Kerbal space program navball target how to#

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.

Kerbal space program navball target how to#

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.