What are the purple and blue node indicators on the nav?

[janirobe]

Have not played in a while these are new to me since I last played.

[Bot]

They basically are the same thing as the green ones but blue are left and right and the purple ones are up and down.

[Ogre420]

The manuever nodes GIZMO has 6 main HANDLES, that allow you to apply thrust in the 6 main directions (Forewards, Back, Up, Down, Left, Right)

In KSP these directions translate to Prograde, Retro-grade, Normal, Anti-Normal, Radial, Anti-radial

Now I'm probably gonna screw this up but, think of it like a car...

(Yellow) Pro-grade & Retro-grade increase (Forewards/Gas) & decrease (Backwards/Brakes) Delta-V along your current flight path.

(Purple) Normal & Anti-normal increase your Delta-V Away from (up hill) & Twords (Down hill) your current SOI (The Planet/Moon/Sun that you are in orbit/currently influenced by.)

(Blue) Radial & Anti-radial are your left & right turn. I *THINK* that these are Left=North and Right=South of your current SOI, but I'm not sure if they still North/South or if they FLIP South/North if you are in a retro-grade orbit.

The colored indicators on the Nav Ball show how to point in all these directions.

[janirobe]

Originally posted by vaprak:

The manuever nodes GIZMO has 6 main HANDLES, that allow you to apply thrust in the 6 main directions (Forewards, Back, Up, Down, Left, Right)

In KSP these directions translate to Prograde, Retro-grade, Normal, Anti-Normal, Radial, Anti-radial

Now I'm probably gonna screw this up but, think of it like a car...

(Yellow) Pro-grade & Retro-grade increase (Forewards/Gas) & decrease (Backwards/Brakes) Delta-V along your current flight path.

(Purple) Normal & Anti-normal increase your Delta-V Away from (up hill) & Twords (Down hill) your current SOI (The Planet/Moon/Sun that you are in orbit/currently influenced by.)

(Blue) Radial & Anti-radial are your left & right turn. I *THINK* that these are Left=North and Right=South of your current SOI, but I'm not sure if they still North/South or if they FLIP South/North if you are in a retro-grade orbit.

thanks for the reply makes sense. cool to have the extra nodes to make manual navigatin easier.

[porfirius7]

I'll throw in my explaination as well.

<yellow> Prograde increases the current velocity of the ship, by burning in the same direction that the ship is currently traveling, which makes the orbit larger / Retrograde decreases the current velocity of the ship, by burning in the opposite direction that the ship is traveling, which makes the orbit smaller.

<purple> Normal and Ani-normal.... In math, normal means the same thing as perpendicular. That's what it means in the game as well: it means perpendicular to the orbital plane. So if you represent a circular orbit on a piece of paper, by drawing a circle with a magic marker, then the paper represents the plane in which the orbit is contained. Now, let's say you indicate the direction that the craft is traveling, by drawing an arrow on the circle: it could be clockwise or counterclockwise based on the your perspective in space. If it's counter-clockwise, then normal is pointing up, out of the the top of the piece of paper, perpendicular to it, and anti-normal is pointing down, out of the bottom of the piece of paper, also perpendicular to it.
Burning normal or anti-normal will change your inclination.

<blue> Radial and Anti-radial…. Imagine you're on a merry-go-round that's spinning very fast, and you have the feeling of centrifugal force pushing you out away from the center of the merry-go-round, as if you're going to fly off, outwards. That sensation of force would be in the anti-radial direction, and radial is the opposite, inwards, towards the center of the merry-go-round, like centripetal force. So, if you burn radial, you're burning directly towards the center-of-mass of the body that you're orbiting.
Radial and anti-radial burns will make the orbit pivot around the maneuver node within the orbital plane, like a frisbee might pivot around your fingers right before you release it.