Hey, mister, don't you have a map?

[Rooster Podunk]

I'm scanning a mediocre K system with an M wayyyy off over yonder. Traveling there the background stars are 99.9% blue. Except one. One bright, vibrant red whatever right there in front of me. The problem is is it 6 LY away, or 1000 LY? In what direction should I work the GalMap? Am I pointing this way or that way? Being mostly self reliant I open ol'GalMap to be greated by 400,000,000 billion stars. Filter it down you say? Find a likely candidate I 'think' might be the one.

Give us some nav reference, FD. It can't be THAT hard to add a filter for what the heck is infront of me or at least what direction I'm pointing in the sky except for a wild guess if I'm pointing up, down, left, right, or somewhere between. If I'm missing something (my excuse is age) but for the life of me I sure the heck haven't been able to figure out what.

 

[Florenus]

It would be great if we could somehow target stars using FSS, or in similiar fashion, from our ship POV.

 

[MadDogMurdock]

Select a star in any direction in Galmap.
See where it is in relation to your red star in the sky box.
Figure out which direction you need to be looking in Galmap and then select another in roughly the right direction.
Refine your selection as needed.
Then look outwards along the line from where you are through the star you selected in Galmap.
Filters might start to help you at that point.

Still quite a task but at least you'll be looking the right way.

But yup, some kind of direction pointer doesn't seem like a stretch.
Or maybe have the Galmap open facing the same direction as your ship.

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

It's Raxxla. That's why you can't find it on the GalMap.

 

[Rooster Podunk]

Select a star in any direction in Galmap.
See where it is in relation to your red star in the sky box.
Figure out which direction you need to be looking in Galmap and then select another in roughly the right direction.
Refine your selection as needed.
Then look outwards along the line from where you are through the star you selected in Galmap.
Filters might start to help you at that point.

Still quite a task but at least you'll be looking the right way.

But yup, some kind of direction pointer doesn't seem like a stretch.
Or maybe have the Galmap open facing the same direction as your ship.

Yeah, that method is exactly what I end up doing however, like you said a clicking gymnastics routine. I sit here in 2019 and my Meade can tell me where I'm looking relative to the zenith/nadir of my field of view. My car will tell me to turn right or left. It seems in 3305 navigation tech as devolved. I know, another minor complaint, but I'm hoping some FD wiz scratches his head and thinks "hey, we could actually do that". Oh well, all we can do is point out an issue and ask.

 

[VR CMDR Novindus]

Select Target Ahead. Cycle Targets.

That would be novel though, to be able to line of sight systems and select them for routing, so that when you enter the GalMap, the star is already selected and all you have to do is plot route. Yes, it would be even better to be able to do it without entering GalMap, but realistically I think that's where all the routing logic is code-wise.

EDIT: Just thinking about it, this would work well as a new HUD mode, where all your targeting key binds now apply to star systems only.

 

[BradHann]

The skybox has reference points you can use to triangulate things. The galactic plane, Andromeda, Magellanic Clouds etc etc. Work out roughly where they are in relation to your point of interest, then search the galmap in that direction.

That said, finding one specific star is a PITA no matter how good you are at triangulation.

 

[KylePanarid]

There's not a super reasonable way to do this. Given the sheer amount of stars, trying to project them all onto a spherical surface would be disastrous.

Although I wonder if a telescope type module could be implemented, that can read the metadata of the autogenerated skyboxes, so you could set filters of star magnitude, primary emission spectra and so on in order to pinpoint the star you're after, then use the filters you've defined to poll the galactic map. Sort of like astronomy in the field.