Galaxy Map in VR

[Roger Wilco Jr]

Post your tips & tricks!


I've had my Rift about a month, but have only been in the galaxy map a few times, and what a pain in the ass it was. I tried mapping my control bindings to something that made sense, but I still had a hell of a time trying to figure out what I was doing.

Then one evening, it just clicked. I had been trying to navigate the cursor directly onto a star, like you do with the mouse, but I just ended up getting twisted around and upside down, and maybe a little sick. Then I finally figured out that you only need to move the cursor to the disc, which is on the same plane as the cursor and connected to the star with a drop down line (or up). Now it's a breeze to select nearby stars.

I have my joystick set up like so:
pitch moves my cursor forward and back.
roll moves my cursor right and left.
twist rotates the map.

On my throttle, I have a hat switch to move the cursor up and down.
I have something assigned to tilt the map, but I don't remember and don't use it anymore.
Oh, and the throttle itself is used to zoom in and out (same as debug camera so it's natural for me).

So when I enter the map and want to visit a nearby high tech system, I usually zoom out a bit, and then rotate the map so that the high tech system is in front of me. Then I push forward on the joystick to move the cursor toward the system, and jog right or left as required. If I'm too high or too low, I use the hat switch to get closer to on plane. When the cursor gets near the disc, it kind of snaps to it, and then it is just a matter of selecting it. Then I just use my normal navigation buttons to navigate the panels.


However, I do still have some problems:

Sometimes, when the cursor has a system highlighted, I can't select it for a nav point, or can't select the system map. When this happens, I have to exit the galaxy map and start over, and it usually works the second time. I'd love to find a fix for this.

It also is a lot slower than whipping the mouse around, like if you want to check what ship is stored at that system 300ly away. I hope there is a fast mode that I just don't know about.


Anyway, the key thing about the galaxy map in VR, imho, is using the discs and not trying to select system spheres directly.

[thebs]

Yep, I mapped my X-55/X-56 throttle thumbstick, throttle slider, dial and my joystick twist, to navigate X-Y, elevate Z, zoom in-out and rotate XZ, respectively.

That said, it's rather pathetic they haven't gotten the mouse to 'snap' well in the galaxy and system maps like they have in the station screen. They used to have problems with the station screen and mouse, both in VR as well as even just head tracking, but finally addressed it in 2.x. Why can't they do the same with the galaxy and system maps?

[TorTorden]

Took me a few days to realise the same.

And a about a week to get proficient at it.
Now it's probably still faster the old way in 2d, but I honestly don't miss it or feelse it's too cumbersome at all.

I'm actually getting quick, almost as fast as before vr.

And is it only me and secretaries that are able to type without looking at the keyboard?

And no its not stupid that the mouse don't work.
Because the mouse is a two dimensional pointing device, the map in vr is fully three dimensional.
The station menus are actually a 2d rendered screen in 3d space.
And that same curved screen is actually active in the galaxy map as well, which kind of compounds the issue.
The mouse pointer isn't moving on a flat surface...

[thebs]

And no its not stupid that the mouse don't work.
Because the mouse is a two dimensional pointing device, the map in vr is fully three dimensional.

No, it's absolutely stupid. I cannot emphasize this enough,

There are 2 things here ...
1) The mouse is on a 'plane,' and there's no reason why the mouse cannot point at an object in 3D X, Y and Z space, while tracking on a 2D X-Y plane -- i.e., simple trig (pick the first thing in front, along the vector from the origin)
2) The head tracking in VR, where you are "looking" is your origin and vector -- i.e., VR, like any head tracking, only defines the 'plane' reference -- nothing else changes (still a plane, with a vector, from an origin)

Even without #2, Frontier is doing #1 already. #2 just introduces another translation in X, Y and Z space. Case in point ...

The station menus are actually a 2d rendered screen in 3d space.

And yet ... same problem!

Even non-VR, before Elite 2.0 (or 2.1 was it?), the mouse was also useless for those of us with 'head trackers' too! Frontier Developments failed to calculate where the "plane" you were looking was, because the head tracking changed the origin and introduced an added, 3D vector. Again, same exact issue.

The simple solution is that Frontier just needs to add another translation for the plane where you are looking. They haven't done that with the Galaxy or System maps, like they have for the Station interface. They already do it for when the plane is 'dead ahead,' so you can pick a remote start that is not nearby.

It's literally all about adding the necessary translation. I could whiteboard this in minutes to explain it all.

Disclaimer: I've done some 6DoF simulation development in my career, including man-machine interfaces, in the past. Ironically the visualization is actually really simple ...

► Show Spoiler

just transforms that are easily done in matrix math, and accurate enough at single precision or even 32-bit integers, hence their speed in computers. It's a crapload easier than, say, the typical system of equations using triple integrals -- i.e., the 'rocket science' -- of the actual dynamics of the often applied 6DoF, which wasn't my forte (although I still learned a lot from guys that worked on Sprint, Pershing, STS/Shuttle, even some from Apollo). We've handled this code since the '80s with ease (even Fortran 77 does 7 dimension arrays -- 6DoF against time), and it's definitely been a no-brainer in the '90s with modern CFD libraries in C. Heck, we used to do it on 16-bit machines with Kilobytes of info, doing simple matrix math using just basic ALUs (add and multiply), before all the SIMD stuff, like with the Bendix 900 series. The fact that they are using OpenGL makes this trivial too. I.e., OpenGL provides 2D like 3D, including all the translation.