Is there a mismatch between map view and planetary models?

[FinalFan]

My lander took off from Minmus and put itself into a prep orbit to return to Kerbin; it was a low orbit but I checked the trajectory in map view and it looked like it had comfortable clearance.  But as I followed the ship, its altitude above the surface dwindled to 87 meters before increasing again.  Well, whatever, I made it ... but then I had another close encounter a mere 26 meters above the surface!  Map view shows a gap between trajectory and surface that should plainly be bigger than that. 

Conversely, in the past I've seen the path sink into the "ground" on map view while I was still a hundred meters up.  I had thought it was just because I was suborbital and "close enough" to the ground, but now I'm wondering if it was the same phenomenon in reverse.  Is this a known issue? 

[bewing]

The map view model of the CB is just a model. Yes, it is known that none of the models precisely match the CBs. You should have seen the differences between the models of Gilly and Bop and reality before they got fixed a few versions ago -- those were really really bad. They were off by kilometers.

It's one of the reasons why the typical "suicide burn" technique is so dangerous -- you're trying to create a maneuver node in map mode on the CB's surface, but you can't trust what appears to be the surface in map mode.

Edited November 23, 2019 by bewing

[StrandedonEarth]

4 minutes ago, bewing said:

You should have seen the differences between the models of Gilly and Bop and reality before they got fixed a few versions ago -- those were really really bad. They were off by kilometers.

Ah yes, a few of my kerbals  went OIT (Urbit Into Terrain) around Gilly