, mostly by opposing the spin. I think an indicator would only slow my recovery down.

That said, I still think it would be useful for the other reasons I've posted above.

The original post is not asking for a compass. He is asking for a vector indicator of ships motion. which is covered in depth here:

http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/1573?page=2#176162

A compass is covered in a separate thread.

What issues it resolves is based on the flying style of the user. Obviously some people are comfortable without orientation. Some might even be annoyed by it. It should have a toggle for show/hide.

Maybe make it a 'show on key-press' toggle, like Zoom temporarily sets a different FOV. It's there if and when you need it, and gone the next second once you release the key

I have a possible suggestion for indicating the direction your traveling and the speed that should be relitivley simple to impliment. Have as part of the hud what appear to be small blue dots when your stationary but they streak when you move, the faster you move the longer they are. this would basically give you a headless arrow showing wich direction your going and roughley how fast. kinda like adding mouse trails the the space junk and making it bright blue and rather small.