[1.8.x] Precise Maneuver editor

[Morse]

18 minutes ago, Matt77 said:

Are the orbit modes documented somewhere as well?  Or should I know about them already?

No, they are not. At least I didn't find any relating documentation. Like the rest of the KSP API, we take it, and we make a guess. My guess would be as good as yours, that's why I didn't document it.

 

When I posted this mod, I was assuming people were already familiar with PreciseNode, so I didn't duplicate most of the description from there. You may want to watch the video related to the PreciseNode for some basic info.

Edited December 29, 2015 by Morse

[Matt77]

1 hour ago, Morse said:

No, they are not. At least I didn't find any relating documentation. Like the rest of the KSP API, we take it, and we make a guess. My guess would be as good as yours, that's why I didn't document it.

 

When I posted this mod, I was assuming people were already familiar with PreciseNode, so I didn't duplicate most of the description from there. You may want to watch the video related to the PreciseNode for some basic info.

Thanks - I am familiar with PreciseNode.  I have just watched the video you suggested, it was very basic and doesn't mention the orbit modes.  I've also had another look at their GitHub page and couldn't see any mention of these buttons.

I am talking about the buttons in your mod labelled "loc, ent, ext, rel, dyn".

[Red Iron Crown]

Pretty sure that refers to the conics drawing modes, you can seem them explained here: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/11297-different-conic-drawing-modes/

[WuphonsReach]

With the advantage that "loc", "ent", "ext" are more likely to be remembered then 0..4, so +1 for using abbreviations on the buttons instead of 0..4.

[Matt77]

20 hours ago, Red Iron Crown said:

Pretty sure that refers to the conics drawing modes, you can seem them explained here: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/11297-different-conic-drawing-modes/

 

18 hours ago, WuphonsReach said:

With the advantage that "loc", "ent", "ext" are more likely to be remembered then 0..4, so +1 for using abbreviations on the buttons instead of 0..4

Thanks both!  I've just set up an encounter with Minmus and that is exactly what these buttons do.

[Matt77]

I'm surprised there isn't more interest in this mod.

I came across a glitch today, sent a satellite up into a polar trajectory.  When I hit "circularise" the node gave me a perfectly vertical descent back down :-)  Not a problem in this case, plenty of time to set a manual node.

Log is here in case you want a look.

[Morse]

49 minutes ago, Matt77 said:

When I hit "circularise" the node gave me a perfectly vertical descent back down :-)

That... seems to be mathematically impossible. My only idea is that the plugin somehow didn't find which direction is perpendicular, and gave a zero velocity vector, which indeed means a straight descent.

Do you have some parameters of the orbit and such? The logs are not really helpful, I do not log any orbit information, there'd be too much of it. But a save, or a screenshot. Feel free to open an issue here, unlike KSP forum github allows for attachments and screenshots.

[Matt77]

That's odd, the strange string of random letters in my last post was supposed to be a screenshot.  I'll try again with a different host...  You might need to go to Photobucket to see the full resolution, I think the forum is resizing it.

Edited January 2, 2016 by Matt77

[Morse]

Hm, seems like the logs did help, since you have so many mods installed, and some of them are more verbose than mine

Looks like KSP returns "not a number" instead of relative position of a node in some cases, and some mods (MechJeb, KER, and some others) all run into it at some point, but I can't find any solution other than "reload" (or just go to the space center and back).

So all I can do is add a protection, so that when NaN is returned the button does nothing instead of "drop dead down", but not much more than that. I can't calculate an orbit without knowing my position

[Matt77]

 

 

 

I hope it was useful info, it happened again today in a normal equatorial launch, so I thought it was something in my install which you mentioned is slightly modded ;-)

[Morse]

On 02.01.2016 at 11:01 PM, Matt77 said:

When I hit "circularise" the node gave me a perfectly vertical descent back down

I introduced some checks in the new version 1.1.1. Now if the orbit parameters are obviously incorrect the button will do nothing instead of dropping you on the planet. Not much else that I can do about it.

[Andersenman]

On 20/12/2015 at 11:43 PM, Morse said:

• All the windows except for the main one and keybindings were removed. All the info is now accessible through the main window.

