Feature request: Side and rear view from ship

[dragonflywings]

Hello all, I'm a newbie, I've read the manual and looked around in Celestia but I haven't found a way to view various directions from the space ship. It seems that it is always viewing straight ahead in the direction of motion unless follow, sync or track is active. I was able to get the joystick working fine. Most joysticks have an 8 way D-pad, maybe that can be used to set the view direction. Of course that would only set the view in the horizontal plain. Maybe rolling the craft would make up for that, but it would be cooler to be able to look in any direction out of the craft without adjusting the attitude of the craft.

Any suggestions?

[selden]

The numeric pad, the arrow keys and the joystick all can be used to rotate your viewpoint up and down and left and right, but there is only one keyboard command which instantly points you in a different direction:

* (Shift-8 ) is the "look backward" command.
It can be used to look behind and then switch back to looking forward.

Of course, the Navigation menu items can be used to point you toward any specific object.

[dragonflywings]

Thanks selden, I should have been more specific. The numeric keypad keys change the view but they also change the direction of the craft. What I would like to do is make the view and the navigation of the craft two separate controls. For example I would like to fly past a planet and be able to look at the planet as it passes. Or I would like to fly around a planet and look down on the planet without changing the direction of the ship which would be moving in a circular path around the planet.
Thanks

[Bob Hegwood]

Or I would like to fly around a planet and look down on the planet without changing the direction of the ship which would be moving in a circular path around the planet.

Don't know if this is what you mean, but you can currently fly around a
given planet by simply selecting it from the solar system browser, then
pressing the F key to "follow" it as it revolves below you. If you also use
the L and K keys, you can speed up the rotation or slow it doen so that
you can view given features as they pass below you.

Maybe this helps?

Take care, Bob

[dragonflywings]

Hi Bob, Thanks, that is useful information, I have been using those features and they are cool. But that is not really what I'm looking for. If I fly past a star/galaxy/nova I would like to look out the side of the craft and see the object pass by without actually pointing the craft at the object. In first person shooter games if the shooter is walking straight down a hall he can look to the left, right, up and down while walking straight ahead. That is the kind of thing I'm looking for.
I'm starting to think that this will require a program feature change/enhancement. I think it would increase the usefulness of the product a lot.

Another option in addition to view direction would be the ability to let the ship coast in a straight line influenced by inertia while the ship changes attitude. I believe in real space flight a craft can cut it's engines and still continue in the direction it was going, in the mean time the craft can be pointed in any direction without changing the actual direction of motion. In this program killing the engines would just be a matter of NOT pressing the acelerate or decelerate keys. But when the "nose" of the ship is pointed somewhere else, the direction of the ship changes too. That is not the way a vehicle in space would behave. If simulation of a space craft is the point of the space ship feature then it is not behaving like a real space craft. I certainly would like for it to.

And while we're talking about it, let's throw in a little gravity. I realize that if I ask for too much realism I'd have to give up light speed and maybe a few other things because of physics. Maybe these things I'm proposing can be selected and deselected in an options menu.