Make landing pad orientation visually clearer

[DjVortex]

One problem with the current design of landing pads, especially on outposts and surface settlements, is that their orientation is not at all visually clear. If you are approaching a landing pad, it's hard to know which end to approach from:

It would be nice if it was visually clearer which way the landing pad is facing. My suggestion: In aviation green lights are used to indicate right and red lights to indicate left (this is also used in ED at the "mail slots" of space ports). So perhaps such lights could be added to the landing pads, something like this:

The difference is subtle, but once you realize that the red lights indicate the left side of the landing pad and the green lights the right side, you immediately know which way it's oriented (and thus which way you should approach / orient your ship).

(And yes, I know that when you request landing permission the landing pad lights up and the bright number appears on the "far end" of the pad. However, the number is often difficult to discern from the distance. This would be a small but useful QoL improvement.)

 

[metatheurgist]

The approach end is always closer to the side. The cargo gantry is always on your right. But I wouldn't object to more indicators. They already do it for engineer landing pads. There's a green light opposite the approach.

 

[aRJay]

Actually I quite like this idea, so much better than the big arrow usually suggested.

 

[Koma Pahu]

I like the idea, although I’m not sure how clear the lights would be once the hologram is active.

 

[Factabulous]

No point - the only people who would notice subtle lights already can land by just looking at the current scheme.

Change for change's sake - is there really nothing more important to change in the game?

 

[Screemonster]

op you're not thinking big enough

make landing pads direction-ambiguous and only rotate you if necessary to enter the hangar.

 

[DjVortex]

No point - the only people who would notice subtle lights already can land by just looking at the current scheme.

Change for change's sake - is there really nothing more important to change in the game?

I have been playing the game actively for a bit over two years now, I have Elite V rank in exploration and Elite III in trading, and quite some other achievements, and I have probably landed manually literally thousands of times. And to this day those outpost and surface settlement landing pads confuse me because I can't see which way they are oriented.

I somehow doubt I'm the only player who has this problem.

This would be a relatively easy QoL improvement (especially now that they are doing a lot of work with stations etc. with the colonization feature).

 

[varonica]

When I get assigned a landing pad there's always a big number for the pad at one end, the end the nose of the ship ship should be pointing at, I mean sure it can be hard to tell for some people before you get assigned a landing pad, but that's pretty irrelevant, the big number tells you exactly which end is which once you request docking permission.

 

[tolm]

Just let us land either way around.

 

[varonica]

Just let us land either way around.

Ah yes, and when you get rotated you run straight into a building when taking off. In concept that would be fine because most people would take off safely, but you would never actually build a system like that. Ground ports, for instance, rotate you so when you take off it's directly over the exterior to the port landscape, but if you landed the other way around you would be flying over the buildings and other landing pads when you take off, so it makes sense in a planning paradigm, that's how you would design it.

 

[metatheurgist]

I think it should be smart enough to rotate us out if we parked in the usual direction and not if we already parked facing out.

 

[DjVortex]

When I get assigned a landing pad there's always a big number for the pad at one end, the end the nose of the ship ship should be pointing at, I mean sure it can be hard to tell for some people before you get assigned a landing pad, but that's pretty irrelevant, the big number tells you exactly which end is which once you request docking permission.

About that... When the pad is viewed from above, it can be very hard to tell which side the number is. Even more egregiously, with outposts when you are looking at the pad from a distance from either end, the number is always facing you the right way, so it's impossible to tell if you are approaching from the right direction or not! (I think with surface settlements the number will not be facing you correctly if you are approaching from the wrong end, and thus will be mirrored, which helps a bit, if you can distinguish that the number is indeed mirrored.)

Do you really think I would be making this thread if the number would make it crystal-clear which way the pad is oriented? Rather obviously if it was that clear, I wouldn't be making this suggestion. The hologram number does help somewhat, but there are many situations, many angles, from which it still leaves it unclear, until you are very close (after which you often need to make a large correction on your approach).

 

[Anticon]

Yep, I agree, good idea and a very small effort for QoL gain. Of course there are more important things to fix, but so what? Small things matter too.

 

[varonica]

I think it should be smart enough to rotate us out if we parked in the usual direction and not if we already parked facing out.

Ah yes, but then the railings would stop you getting into the hanger annexe and the concourse because they are solid on that side.

 

[metatheurgist]

Ah yes, but then the railings would stop you getting into the hanger annexe and the concourse because they are solid on that side.

Easy fix, retractable railings. We already have something like that to stop us from walking on the pad when the ship is loading.

 

[DjVortex]

I think adding some lights or other visual markers would be significantly less work than fundamentally changing how the landing pads physically behave.

 

[varonica]

Easy fix, retractable railings. We already have something like that to stop us from walking on the pad when the ship is loading.

I always felt they missed out on the landing pad designs when they didn't allow us access to the walkways all around the pads, would have been fun to run up some of them and look down at your ship, oh well.

 

[Tryohazard]

Add a helper gizmo to replace the mini hologram model of the space station that lets you know if you're oriented the right direction. should only be necessary on outposts and planetary stations since orbital parkings are pretty easy.

 

[CMDR X]

Paint is cheaper.

 

[Ameeleean2]

There is no visual assistance to landing (well except pad nr info) until ship is really close to landing pad. What I would like to get is for it to activate much sooner- right after docking permission is granted or when landing gear is deployed.
I'm rarely doing manual landing on settlements- I do it only on ships which do not have docking computer installed. I agree that on settlements finding proper landing pad and orientation is annoying enough for me to switch to autodocking mode immediately.
My usual style is to ask for docking permission then manually fly really close to landing pad (close enough for docking computer to just position/rotate my ship and land) and then setting throttle to 0 for docking computer to take over.

It would be nice to have something easily visible from distance- sometimes it is hard to determine on which side pad number holo is simply due to game being displayed on 2d screen (so I guess VR users have advantage here).
There is also another solution which would be to display huge holo pad number parallel to landing pad surface.