There is no way to tell which direction your ship is moving. I think that their should be a small dot, similar to the target for a wormhole that shows which direction your acually moving. Either that, or in the hud, there should be a little 3d box which has a shows 1 vector of your movement. Or maybe just the axis of a 3d coordinate system each one growing with size ie how big are you.

the micro-meteors you'll see flying past your cockpit, i think, are meant to serve that purpose. Yes, it could be a better, and I'd love a cooridinate system besides, but I (personally) have never had much problems with determining which way my ship is going.

well, personally I don't look at the micro meters, I try to ignore them. However, I didn't know that's what they served as (it's ovbious that they COULD serve as that) and I will try to pay attention to them in the future. For me something on the hud would be really helpful. Because normally one tries to see past the meters. They don't really stand out. You aren't going to spend time looking at the meters when your in the middle of combat, are you?

Not that I know much about this stuff, but I don't. I look at my target and the target lead. :P

During combat it's more important to know where you are moving relative to your target, a direction indicator wouldn't help there.

You can turn those "micro meters" off, you know.

really ? i didn't knew...
how can u do that?

Onder options, graphics, turn space dust down to off.

I posted another thread about this because I couldn't find this thread. The moderator kindly pointed me here. :-)

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I use the free-flight mode all the time, and find the other mode to be a bit annoying and confusing. But one annoyance of free-flight mode is that I sometimes lose track of my own vector. And the speed display becomes semi-meaningless. The floating space dust is only slightly helpful.

Of course, there's the problem of "What's my vector in relation to?", but we'll ignore that for now and posit some sort of ether so there's such a thing as absolute velocity. :-)

I would like the HUD to somehow show my vector. Maybe have the 'speed' display always refer to my speed in whatever direction I'm heading, and put a little marker on the radar and the display that show the direction I'm going in.

I'm thinking maybe a green chevron ('V' or '^') or X.

I would actually find this fairly helpful in combat. Not when I'm actually shooting and dodging, but when I'm far enough away from things to pay attention to manuevering in the larger scale.

I think that the vector should be inrelation to which way you are mouse looking. So even if you are moving at a constant speed, the vector will change when you move your mouse around. Something on the radar might be nice, but I would still like to see 3d arrows/vectors on the hud.

I agree wholeheartedly. They have this feature on modern fighter jet HUDs, it's called a Flight Path Marker (FPM). Useful for lining up a runway landing.

In Vendetta having an FPM would come in handy making a trap on the cap ship ;D racing down the tubes, avoiding roids, zooming into a dock while under fire...

I guess I'm having a hard time visualizing what you mean by a "3d box." Two simple, small aqua circles on the HUD would work just as well imo (one with an x through it marking direction opposite of travel, the other circle marking direction of travel)

[stamp of approval]

I think the 3D box would look neat, but not actually be helpful given the limited amount of attention you have for any small part of the HUD, especially during combat.

I think I like the small aqua circle idea. Hmmm... The only problem is that your field of view is about 90 degrees as far as I can tell. So, if you were going some manner of sideways, both would be off the screen.

Well, as we all know, doing 3d on a 2d screen, or 2d piece of paper is freaking hard. I searched a lot for an example, and I only got close. Look at this image:
http://bdn.borland.com/article/images/10509/coords.gif
If you made each line in that pic, proportionally long due to your speed.

If a ship were to show movement in 3 positive vectors (like in the gif) the person would need to mouse-look 45 degrees to the upper-right in order to be facing the same way they are moving. Once they did that, their movement would be 100% in the z axis (forward.)

What I'm saying is: it only makes sense to base this off the direction you are looking. I can't see any other meathod that would be usable.

Am I being clear enough? If not maybe I'll draw something up.

I agree with you, and I wouldn't ever propose a box solution. I think it would require so much to process that it would be useless in combat. And any vector show has to be shown in relation to your current position and facing. Anything else would also be confusing.

My idea was to put a little spot on the radar display, which already shows a 360 degree view of the space around your ship. It does it by squinching up the sides at the edges of the display, and isn't perfect.

Your method, putting dots on the main display itself, is one I like a lot better. But I'm concerned about what happens when your vector of travel is within 40 degrees or so of being perpindicular to the direction you're looking in. Then the spots would show up at the edge of your screen and convey less information than they could. There'd a a whole 20 degrees you could actually be travelling in where the spots would be in the same place.

But, since I think your display is the easiest of all to interpret, it might be the most useful.

How about this?

http://www.simhq.com/_air/images/air_038a_6.gif

it's what they actually use on F-16 HUDs, and even though it doesn't give you as much information, it's simpler and easier to interperet than three separate vectors. Also, since this marker lines up with actual physical objects in your screen, you can use it to determine whether or not you are going to hit an asteroid, whether you are flying dead center down a race tunnel, if you are headed for the stern or bow of a cap ship etc... very useful.

In a dogfight you don't really have time to do those kinds of calculations in your head, you need a visual indicator that lines up with actual objects.

Phaserlight:
So your saying that you would see that icon in your direction of motion? That might work. I acually suggested that in my original post, but I didn't word it very clearly.

Omnifarious:
I'm saying that 3 vectors like the gif I linked, should appear on the right hand side of the hud. I wasn't talking about radar. I am unsure of your meaning:

You say:
"But I'm concerned what happens..."
Are you concerned about MY method, or yours?

Either way, something should be added.

That works in an F16 because an F16 can only go in the general forward direction. We can move sideways and backwards as well. can't display that on your forward looking screen using a flight-path indicator.

It could be done similar to the targeting reticule, if the camera is looking more-or-less the same direction the ship is moving, the flight-path indicator will be shown on the display to indicate the direction you are moving; if the camera moves so that the ship is moving side ways or backward, there would be an indicator along the side of the display giving a general idea of where the flight path indicator is.

Personally, I don't need anything on the HUD indicating my direction of movement. But a modular, configurable HUD is something on my wishlist, and I could see a flight path indicator or other three dimensional movement indicator being one option that players could turn on or off as desired.

@The Noid: Yeah, I actually had considered that, but it would still be useful when boosting (you don't always boost in the direction your nose is pointing) and when in arcade mode. In physics mode the FPM would slide around a lot more, but it would still be useful for lining up against physical objects.

One possibility would be to have a "pitch ladder" with small tic marks every 10 degrees relative to your direction of motion... but that might clutter the HUD. If it was faint enough it might look kinda cool, though, like the opening battle scene in that Will Robinson movie (terrible movie, can't even remember the name, but the fighter huds looked pretty cool).

Imagine how useful this would be in combat. Take the following example; a triflare valk fires a volley of rockets at you. The fastest way to dodge is to move perpendicular to the rocket's flight path, correct? So keep the 90 degree tic mark over the incoming rockets, and you know you will be moving at a right angle to them. You could use the same technique to perfectly circumnavigate a cap ship. If the center of the cap ship drifted toward 80 you would be moving in an inward spiral, if it drifted toward 100 you would be moving in an outward spiral.

Just line up any tic mark on any object, and you instantly know what angle you are moving in relative to that object. You can't tell me that wouldn't be useful.

Perhaps this "pitch ladder" would only show up when you were in physics mode, so it would be a good indicator of whether you were in physics or arcade.

In arcade the FPM could still be there but there would be no need for a pitch ladder since it would always be close to the direction your nose is pointed in.

that would be freaking cool, I like.

Hmm, that does sound like a workable solution, I like it.