Finding Distance Travelled By A Rover

[Clipperride]

Three of my trusty Kerbalnauts are taking an extended driving trip on the Mun.  Is there a way to find out how far they travel in each session?  I know you get details about speed and distance travelled on the info box that appears after a vehicle is destroyed, but I can't find it in game.

My current method of keeping track is to simply place a flag every 40km, but that's the distance as the crow flies (assuming some kind of Mun crow that can fly in a vacuum!). Obviously the actual distance is further as you alter course to avoid craters etc.  Are there any other methods for keeping track of distance traveled across land? 

[Plusck]

You can use F3, but that will include the movement you get from the rotation of the surface. So to get the real figure, you need to multiply the time spent by your average difference between orbital and surface speed (orbital speed minus surface speed), and subtract that (which would result in adding, if negative) from the total...

[DrLicor]

When you press F3, you will get the same window as when you crash your craft. Is that what you want?

[DrLicor]

Oh wow @Plusck, looks like we posted it the exact same moment  

[Clipperride]

@Plusck  Thank you, I didn't realise that the figure given wasn't relative to the surface you are traveling on.  There should be an odometer that you could strap onto your rovers!

@DrLicor  I could have sworn I'd tried that before, but it works now, so thank you (maybe I didn't hit the Function key when I tried looking for that info window before)

Onwards to the South Munar Pole.....

[Snark]

12 minutes ago, Clipperride said:

There should be an odometer that you could strap onto your rovers!

There should be a stock "odometer" feature... but failing that, there should be an odometer mod.  (I'm not immediately finding one, though.)

Of course, not having set out to write an odometer mod myself (mainly 'coz I generally don't muck around much with rovers), it's easy to just breezily say that-- there may be practical reasons why it's actually a harder technical problem to solve than one might think.

[Clipperride]

4 hours ago, Snark said:

There should be a stock "odometer" feature... but failing that, there should be an odometer mod.  (I'm not immediately finding one, though.)

Of course, not having set out to write an odometer mod myself (mainly 'coz I generally don't muck around much with rovers), it's easy to just breezily say that-- there may be practical reasons why it's actually a harder technical problem to solve than one might think.

I guess the easy solution requires knowing how many times the wheels have turned and I'm guessing the game doesn't keep track of that for modders to make use off. 

The crews reckless speed across some bumpy terrain resulted in the "time to impact" indicator from your accurate burn time mod flashing on from time to time! But driving on the Mun seems much easier than it used to be prior to 1.2

[Snark]

9 minutes ago, Clipperride said:

I guess the easy solution requires knowing how many times the wheels have turned and I'm guessing the game doesn't keep track of that for modders to make use off.

I don't think "how many times the wheels have turned" is even a thing, but that's also not how I'd even try to do it if I were making an odometer mod.  I'd make the odometer be GPS-based, same as how the odometer app on my phone works.

Basically, just make it take a series of GPS "waypoints".  Immediately take a waypoint when it starts up.  Then, frequently check the position, and if it's more than a certain minimum difference (say, a meter or two) from the previous waypoint, then record the new waypoint and add the distance-from-previous-waypoint to the odometer total.  Store the last-waypoint and odometer-total numbers as a persistent value on the vessel (or on the odometer part, if you prefer).

There, done.  I don't see any reason why that wouldn't work.

[FleshJeb]

@Snark

I've never used it, but this might do the trick. I let MechJeb do the driving for me. (About 750 km this weekend.)

 

[Clipperride]

2 hours ago, Snark said:

I don't think "how many times the wheels have turned" is even a thing

That's the point I was making - you couldn't use the easiest real world solution for tracking distance traveled.

2 hours ago, Snark said:

Basically, just make it take a series of GPS "waypoints".  Immediately take a waypoint when it starts up.  Then, frequently check the position, and if it's more than a certain minimum difference (say, a meter or two) from the previous waypoint, then record the new waypoint and add the distance-from-previous-waypoint to the odometer total.  Store the last-waypoint and odometer-total numbers as a persistent value on the vessel (or on the odometer part, if you prefer).

Would it need to take account of the orbital speed of the body you're traveling on?  I'm sure there would be people interested in using such a Mod if it were created

2 hours ago, FleshJeb said:

@Snark I've never used it, but this might do the trick. I let MechJeb do the driving for me. (About 750 km this weekend.)

 

Looks interesting, but my system sometimes struggles keeping track of the current vechile!  I've been enjoying actively driving on the Mun a lot more compared to previous attempts.