For what it's worth, among the axed windows, "Conics Controls" was added upon my suggestion, so I'd be interested in hearing, if I were to switch to your Precise version, why the switchability of node modes must under all circumstances require the invocation of a humongously screen-estate-intensive UI as well as two additional mouse clicks to create an otherwise pointless, zero-dv node for no better purpose than to invoke said UI, and/or, if I understood correctly, that window must now always be there (toggle-able, I hope) even when there isn't a node present in the first place.

Edited January 6, 2016 by Andersenman

[Morse]

Name me one reason why would you want to change conic modes when you are not going to change your orbit.

Also, keep in mind, that the name of the plugin is "Precise Maneuver", and its primary task is to help with the maneuver editing.

[Red Iron Crown]

1 hour ago, Morse said:

Name me one reason why would you want to change conic modes when you are not going to change your orbit.

When looking to see what an asteroid will do when passing through Kerbin's SoI I sometimes switch conic modes.

Not a big deal, and so far I like this version better than the original. Just for the circularization feature alone, the other additions are just gravy.

[Andersenman]

9 hours ago, Morse said:

Name me one reason why would you want to change conic modes when you are not going to change your orbit.

Also, keep in mind, that the name of the plugin is "Precise Maneuver", and its primary task is to help with the maneuver editing.

What Red Iron Crown said. To visualise the effects of any encounter.

Changing functionality is one thing, but reducing usability for no other significant explanation than "I can't find a reason why anyone would need it, so you do neither" is not a good way to advertise your new tool. "Its primary task is maneuver editing ... because it's called Precise *Maneuver*"? That's you having your chain of reasoning either up-side down or not long enough: by that way of arguing you might as well remove the Conics controls entirely because, technically, nothing they change affects the manoeuvre, and never did. Yet, they went into regex' tool, were soon after detachable, even, and it was good.

Not to riff on your mod, I welcome continued maintenance of (essentially) an existing tool, and by all means, solve issues and deal with features your way; but If I were to switch to yours, I need to evaluate your solutions to existing problems and find whether they really are improvements to my gameplay, not to yours.

Besides, any sort of gravity assist causes a change in orbits, too, so ... that would, too, be a manoeuvre, no?

Edited January 6, 2016 by Andersenman

[Morse]

1 hour ago, Andersenman said:

I can't find a reason why anyone would need it, so you do neither

I didn't say that. But of course I need to see what kind of task you want to solve before I start thinking of a best instrument to solve that task.

In stock KSP the only GUI that allows you to increase/decrease conic patches are available through maneuver gizmos, because logically, the only reason why you may want to study the orbit is that you want to change it.

It's not that I'm against the useful functionality, but to bloat the GUI with lots of windows, rarely used options and obscure switches - that is actually what reduces usability.

[Andersenman]

As above. An encounter changes an orbit, no node needed. Also, the amount of patches can be too high (when subsequent orbits are altered by encounters only slightly, thus messing with your aim for setting additional nodes) or too low (when you need more after you had to crank them down for the previous reason) ... Jesus, why do I feel I need to justify every single button to you? Regex' Conics Controls feature and its window had already been requested, its implementation has been found welcome and helpful for a long time; so why this brickwalling now? "Bloat the GUI"? "Rarely used feature"? It was detachable, it was tiny, and there was a clearly labelled switch in the options to bring it up or hide it, how is this bloating or obscure? I know devs tend to feel protective of their baby, but now you're grasping for straws.

1 hour ago, Morse said:

In stock KSP the only GUI that allows you to increase/decrease conic patches are available through maneuver gizmos

No. Unless there's some hidden additional feature I have yet to discover, what it does do is change the count of orbits after how many of which the node applies, not how many additional patches are drawn.

1 hour ago, Morse said:

because logically, the only reason why you may want to study the orbit is that you want to change it.

That's mighty bold of you to presume to know what one may or may not want to do in a particular situation or another.

