Anyway, the G meter is most useful as an indication of how hard your engines are increasing the speed of your ship, and how much speed you are shedding through aerobraking. Very rarely, the gauge may dip into the negative, as when your capsule bobs up again after splashing down. So when you are sitting on the launchpad with the engines off before launch, it will read 1 just from Kerbin's gravity, and when you are freefalling in space, it will read zero. The meter indicates the sum of all accelerations acting on the ship at the moment, including engine thrust, rotation, and gravity. These accelerations are measured in earth-gravity-equivalents called "G"s, and so this indicator is commonly called the G meter. (Incidentally, there is no gauge like this in IVA view, although there is a sliding throttle handle that actually does move in proportion to your throttle setting.)Īlong the right side of the navball version on the main view (but not the IVA version on the ships' internal instrument panels) is a meter that measures the acceleration that is currently acting on the ship. (They are 1/15th of full capacity per notch, for whatever that's worth.) The short version is that it's proportional, so for example, half the gauge is half thrust. This runs from zero thrust to full, and while it has gradations marked on it, they don't seem to actually mean anything. Along the left side of the main screen navball is an indicator that shows your current throttle setting. The number at the bottom is your current compass heading. The numerical readout at the top of navball is your current speed, and the spot you click to change navball modes. In all of the illustrations in this guide, the ship is orbiting west to east, which is counterclockwise from the camera's perspective. So most of your takeoffs and landings will be done while heading east. East (relative to the current world) is the 90 compass heading on the horizon (where the brown side meets the blue side.Įast (the 90 line) is especially important, because all KSP worlds rotate in this direction, which means you get a small speed boost when taking off in that direction, and you need to brake a little less when landing in that direction. The gold line runs from the zenith to the nadir on the zero degree meridian (don't worry if you don't know that that means most of the time, you don't need it). The numbers on the navball are degree angles (up and down) and compass headings (left and right). In target mode, your speed is measured relative to a target vessel you have designated, and a couple of new markers appear. In orbit mode, your speed is measured relative to the whole game universe, and some additional markers replace a couple of the target mode markers. In surface mode, your speed is measured relative to the ground. It will switch from one to another automatically at times, but you can also cycle through them by clicking in the speed rectangle at the top of the instrument. The game's navball has three modes, which are surface, target, and orbit. (Keep in mind that these up/down directions are relative to the world, and will change as you move around the world.) The brown side is dirt, and so represents "down," which is toward the center of the current world. The blue side represents the sky, and so it is "up," which in space is away from the center of whatever world that governs your current Sphere of Influence, or SOI. The navball is derived from instruments invented for airplanes, and so is easiest to explain in those terms. Think of the globe as a map in 3 dimensions. So the globe of the navball maintains its orientation while you move and symbols on it tell you various useful things. While your ship moves around in space it will be facing in different directions, and that can get confusing. The navball is not something most of us are used to using, since we normally travel in the two dimensions of the earth's surface, so here is an explanation of the navball, what it does, and how to read it. Most of your actual flying will be done using these tools. That's why the game gives you two critical tools, which are map view and the navball. Although the main view gives you pretty pictures to look at, space flight is too complex to conduct by eyeball.
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