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[PLUGIN+PARTS][0.23] SCANsat terrain mapping


damny

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to the Dev - I love this MOD! Has helped me Map the Biomes on the Mun and Minmus and i have pretty much completed the tech tree by hitting all the Biomes! Awesome job thanks!

I would like to see a gps type part perhaps.... i know if you scroll over the biomes on the map you get the lat and long co-ordinates so you can input that into mechjeb for the red/blue cross. I like that by adding the scan map part to your ship it links in with my scans of the planet so that is cool - but built in gps part would be awesome.

Otherwise cant really fault this Mod - i think it should defo be a stock part in the future and that probes should be the first things you get access to on the tree with the basic scan parts etc.

cheers,

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Huh, I put a SAR Scanner right at 758km and it still isn't happy, flashing Orange/Green at me, but it is scanning well enough. It seems very picky.

Yeah... The SAR scanner's really on the fence... Just treat it like your ex and you should be fine...

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LOL Sorry about that Sma , I thought, I could grab more but no matter how, I change it , I can't grab them lol still playing with it now after seeing you post.

NP, below is what I'm using and it seems to work on all of the scanners, though I don't have the high res one just yet. Might get it when i return from the Mun though. Did send an automated "probe" with the BTDT and the other similar one to my science lab test rover, got the kerbals out and took them off and put them on the rover just fine so I imagine it'll work with the high res one as well. I know it's not the best idea to put all the scanners on one sat, due to altitude limitations, but oh well. :P If I get picky I'll just raise/lower the orbit as needed I guess. Currently I have the scan sats at either 300k or 350k, somewhere around there I forget now, and it seems to be fine. Took a few days to get a scan though. Although My kethane scan isnt complete yet, but that doesn't run when focused on other ships.

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You could edit the range on the scan if wanted and put the kethane scan on 1 of the scansat scan but, have had problem with that as it as you turn scanner on you show's the planet as been scanned and all the kethane is in big patches but glad it's working for you. :D

EDIT @sma can you post what changes you made or send me ?

Edited by Mecripp2
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damny, this is a great time-killer between interplanetary windows. the predicted orbit on the big map is invaluable for precision landing, and almost makes this game feel like Orbiter in that aspect. Taking an idea from that game, would it be possible to overlay the maps with shading to differentiate day-side and night-side?

Something worth noting for people interested: Slap a GPS part on your next LKO station module, and you got yourself a good target for launching straight into a plane match if your station is inclined like ISS.

You could get the custom biomes mod. It adds biomes to all other bodies. It plays nice with Scansat, so you should get a proper biome map if you use it.

I could kiss your face for that. Just finished Minmus bioscan and thought I was done. For me, this isn't about the science. It's about having a folder full of 100% completed trophy scans.

Edited by wrexecute
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Feature suggestion:

Suggested Landing Locations - Would it be possible to add a feature that would circle area's on the biome maps that have the greatest number of biome types within a configurable distance?

Example of how this might work: Add a small button and entry box. Entry box would be the radius you want searched, say 10KM. When you press the button the calculations would be performed and highlighted area's (on the map) would show up, these would be your "suggested landing locations".

The idea of course is to setup a system whereby I can scan a body, then learn the best places to put a rover to hit the most possible biomes within a set range. (this is mainly prep for when other planets get biomes like Duna, I mean how cool would it be to have your "K-Spirit" and "Koppertunity" rovers on Duna be able to hit several biomes?

Just a thought.

I like this idea.

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Hey Damny, Nice work with this add on. I'm willing to bet you could get Ioncross Crew Support working. It is a cool concept and add-on. You may or may not know the dev has passed it on. You got your parts to work when not focused on and that's what this mod needs. It has a short list of updates left to finish (some of which aren't really necessary). It can be a great add on, it wishes to be. It only lacks a dev to finish it, for this reason above all else, you should consider working on this add on.

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Is anyone else getting ships duplicating themselves when switching vessels? I'm going to do some further investigation to make sure it's just Scansat, it might be interacting with another mod.

If anyone else is having this issue I'd like to hear about it.

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Is anyone else getting ships duplicating themselves when switching vessels? I'm going to do some further investigation to make sure it's just Scansat, it might be interacting with another mod.

If anyone else is having this issue I'd like to hear about it.

It's what killed my SpaceLab I some time ago... I'm not sure it's a problem with SCANsat however...

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Is anyone else getting ships duplicating themselves when switching vessels? I'm going to do some further investigation to make sure it's just Scansat, it might be interacting with another mod.

If anyone else is having this issue I'd like to hear about it.

Do you have RemoteTech2 mod, perhaps? Somebody on that mod thread wrote it was causing duplication of crafts.

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I'm not sure if anyone is working on this, but I realized the other day that the BTDT scanner still uses that original, generic mesh. So I whipped up something to fill in.

