Wouldn't it be nice to have something you'd expect a well-equipped and high-tech space vessel to have? The option to have a toggle to turn on/off/auto clearance markers at the sides, top and bottom of the HUD to indicate distance in meters from objects near your ship. I mean, you'd sort of think you'd have that option to let you know when you are close to a station or entering the mail slot. I don't really care if it's available in open space, CZs, etc. but hey, we can dream.
Clearance distance in HUD?
- Thread starter SalC3
- Start date
Not a bad idea, but there are alignment lights at the four corners of the mail slot to indicate when you are aligned with the slot for entry - they are not a perfect indicator but they do provide a level of guidance. For leaving through the slot, there is no equivalent though.
What would also be good is if you get a clearer indication of your allotted position in the mail slot queue when manually entering/leaving a mail slot constrained station.
What would also be good is if you get a clearer indication of your allotted position in the mail slot queue when manually entering/leaving a mail slot constrained station.
Yea? I have to check. I mean, yea, i am new player who barely spent a few hundred hours in the game, so i guess i am excused for not noticing it yet... now i am curious.
On the suggestion itself: hmm, it doesn't sound too bad, albeit complicated when implemented really well. I mean, the game can treat the ship as one box and display distances to to each side. That's simple enough to implement, but the mail slot for example is not a pure rectangle but actually gets a bit smaller to the sides. Thus the rectangle based display might suddenly indicate negative distance, but the actual ship still fits through.
Alternatively you can work with distances to the ships actual surface. The problem of what to display of that hundreds of data points is still simple: the smallest of them all. But considering how complex some ships geometry is and that you are not merely checking for collision (single point connection) but distances (multi-point connection), this might actually turn out to require much more performance than you'd expect.
So yes, when tinking about how actual distance sensors work: it's amazing how much physics do for you by wave distribution and reflection.
So all in all i see how the distance indicator might really help. Especially newer pilots, when they first time get into a big ship. (I still remember how often i scraped my cutter along the walls of the mail slot, as i missjudged the up and down distance. ) But i guess for any performance efficient implementation we might have to accept some oddities here and there, mostly the sensors sometimes telling us that distance is zero, while you'd on the outside view see that you actually still have a few meters spare.
There is?
Yes - not 100% sure of the exact logic nor how much it can be trusted (even using the lights I have got caught on the station occasionally - maybe due to ship drift) but when sufficiently in alignment with the slot, the four smallish round lights at the corners of the mail slot (look near the corners where the grill is connected to the station) will all be green but when notionally out of alignment one or more of them will be red.Yea? I have to check. I mean, yea, i am new player who barely spent a few hundred hours in the game, so i guess i am excused for not noticing it yet... now i am curious.
This concept seems to be analogous to the OLS system (nicknamed meatball or ball) on aircraft carriers.
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Ahhh... so it is your ships I keep seeing wreckage of when inside the docking area of slotted stations.Hmm, fascinating.
I guess I just never noticed them flying past at 230mps.
In all seriousness though, they are very easy to miss and have most use when slotting the larger vessels (e.g. Beluga, Anaconda, Cutter, Corvette, T9/T10D).
Hmm, fascinating.
I guess I just never noticed them flying past at 230mps.
Hmm. I usually don't fly that fast. So i have to guess that my way of flying just makes them look like random...