Some love for orbit lines

EUS

EUS
I fly with orbit lines. I like them.
There's a problem, and maybe it's that my eyes are maturing, maybe it's something wrong with the game.
When heading to a station, I cannot tell anymore if I'm approaching correctly anymore, so I guess. The guess is 50-50 wrong.
The orbital plane looks a certain way, so I'll either head up, or down to increase the plane, and create a perpendicular approach.
Oops, nope, the plane is flattening, I chose wrong. Not sure there's anything that can be done about this.

When I get closer, the station looks both in front of, and behind the station. Make a guess, right this time, wrong the next time.
It's due to the orbit lines being very thin, and from beyond a certain distance, I can't see if the line is hidden by the planetary body or not.
I think this can be 'fixed', by having the station orbit line two tone, one tone for the part of the curve that's in front, and another color tone when the curve heads away.
 

Monk

Monk
If they could put some color variation in, that would help.

For example, orbit lines that are closer to you would be blue, increasing in intensity to the nearest point to you (pointing at your approach). The farther orbit lines would go red, with the reddest point farthest from you. Additionally, this would all be relative to the body the orbit lines are surrounding. Finally, when you are normal to the plane of the orbit (where no points are closer to you than others) the default color would apply to the entire orbit line since you can see where everything is from this perspective. Coloring would occur at some angle, where it becomes useful.
 
Last edited:

Jenner

I wish I was English like my hero Tj.
Jenner
Yeah, I think something like that would be very helpful. Or just make it dashed but the same color. Anything. :)
 

Abomination

A
It's difficult to judge at these enormous distances. Dashing or slight color fading would certainly help.
Got one other thing that might be related: craters.
Sometimes I just can't convince my brain they are holes going in and not blobs coming out of the ground.
Sometimes, flashing a few times with the eyes helps, other times it requires a more drastic approach.. [knocked out]
Brains... messy stuff :)
 
Last edited:

Monk

Monk
sleutelbos said:
Yes, just make obscured lines dotted.
Click to expand...
Dashing obscured lines wouldn't completely solve the problem though. It would only help when one of the orbit lines is obscured...It is possible, at some angles and with a large enough difference between planet diameter and orbit diameter, that orbit lines would be above and below the planet. In that situation you couldn't tell which one is closer, at a glance.
 

deathmagnet

deathmagnet
The game actually has this feature in place so you can tell your orientation to the orbit line. Its the blue lines that you see on your HUD

fvwW0fb.jpg

I always approach the station from the "underneath" the orbital plain. The blue line will tell you how close to that you are:

WeLXKwm.jpg
]

Forgive the crude images. I did it on paint in only 5 minutes or so.

Hope it helps. I will try to follow up with video

Thanks.
 
Last edited:

We Are Groot

We Are Groot
Yes I would like to see thicker maybe transparent orbit lines. A bit of a futuristic look with less jaggy and more .... whatever. This is the closest I could find to what I picture in my mind.

[video=youtube_share;0jHsq36_NTU]https://youtu.be/0jHsq36_NTU[/video]

A cross between that and 1:20 into this video where you can see Saturn which somewhat has an almost transparent look.

[video=youtube_share;usYC_Z36rHw]https://youtu.be/usYC_Z36rHw[/video]
 
Last edited:

Lheim

Lheim
Yes, it's impossible to tell what the orientation of the orbit line is until some part of the planet occludes it - it's just the nature of a 2-d display. That's why I always come in well above or below the plane of the station's orbit; it gets easy to see as you slide past the planet's pole.

Having the orbit line a little darker 'in back' and lighter 'up front' would be quite helpful.
 

sqzbox1

S
Very nice effort - but doesn't help the specific problem raised in the OP. The relationship between the blue circle (which is always properly circular) and the orbit line does tell you your position relative to the plane of orbit - but you can actually determine that simply by observing the degree of "circularness" of the orbit line so it doesn't give you any additional information - just a more accurate measurement method really. The problem really is this - is that part of the line that my eye is telling me is at the front really at the front? or is it at the back? This is the old "is the box hollow or am I looking at the outside of it" - caused by a 2-D representation of a 3-D object in wireframe (which is what an orbit line actually is - a wireframe). I imagine this isn't a problem in VR.

It's actually not too much of a problem - it's just that for people like me (and obviously the OP), we like to aim for the perfect approach every time. It's part of our goal to be a great pilot right? So if we guess right then when we head down, say, to expand the orbit line out into a full circle (for the underneath approach) and the orbit line does indeed start to become more circular then great - perfect approach. But if we head down and we see the orbit line start to compress towards a line then we know we have guessed wrong and have to then head up (and rotate our ship) to the other side of the plane of orbit. The blue circle helps in no way with this.
It is only a problem for the initial guess - do we head down or up?
 

deathmagnet

deathmagnet
I agree that any great pilot should always try to approach from mailbox side. So long as you approach form planet side you will be approaching from the correct direction. now it used to be really easy to do this but i do believe they changed the orientation of stations to planets. They used to directly face the planet but from observations they seem to be slightly skewed from direct face. Maybe I am wrong. Just seems that way now.

Believe me. Some indicator that would tell you how well you are lined up to mail box while in SC would be great. Until then. Approach from under and planet side.
 

frostypaw

frostypaw
The blue lines you refer to are just distance markers from the planet at 10x 50x 100x 500x 1000x it's radius (or some such figures)

The fading of lines towards the back would be most appreciated - just from their yellow/orange into red would be fine imho it only needs to be subtle really
 

deathmagnet

deathmagnet
frostypaw said:
The blue lines you refer to are just distance markers from the planet at 10x 50x 100x 500x 1000x it's radius (or some such figures)

The fading of lines towards the back would be most appreciated - just from their yellow/orange into red would be fine imho it only needs to be subtle really
Click to expand...

They may be distance markers, but i used them as orientation references. It works so therefore it is. So therefore it could be both
 

Cmdr Cheese Wedge

Cmdr Cheese Wedge
A broken orbit line like the dotted text would help a great deal in what is being obscured.
Maybe a bit more visual reference as you approach closer to your destination, a spatial awareness hud or something, not sure how it could be implemented, just floating the idea out there.
 

GJ51

GJ51
Not easy to describe, but the blue lines can orient your approach to the station properly 100% of the time.

When the first blue circle pops, line up the aiming reticle so that the vertical line at the bottom is perpendicular to the blue circle's outer edge. Maintain that orientation until you can line up the reticle so that the vertical line at the bottom is dead on the yellow orbit line and the planet is to your right. then all you need to do is split the difference between the orbit line and the planet , rotate 90 degrees and line up on the station with the planet behind you. 9 times out of 10 you'll be facing the station entrance. The closer the station orbit is to the planet the harder it is to get just right, but following the outer blue orbit line with the bottom vertical pip on the reticle maintaining perpendicular orientation is the key. As the outer blue line fades, just do the same thing on the next blue circle following them in from outer to the next circle as they fade.

Sounds complicated, but it really isn't. Repetition will help.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom