Don't come in too steep, (no red hatching on the ladder) and then when you enter glide keep on a shallow approach angle in the blue area of the ladder to stay in glide for longer.
Also on the altitude bar on the right keep an eye out for the OC (Orbital Cruise) and DRP (Drop) markings as they indicate at what altitude you will transition into each approach phase.
Above the OC marker you are in normal super cruise.
Below the OC marker you enter orbital cruise.
Cross the DRP and you enter Glide
The trick is to come in shallow and then work out how close to get in OC as you approach your destination before dropping to glide as a final high speed approach to your target.
Thanks for explaining. I've certainly been doing it pretty sloppy so far LOL
I'm having much the same issue, and each of the tutorials I find are telling me the same thing you're telling me. Unfortunately, it seems like that particular strategy just isn't working for me, because I still drop out at the same altitude no matter how shallow I'm going.
Yes you shouldn't just plummet like a dart towards the surface, but you gotta go steeper than -5 when you want to go from OC to Glide or it will drop you to normal drive instantly.
So when you approach the OC->Glide transition, make sure you're at like -10 or something. There's a blue scale from -5 down to -.. uh.. something... not too steep... But (near) level flight isn't possible in Glide mode. Maybe that's the problem?
The problem I'm having with that is that if I want to travel a distance along the planet surface, but a bit faster, I climb up and start supercruise (orbital cruise) and then I nose down to get to Glide, but before I manage to get the nose down more than -5 it drops me to normal flight since I'm not going steep enough
Guess I gotta go up a bit higher and dive in a bit again if I wanna do that...
So when you approach the OC->Glide transition, make sure you're at like -10 or something. There's a blue scale from -5 down to -.. uh.. something... not too steep... But (near) level flight isn't possible in Glide mode. Maybe that's the problem?
The problem I'm having with that is that if I want to travel a distance along the planet surface, but a bit faster, I climb up and start supercruise (orbital cruise) and then I nose down to get to Glide, but before I manage to get the nose down more than -5 it drops me to normal flight since I'm not going steep enough
Guess I gotta go up a bit higher and dive in a bit again if I wanna do that...
And speed also matters. Haven't found the absolute sweet spot yet but going above 120km/sec seems to give you the "too fast for orbital cruise" message when trying to glide and yanks you out. As for the oribtal approach, anything above 1.2 Mm/s seems to smash you into your planet of choice. So throttle back as soon as the altimeter starts showing up on your hud.
My approach.
- Set waypoint to surface base you want to land at.
- Fly directly at planet.
- Once you get close, reduce speed to 50%.
- Fly around the planet until surface base is a solid color (not washed out, meaning hidden behind the planet).
- Fly directly at planet again.
- Once you hit Orbital Cruise keep flying level until the surface base is 200-300km away.
- Fly directly at the base.
- Once you enter Glide, keep gliding until the base is about 20km away.
- Fly directly at the base.
- Then you drop out into normal flight about 4-8km from the base.
- Request Landing.
- Land.
- Done.
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