A better use  of the mouse for the observer management.

Not all the observer commands are mouse oriented, so often it is necessary to use the keyboard specially for roll the view.

Description:

It is necessary to recall that the observer is not a spaceship. Instead I prefer to think to it like if a camera (with zoom capabilities) is placed directly in the observer position, in a sort of virtual reality environment without physical limitations like speed, gravity, centrifugal accelerations ad so.

To improve the virtual reality immersion sensations the user should think the observer to be a sphere. The user sits on a chair fixed in the middle of this sphere. The user's neck and ayes are not able to move independently, but the user has some kind of camera with zoom capabilities. So all the movements that the user give to the observer causes the change of the view.

Starting from this fundamental paradigm, actually in Celestia, the mouse is the most used device to manage the observer movement and orientation. It is easy, fast and intuitive.

But some important commands are not reachable directly from the mouse.

For example using the [right-click-drag] the observer rotates around the currently selected object keeping the initial distance. I should call this feature orbiting.

When orbiting with the mouse after a pair of movements it is very difficult to restore the initial position. It is necessary at least the use of the [7] and [9] numpad keys (Roll commands) or complicated mouse drags in small ovals shape to restore the position.

Is requested the capability of using roll commands directly via mouse (for example using the [ctrl]+[left-click-drag] that actually is used to move forward/backward because this behavior is already available through [left-click-drag]+[right-click-drag] or [mouse-wheel]).

Another option is the implementation of an additional limited orbiting mode or some kind of automatic alignment of the observer. In this mode the observer should rotate around the body following the latitude, accordingly with its initial orientation. See the following figure for example.

If the FR23 is implemented should be useful to implement also a feature that aligns the observer orientation to the current reference system. Should nice if will be possible to align each axis independently, or coupled or all at the same time.

Required/Suggested:

  (...)

Further related improvements:

  (...)

Related Newsgroup Threads:

  (...)

Reference Celestia Version:

  1.3.0

Status:

  (25-08-03) Submitted to forum attention.

  (25-08-03) Waiting.

Subscribers (Subscribe this item)

  Paolo Angeli.

Back to Group 5.
Back to Feature requests.
Back to My Celestia.