Edited January 6, 2016 by Andersenman

[Superfluous J]

Sounds like maybe this isn't the mod for you. Maybe you should write your own version that works the way you want it to, instead of harping on someone who didn't have to give anything back to the community, but did so anyway. And is probably regretting that decision right now.

I personally won't use this mod because the list of features is a long list of taking away what I like about Precise Node to add things I won't use. And that's okay. Not every mod is for everybody.

[Andersenman]

Possibly not the mod for me, yes, but I can't presume to know solely because of the change of feature X; could very well be there's very good reasoning I haven't thought about, which is why I'm here, digging to find out. No harping intended, I apologise if my ... tenacity ... was perceived as an attack of sorts.

[Morse]

6 hours ago, Andersenman said:

Jesus, why do I feel I need to justify every single button to you? Regex' Conics Controls feature and its window had already been requested, its implementation has been found welcome and helpful for a long time; so why this brickwalling now?

And perhaps if I find a better way of getting the needed functionality it'd be even more welcome. And for this I need usecases. There are lots of ways to expose the needed gui, a separated window being one of them, and I don't like it. I don't like the idea of spamming the orphan windows without the clear connection with the main window. Especially the ones that supposed to be on screen even if the main window is not. That's what is called "unintuitive UI": when there is something on the screen, and you have no idea where did it come from, and how to disable and/or later re-enable it.

Dropping random functions in one place is fun, until you end up with some enormous monster which nobody knows how it works. I started my fork as a slim and easy alternative to PreciseNode, why would I want to end up with the same bloated code I started with? If anything, it'd be stupid, you already have one PreciseNode, why would you want a second?

[Andersenman]

Dear Morse,

we clearly have different ideas of what is considered "liked", "orphaned", "spammed", "unintuitive", "random", or "of unknown origin" and, more importantly, seem to dislike each other's to an unproductive degree, so I don't see a point in continuing this discussion.

Best success with your mod.

 

Kind regards

A.

Edited January 7, 2016 by Andersenman

[macr0t0r]

(And this is why I rarely share my work online anymore: every use believes they know how it should be).

For what it's worth, I like the trimmed-down controls of this mod versus Precise Node, and it does add some interesting features.  That said, they are similar enough that I'll use whatever stays compatible in the future.  I'm just glad that both mods exist so that there's double the chance that one of them will get updated when KSP 1.1 finally arrives.  The game is a headache without it!  Thanks, for taking the helm on this one.

[FancyMouse]

Quote

The text fields are now read-only.

Nope this will be the major blocker for my adoption - I have a couple of scenarios to edit the exact values:

1. I know how much delta V it needs. e.g. going to Mun/Minmus. I just type 860/920 directly and adjust from there instead of pressing buttons. Another case is when I use transfer window planner when delta V is also known. Why do I need to click dozens of times to get a value that I can type with just 3 or 4 keystrokes?

2. Solar maneuver time. The incremental time even with 10x option is of no use for plotting solar maneuvers - I almost always end up typing the time value directly, or changing a more significant digit. (note I can't drag the node in map as usual - e.g. I'm focusing on some other planet)

I'm not too excited about KAC integration - KAC itself has maneuver alarms and I can set it to auto, meaning it will automatically create/update alarms several minutes before the burn.

In general, it seems to me that this mod is rather just some "cleanup" (including removing some useful features), and adding some features that already had better options. I can keep an eye on this, but certainly not the one for me now.

[Morse]

On 28.02.2016 at 7:08 AM, FancyMouse said:

I know how much delta V it needs. e.g. going to Mun/Minmus. I just type 860/920 directly and adjust from there instead of pressing buttons.

Hm, this is a legit usecase. I think I'll introduce a way to save several presets permanently and then load them as a drop-down list.

But I'll do it after 1.1 is released. It seems the release will have quite a GUI overhaul, so we'll need to see what the new default maneuver controls would be first.

[clumsypilot]

Managed to get it running on 1.1 prerelease and can't play without something like this, so I thought I'd share before the author realeases an official build. Use at your own risk:

http://s000.tinyupload.com/?file_id=20712356249738241556

sha256: F637AD0E282600B21E9C5EF20D5953A102BF5BB82213A3B71758144483C957FF