how to land on, and hover to, target destination on surface

[PsychoMuffin]

On Career, there are a lot of contracts to land on the surface of another body and take a measurement. I"m good and getting into that orbit, killing my horizontal speed, and coming in retrograde very close, but I just can't seem to nail the landing spot on! I think my problem is stemming from 3 things:

1) On the map, I can only zoom in so far, and can't tell exactly where my trajectory is hitting the target.

2) When I am coming in close, I can't tell where my target is on the navball, as when navigation for it is activated, the target is somewhere below the navball horizon, and all I can see is the top since I am vertical.

3) Once hovering, I have trouble keeping track of my orientation with regard to the camera angle and north, and can never seem to know which way to nose down. (at least without needed to zoom in to find my hatch to learn which way is pitch and yaw.)

What do all of you do in order to hover over to your final destination with these things in mind? How do you know which way to nose to hover when you can't find the target? I'm playing primarily with the mun in mind (although I think it would apply to all bodies), and without any mods.

Thanks!

 

[Spricigo]

welcome aboard.

1st thing to consider is that the game keep track of the contracts that you accept/decline/ignore/complete/fail and use it to sort what kind of contract is offered. You are more likely to get an offer for contract similar to what you accepted/completed and less likely to what you declined/failed. If you feel some kind of contract not worth the trouble just avoid it.

Now to the actual issue:

Practice, practice and practice.Precision landing is a skill to develop (like many other in KSP), with enough practice may become second nature.

Instrumentation is fundamental, if you can grab some mods to provide more of that essential info about your craft your target (Kerbal Engineer , Waypoint Manager,...) and don't get distracted by the camera when you should be paying attention to your instrument.

4 hours ago, PsychoMuffin said:

3) Once hovering, I have trouble keeping track of my orientation with regard to the camera angle and north, and can never seem to know which way to nose down. (at least without needed to zoom in to find my hatch to learn which way is pitch and yaw.)

as in this exemple. The Navball shows you the craft correct orientation regardless of how the camera is set, looking for the camera is not only unnecessary but counterproductive. (well, except for the lack of radar altimeter which is only present in IVA in stock KSP).

[PsychoMuffin]

I'm not sure you completely understand why I am having trouble. Think of it this way, and tell me how you would solve this problem:

You have landed on the surface and are pointing straight up, and have rotated to the default orientation. You are close to your activated navigation, but not yet in it. You don't know in which direction (NSEW) the zone is because it is under the horizon of your navball, and since you are vertical, all you see is the blue of the navball. Now, given this information, can you tell me which way I should pitch or yaw my hover in order to get to the target zone?

Also, I find looking at the camera very important when trying to land in and around craters on the mun without blowing up. I know the instruments are very accurate and informative, but they don't tell me when I am about to hit the ground and what the slope of that ground is.

Here is a link to my predicament: https://ibb.co/fkEVHc

As you can see, I am very close to the lower of the three, but not yet in it. Can you tell which way I need to go? I cannot zoom in any more. 

[Flavio hc16]

i would just download trajectories and call it a day

[Spricigo]

3 minutes ago, Flavio hc16 said:

i would just download trajectories and call it a day

Not sure how trajectories would help, seems more a work for Waypoint Manager.

 

[PsychoMuffin]

It looks like the Waypoint Manager would help, as that would display the location on the ground. I was hoping there was a vanilla way to solve the problem.

[ElWanderer]

3 hours ago, PsychoMuffin said:

Here is a link to my predicament: https://ibb.co/fkEVHc

As you can see, I am very close to the lower of the three, but not yet in it. Can you tell which way I need to go? I cannot zoom in any more.

I may be completely wrong in this, but I thought the location of the waypoint was at the tip/bottom of the marker. With that in mind, I'd aim Southwards initially, correcting once pitched over enough to see the marker on the navball...

[Flavio hc16]

32 minutes ago, Spricigo said:

Not sure how trajectories would help, seems more a work for Waypoint Manager.

 

you put the waypoint you need as target and the start playing a bit with the manoeuvring node, in this way i can land very very often at less than 100 meters from my target ( let it be a waypoint or a base for assembly)

[Kryxal]

You could always place something to use as a control point in each direction.

[bewing]

15 hours ago, PsychoMuffin said:

 

1) On the map, I can only zoom in so far, and can't tell exactly where my trajectory is hitting the target.

You have to also keep in mind that the CB is rotating underneath you. So your target will move east while you are descending. So you have to keep the rotational speed in your head while you do it all. It's a trick to learn.

15 hours ago, PsychoMuffin said:

2) When I am coming in close, I can't tell where my target is on the navball, as when navigation for it is activated, the target is somewhere below the navball horizon, and all I can see is the top since I am vertical.

There is a setting in the stock contracts.cfg file you might want to try. SurveyNavigationGhosting = True

It's not quite like an anti-waypoint. It actually lets you see the waypoint marker through the navball, on the other side (with an extra visual effect).

15 hours ago, PsychoMuffin said:

3) Once hovering, I have trouble keeping track of my orientation with regard to the camera angle and north, and can never seem to know which way to nose down. (at least without needed to zoom in to find my hatch to learn which way is pitch and yaw.)

 

What I do is orient my ship in advance, before I even start my retroburn. Then I say to myself several times something like "North is going to be A, South is D, East is W, West is S." Then I look at my landing zone target straight down in flight mode. Fix the N/S targeting first. If you are drifting in the correct direction, then burn vertical to slow your descent, so you can drift that direction for a longer time. If you've drifted too far, then burn retro to stop your drift.

 

[TheFlyingKerman]

One simple way is sending a rover and traveling the last few km on the surface.