Making Orbit Markers Visible

[Clipperride]

Not so much a question as a public service announcement for anyone else that, like me (unless I'm the only one), missed a blindingly obvious part of the GUi that makes life a lot easier.

I can't believe that I only (accidentally) discovered yesterday that a simple right click on any of the markers that appear on orbits on the map screen (eg periapsis, ascending node etc) and the value remain visible.  Previously I've been scooting back and forth between the marker and maneuvere node I'm adjusting.

[Snark]

1 hour ago, Clipperride said:

I can't believe that I only (accidentally) discovered yesterday

Yah, it's an easy thing to miss.  They added the feature in 1.1.x (I think), and I, too, somehow completely managed to miss that they'd done that, and was flabbergasted to discover it long after the fact.  It's incredibly handy.  Was so jazzed to discover this. 

Obligatory looking-gift-horse-in-mouth:  Now, if only the setting would persist when toggling in and out of map view...

[Gianni1122]

I also discovered this accidentally when I first started playing.

What I actually did was right click on random values without realizing I was doing it (I use a trackpad so accidental RMB happens sometimes) and for the life of me could not figure out why I could, for example, always see the inclination but had to hover over the closest approach every time I needed to view it. I felt like KSP was trolling me conveniently displaying the info I didn't need and hiding the info that I did. haha

Those little discoveries that make KSP even better are so great. It's like finding a 20 in the pocket you never use of the jacket you always wear.

[katateochi]

Yeah that was a much needed feature, as @Snark says it was only added a few versions back so before then we had to do the constant adjust...check...adjust...process.
 

5 hours ago, Snark said:

Obligatory looking-gift-horse-in-mouth:  Now, if only the setting would persist when toggling in and out of map view...

very much this.....except I can see from a dev point of view it might be much harder than it was to add the current toggle. I'm guessing that the markers are an object that looks after itself, so when say the Pe drops below the terrain or when you switch out of map view that object gets destroyed? So then the reference to it's state gets lost. That could be solved by making the marker states properties of the orbit they belong to (except not all markers do belong to an orbit which complicates that). And what about when you want to clear all the toggled markers. ie sometimes you have several markers close together and you accidentally toggle them all, dropping out of map mode and back is a quick way of clearing them all. So if they make markers persist (which is something I do very much want), how to also add a simple way of clearing all toggled markers? 

[Snark]

25 minutes ago, katateochi said:

from a dev point of view it might be much harder than it was to add the current toggle

Oh, I'm not saying it's trivial.  Just that I want it. 

25 minutes ago, katateochi said:

I'm guessing that the markers are an object that looks after itself, so when say the Pe drops below the terrain or when you switch out of map view that object gets destroyed? So then the reference to it's state gets lost.

You could implement it as a simple dictionary-type thing that just keeps track of "Here are the things that the player has chosen to keep toggled on", where the "thing" reference is not an actual reference to the data structure (which may have been destroyed) but a "key" value-- i.e. "ship <id> Pe for <celestial body>".  Restarting KSP, switching scenes, or switching ships would clear it out completely.

It wouldn't be a property of the orbit, it would just a be a list, the size of which equals the number of things that the user has clicked on to nail them in place.

32 minutes ago, katateochi said:

And what about when you want to clear all the toggled markers. ie sometimes you have several markers close together and you accidentally toggle them all

Meh, just click 'em again.  I have to say, this scenario has never come up for me even once, ever.

Just to take an analogous case:  consider what happens in flight view when you pin the right-click menu for a part.  It stays pinned even if you go into map view and then back out again.  What if you have a bunch of parts pinned and want to clear them all?  Answer:  you go through them one by one and click them.  Yes, that would be tedious... but it comes up pretty rarely, and the complexity to add a clear-them-all routine would probably not be worth it.  For example, should they be cleared when toggling in and out of map mode?  I think "player wants to keep their choices" is a much more common scenario than "player wants to clear out all their choices".

So I really don't see a problem there.  My answer to "how to add a simple way of clearing them all" is, "don't."  Perhaps not a perfect solution, but IMHO a much, much better answer than the current one.

[Starhawk]

The ability to right click some markers and have them remain visible has been in the game for quite some time.  It may have been in already when I first started playing (0.23.5).  It used to just be the apo and peri markers, though.  They made all markers 'click-and-persist'able in a recent update and it was a feature I was dying for.  There really have been an enormous number of little polish and quality of life improvements in the last couple of versions.

I, too, would appreciate markers whose state persists when switching between flight view and map view.

Happy landings!