Hey all, I'm somewhat new to the game, so apologies if this has already been discussed.

I like the dual flight system, as a lot of things become possible in physics mode. But I think something that would make physics mode control a bit easier is a small indicator in the HUD that shows the direction you're traveling. Not like a vector off in the corner somewhere, but just a small circle drawn wherever it is on the screen you're headed. A corresponding opposite direction indicator would also be helpful, so if you're pulling a quick 180, you can tell more accurately how far around you're turning relative to where your ship is actually going. It would help for just general travel, as well, especially in the low-agility ships. Put your target, say a station, between the momentum indicator and your crosshair, and boost until the indicator is on the station. You now know you're flying directly toward the station, and can turn around to shoot a missile at those bots chasing you.

normally people can do this by instinct of what thier mouse can and cannot do. Also using the wormholes as a reference works well too. But this option I could see being very handy, I'm picturing a gyro type sphere and a line that extends from the center showing you where you are going.

Watching the "space junk" helps too.

Asp

This was one of the first things that popped into my mind when I first started playing..

You can tell roughly by the direction and speed of the bits of dust passing you, but I would like some sort of graphical display of my direction and velocity on the HUD..

Another thing would be seeing other objects Velocity and Trajectory displayed, what instantly comes to mind is a system like Terminus (if you have played it), where the direction and speed of craft was displayed by a series of <<< marks coming out from the ship..

Yeah, we basically used "space junk" to do this, which isn't ideal. If anyone has any ideas for a particularly cool HUD indicator, please post them. We'll consider it when we get further along with HUD reconstruction.

We already have a speed indicator, it just doesn't have any direction element to it. A simple x,y,z indicator system could be added to the speed indicator, where x,y, and z are relitive to your orientation. The total all three would always equal your current speed, so that the speed indicator would look very much like it does now. One example of this is the the speed indicator could have a line or stager in it at each division. Let me explain in greater detail.

We can make a left handed stager negitive, and a right handed stager positive, with a x/y divider that always extends to the left, and a y/z divider that always extends to the right.
x = 10
y = -15
z = 25

The speed bar would show 10 units stagered to the right, a divider that extends to the left, 15 unit stagered to the left (for a negitive value) and a divider that extends to the right, and 25 more units stagard to the right, for a total speed of 50.

In this system, you know your total speed, and you know which strafe keys to use to reduce your your speed. It also give a general sense of direction.

For a more precise sence of direction, add an indicator to the radar, where the indicator's position is the direction you are headed.

Yeah, showing 3D speed components is always difficult. The Babylon 5 games' solution works but is horrible(speed bars on the left,right and upper edges of the screens, for X, Y and Z). I think another HUD element would be needed, maybe show the 3 axis (typical XYZ diagram for plotting we used in school) and have each axis light up/dim out as the speed increases/decreases, also showing the numeral value of the speed, of course.

Direction is trickier since you need a point of reference (point to/away from what?) most logical solution would be a system's star, but we have systems with three of them, so I cannot think of a solution for that.

I agree with Rabid Panda, partially because space dust usually detracts from fps (and I don't have a rig good enough) and partially because I like the gyrostat idea. I don't know how much hp it would take to implement a 3D element into the HUD, but a semi-transparent arrow in a cartesian system might do the trick.

The radar, as it exist now, already shows direction. It shows the direction of objects around you. We already know how to use the radar. The radar already has multiple indicators, showing multiple ships, roids, etc...

By adding one more indicator to the radar, that works the same as the existing radar indicators, we can have a sense of direction, in a form that we already inderstand how to use.

I premote this method as both the most intuitive, and the easiest for the devs to impliment.

Would the aproprate dev care to comment on how soon we could have this indicator?

and, Would the readers of this thread please indicate either aye or nay for this indicater?

I usually orient myself with the asteroids as I turn space junk off.

Space junk has a tendency of giving me motion-sickness (so does the wall projector *sigh*).

But a simple on-screen vector indicator would probably do the job:



The outer black oval is the horizon plane viewed at an angle, rotated from it's horizon line (black).

The vertical blue line is the vertical plane and the blue oval is actually the vertical plane "circle" rotated to the yaw angle (red circle & line). The size of the relative circles represent their velocity vector.

Aka, this example shows the red circle halfway to the size of the black horizontal plane and thus indicates 50% thrust on the horizontal plane.

