Navigation Grid Orientation
mattm's picture
Posted on:
Tuesday, November 21, 2017 - 11:44

Details of the vessel's navigation systems and the technical framework they use will be published soon. One issue that has arisen is around the orientation of the 3D grid used for navigation.

The navigation grid uses a Cartesian co-ordinate system. This relies on three axes - the X and Y axes familiar from 2D graphs and a third Z-axis representing the additional dimension of movement in 3D. The position of anything can be described as co-ordinates based on the object's location along each of the X, Y and Z axes. In the example diagram, the blue dot could be described by co-ordinates X3, Y3, Z3.

Numbering of the axes begins at the center of the grid which is X0, Y0, Z0 and increases in the direction indicated by the black lines. For the Y and Z axes this is fairly intuitive. 

But the direction of the X-axis may be less intuitive.

If represented on a console, the direction of the X-axis would move towards the operator rather than away from them. This means that as X-axis values increase, the vessel is moving in reverse relative to the operator's perspective (shown in the diagram by the green arrow). Apparent forward movement (displayed as moving away from the operator) would be described as diminishing X-axis values.

In other words, the standard Cartesian system seems less suited to describing movement when you're inside the object rather than looking at it from some external viewpoint.

Should we reverse the orientation of the X-axis to more intuitively represent forward movement? This risks departing from a fairly fundamental mathematical standard, which may present problems training new operators or acclimating already experienced navigators.

But then, how much navigation in space has really happened up until this point? This may be the ideal time to adopt a standard that better represents operational reality

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Comments

Astarlia's picture

So this is just for navigation relative to ships position right?  (as opposed to through a whole solar system or whatever)

In which case I don't acutally understand how you got to the 'defaulty positive x will be going backwards'.  you get to label the axis whatever you went and yeah i think it makes way more sense to label positive x as forward.

(actually if i were doing it i'd have x as the left/rigth axis, y as the up/down axis and z as the forward/back axis, bc i think that's what maps best to graphs ppl are used to looking at)

mattm's picture

The original approach is determined by the existing standard... although they may not have had starship navigation in mind when creating it.

You can find out more about the navigation system and the way the gird is configured in this navigation overview article.