Which Mod Should I Use For This?

[Popestar]

I have been finding that, lately, I'm seriously misjudging how high off the ground I am during re-entry.  And by that, I mean distance to the ground itself, not to where sea level is at.  I know the altimeter shows distance to sea level, but sometimes I end up coming down over actual land, and I either deploy the parachute far too early thinking I'm going to bounce off a mountain, or I deploy it far too late thinking the ground below me is flat.

I've been checking out the mods, and I'm sure one of them has something to show actual distance to impact, yes?  If so, which one would that be?

[Geonovast]

I use KER, it has one built in.

Any informational mod should have it.  I can't say for sure, but I can't believe MechJeb wouldn't have it.

IVA view (When you're in the pod looking through the kerbal's eyes) there is a terrain altimeter, but it's a real gauge and hard to read.

Would be nice if we could switch the stock altimeter between modes similar to the navball mode switching.

[4x4cheesecake]

Well, I use KER as well but if you don't want all the other features, you may want to try this one:

 

[Popestar]

1 hour ago, Geonovast said:

I use KER, it has one built in.

Any informational mod should have it.  I can't say for sure, but I can't believe MechJeb wouldn't have it.

IVA view (When you're in the pod looking through the kerbal's eyes) there is a terrain altimeter, but it's a real gauge and hard to read.

Would be nice if we could switch the stock altimeter between modes similar to the navball mode switching.

Wait...what?

[Geonovast]

4 minutes ago, Popestar said:

Wait...what?

The navball has three modes, because the indicators on it are all relative.

Modes are Orbit, Surface, and Target.  It's pretty good about auto-switching to what you need at the time (Switches from surface to orbit on launch, orbit to surface on landing, from whatever to target when you get close to your target).  But you can switch it manually at any time by clicking on the box where it says Orbit/Surface/Target

[Pecan]

2 minutes ago, Geonovast said:

The navball has three modes, because the indicators on it are all relative.

Modes are Orbit, Surface, and Target.  It's pretty good about auto-switching to what you need at the time (Switches from surface to orbit on launch, orbit to surface on landing, from whatever to target when you get close to your target).  But you can switch it manually at any time by clicking on the box where it says Orbit/Surface/Target

Beat me to it almost word-for-word, lol.

Yes, MJ has a specific 'surface info' window, including altitude above the ground as well as above sea level.  It also has completely customisable windows so you can show exactly and only the information you want at any time.  Just using custom window and select from the very large range of stats it includes.  A couple of years ago KER and MJ did a swap-and-merge on their data-delivery code to make sure they were giving as accurate and reliable info as possible.  To what extent they've diverged again since then I don't know.

 

[helaeon]

KER + Trajectories.
With trajectories you can predict your impact even through atmo when you make your de-orbit node, makes landing back at KSC super easy. It even has an - in flight marker to update your updated impact as you do burns or aerodynamically glide.

KER's hud gives a moment by moment read out, think of it as your instrument cluster. The relevant ones here are altitude above terrain & time to impact. I tend to do propulsive landings now so time to suicide burn is good too.

If you want to go to MechJeb, it has mostly the same readouts as KER but you have programs too... so you can turn the landing over to mechjeb once your re-entry is complete and do a spaceX style precision landing on the runway! (Not rough to do manually but the computer uses nearly minimum deltaV. I'm a pretty good pilot and I don't think I can beat the computer on hitting that suicide burn that exact).

[bewing]

KerbNet also displays altitude above ground, but very few people use it for that.

 

[Gargamel]

On 11/9/2018 at 3:19 PM, Popestar said:

And by that, I mean distance to the ground itself, not to where sea level is at.  I know the altimeter shows distance to sea level, but sometimes I end up coming down over actual land, and I either deploy the parachute far too early thinking I'm going to bounce off a mountain, or I deploy it far too late thinking the ground below me is flat.

Parachute deployment altitude is determined by AGL, not ASL.   So if you have them staged correctly, and your tweakables are set right, they should deploy open at the same altitude over the ground, every time.   I usually stage them right after I complete my re-entry burn. You really don't need a mod at all to open your parachutes correctly. 

Now if you're flying into the side of a cliff, they will open too late to slow down, but even if they did, you're still going to bounce down the side of the mountain, so it's kinda moot.  

[Vanamonde]

This discussion of add-ons has been moved to Add-on Discussions.