The blue circle is slightly bigger than the red circle size and thus indicates vector is moving faster on the vertical plane than on the horizontal plane.

The blue line making the cyan arc indicates the trajectory vector's direction.

All of these angles are in respect to your ship's orientation. So with FA off, turning your ship around basically reorients this relative vector orientation. With FA turned on, this would probably have to go because we would need to orient it from a fixed plane in the sector and there's currently no such things.

Astronomically we'd orient this on the sol plane but sometimes, in VO, there's more than one SOL in a sector so it becomes confusing.

Ok, so this isn't incredible cool, like Incarnate is looking for, however it is simple and could use existing elements from the game - and would likely work for most requirements. It has 2 components (they should be engageable/disengageable by the user - either as one, or separate, your choice)

Part 1. Enable a vector like we get when we have a target - an arrow (maybe yellow) pointing towards where we're going, with a crosshair when you're directly on it. For a velocity vector, a number could appear beside the arrow. Perhaps an inverse cross-hair could appear when you're 180 from your vector.

Part 2. A radar marking whether it's infront of you, behind you, left, right, etc.

You could prolly implement this as a hidden target always 3000 m away (ie. just within targeting distance)

There's prolly a number of things wrong with this, so i'll expect you all to bring them up.

bump

As much as I understand that many folks want this idea implemnted, I would stress that it should be an option.

Personally, I want less HUD, not more. I don't need any indication of my direction because for me, it only matters relative to the object I'm engaged with (be it an asteroid, station, player or WH indicator). It is visually obvious in this case, and personally I can't see why I (again personally) would want more clutter.

Perhaps this would be an excellent idea to implement once the LUA code for the HUD skins is opened up. Then it could be included or removed depending on the desires of the Skin artist.

So again, I stress: Optional.

I almost thought Panda was back until I saw the date. Oh well.

I agree with optional. After all, this was the first suggestion I ever made: a direction indicator. This was back in alpha and nothing was done about it; of course -- and I'm just guessing -- the HUD was probably not very easy to change as it is now.

Then again... once Lua is unlocked, practically everything will be optional.

At wich point VO will become a Scripting War rather than a space sim.

I suspect some people out there to actually use Aim Bots in game.

Imagine when Lua is opened up.

How do you tell who uses aim bots?
I need an aim bot. My aim is fer shizzle.

And I *really* do NOT want this to turn into a scripting war type of game, where the scriptkiddies have ungodly advantages over us luddites.

Unless they want to write lua scripts for me, then I think it's OK.

On TOPIC:

Just have a "destination" indicator on your HUD. A little green circle or something. If your "destination" is behind you, you see an arrow on the edge of your screen, which "points" to your destination.

And like Gav said, make it optional. A simple checkbox to select whether you want the destination indicator in your HUD or not.

Well, scripting can only make use of information that the game gives you, and controls that the game allows. If the only things the script can have access to are the graphical elements on the screen and the information that determines how they are drawn, the most you could do is change the function of some of them, or recombine them in some way (Put some target info next to or around the target box, rather than in the corner of the screen, add a small sector list display to the HUD, etc etc)

Sure, you could potentially make something that would always point your ship towards the lead indicator while in combat. But what would that get you? You'd be flying like an NPC. Somehow I doubt this would give anyone an advantage in combat.

What mgl_mouser posted is how I would have envisioned it, except that the z axis line would point in the direction the ship was flying, rather than having the shaded area..

Also as for a point of reference, it should always take the current facing of the ship, so as you would move your view around it adjusts to your new facing..

The ship would always lay along the horizontal plane, facing the top. So if you moved your view to the right, the rings would rotate right. So it always shows the direction of the ship relative to where you are looking.

I made some pictures but I forgot I don't have any web space so I might post them later..

Well here is what I'm thinking:


The ship is just to show the orientation of the hud in relation to the ship, I don't think I would actually show it in the real UI..

In this picture the ship is still going in exactly the same direction as the first image, but it has rotated 180º on the horizontal plane, this is just illustrating what I mean by the hud always taking the front of the ship as the point of reference to direction:


Note the green arrow is the actual direction the ship is moving, so if there was no Z thrust it would lay along the red line..

I like that. :)

I like RP's "gyrosphere" idea. Very similar to a pitch ladder I had suggested about a year ago.

http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/10604#123260