Auto-camera

Auto-camera is the view the theater opens on. It cuts the camera as the mission plays, so you can watch without flying the view yourself. On Starship Flight 13 the cuts follow the webcast: the same mounts, in the same order, at the mission time the broadcast switched. On the lunar flight the cuts follow the phase of the trajectory.

While Auto-camera is on, the bottom of the screen is the webcast bar. It shows the engine lights, attitude, a short milestone line, the T+ or T− clock, and dials for speed and altitude. The telemetry rail, the camera buttons, and the scrubber stay hidden until you open the Menu.

Press \ to turn Auto-camera off, and press it again to turn it back on. Choosing a camera, or holding a free-camera key, also turns it off, and the view stays where you left it.

Playback and bookmarks

The clock runs forward only. P or Space plays and pauses. − and + step the rate through 1×, 10×, 60×, 3600×, and 86400×. One second of wall time is then one second, ten seconds, one minute, one hour, or one day of the mission.

Keys 0 through 9 jump to bookmarks on the flight you are watching. 0 is the pad at t minus 5. The other keys are the beats that trajectory actually has, in time order. A flight that never lands does not grow a landing bookmark to fill an empty key.

Screens and dashboards

H opens this help. K opens the KeyMap, a keyboard with the action written on each key. M opens the Menu: telemetry, the camera buttons, and the scrubber. The mission clock pauses while Help, the KeyMap, the Menu, or the flight graphs are open. Closing the last of them resumes playback if the theater was already playing. Esc closes whichever of those screens is up.

Tab does not open the KeyMap. It cycles the theater pictures: the main view, the flight graphs, the ascent cross-section, the Earth great-circle slice, and the polar map. The flight graphs pause the clock. The other pictures leave it running.

Cameras

Free cameras can move. They are Sun, Earth, Moon, Booster, Launch Tower, and Starship. W and S pan forward and back, A and D pan left and right, Q and E yaw, and Z and X zoom. T and B pan up and down, R and F pitch, and C and V roll. Drag with the left mouse button to orbit, drag with the right button to pan, and scroll the wheel to zoom.

Fixed cameras are the livestream mounts: the pad drone, the ground camera, the tower cams, the hull, the engines, the payload bay, the grid fin, and the recovery drone. They keep their frame. Movement keys do not steer them.

[ and ] step through the camera list. Picking a camera turns Auto-camera off.

Labels and orbits

L shows or hides the name plates. O shows or hides the orbit lines. Each one toggles on its own.