Javascript is disabled. View full album

I had a few things in mind when I made this. It needs to be small, much smaller than the other scanners, because it is meant to be used on rovers and planes and such. So I made it a 0.4m square, it fits comfortably on top of a probe core, or on the side of the rover body.

I borrowed heavily from the look of the multispectral scanner (in an abstract way, not in a copying-elements-of-Milkshakefiend's-texture way) for the texture. The model is somewhat similar too, but that's not intentional.

The radar dish is similar to some missile detection systems and naval firing control systems, although much smaller, so it seems at least somewhat plausible as a close range anomaly detector.

There are a few problems with my current design though. The complex animations (there are four of them) require a separate plugin to work correctly, and don't work well with damny's plugin. The scanner function works, but it ignores the animations or whether or not the dish is deployed or not. My thinking is to make the orange light and text flash while no anomalies are nearby, then switch to the green light when an anomaly is detected. I don't know how to do this, or if it's easily possible. It will require input from damny's plugin; obviously there is some event triggered when an anomaly comes into range, I just don't think I can integrate my plugin with that though.

In the .gif above I'm just manually triggering all of the animations. One for the dish and light deployment, one for the dish spinning, one for the orange light, and one for the green light. Obviously that's not a good solution. I can integrate the deploy animation easily enough with the regular SCANsat module, but if I want anything else to happen I need my own plugin.

And if there is already some plan or part in the works for this model I can retract my submission and adapt it for use in my own part set, so that's no big deal.

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Nice, I totally agree with you that the BTDT model needed to be different. I was working on making a new MapTraq model based on one of those shark fin style sat radio/gps receivers on cars but was having trouble wrapping my mind around modeling all the curves as I am pretty new to Blender.

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Nice DMagic any chance on a download ?

I'm thinking about that. I can release it as is, with the single, deploy animation using the SCANsat module. The other animations won't work, but it's still an improvement on the default model. I could also release my own plugin, with all of the animations manually triggered, I don't really want to do that though, as that's not a good solution.

Either way I need to make a proper .cfg file and check everything again to make sure all is as it should be.

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I'm not sure if anyone is working on this, but I realized the other day that the BTDT scanner still uses that original, generic mesh. So I whipped up something to fill in.

[sNIP]

I had a few things in mind when I made this. It needs to be small, much smaller than the other scanners, because it is meant to be used on rovers and planes and such. So I made it a 0.4m square, it fits comfortably on top of a probe core, or on the side of the rover body.

[sNIP]

And if there is already some plan or part in the works for this model I can retract my submission and adapt it for use in my own part set, so that's no big deal.

I like this! Nicely done. Very cool dish. I'm glad to see some other parts popping up. I intend to make some more parts for SCANsat (and fix the existing ones, I haven't forgotten about them!), but there is definitely a lot of room for other people to make parts for it as well. Once RL stuff stops devouring all of my time I'd like to try and make a more cohesive set (or sets) of parts for SCANsat and I'd definitely be open to a group effort or collaboration.

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I might be doing something wrong, but I am not sure what it is:

I am flying aroung mun in an 100kmx100km polar orbit using the Scan Multispectral Sensor, the SCAN MapTraq and the SCAN BTDT.

I am getting no updates on my small map window, just in the big one. The percentage coverage is increasing.

BIO and ANOM are blinking yellow/orange and BTDT is permanently orange.

Any one, who may explain this to me?

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I might be doing something wrong, but I am not sure what it is:

I am flying aroung mun in an 100kmx100km polar orbit using the Scan Multispectral Sensor, the SCAN MapTraq and the SCAN BTDT.

I am getting no updates on my small map window, just in the big one. The percentage coverage is increasing.

BIO and ANOM are blinking yellow/orange and BTDT is permanently orange.

Any one, who may explain this to me?

You're way too low. Each scanner has a maximum, minimum, and optimal altitude. They're defined in part.cfg for each part, but they really should be mentioned in the description so you can see the values when you're building your craft. The MapTraq is used for accessing the maps on craft without any of the sensors -- sort of like a GPS receiver.

[TABLE=class: grid, width: 85%, align: left]

[TR]

[TD]Part

[/TD]

[TD]Part Folder[/TD]

[TD]Min. Alt.[/TD]

[TD]Max. Alt.[/TD]

[TD]Opt. Alt.[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]SCAN RADAR Altimetry Sensor (Low-Res Altimetry)[/TD]

[TD]Scanner 1[/TD]

[TD=align: right]5km[/TD]

[TD=align: right]500km[/TD]

[TD=align: right]5km[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]SCAN SAR Altimetry Sensor (Hi-Res Altimetry)[/TD]

[TD]Scanner 2[/TD]

[TD=align: right]5km[/TD]

[TD=align: right]800km[/TD]

[TD=align: right]750km[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]SCAN Multispectral Sensor (Biomes & Anomalies)[/TD]

[TD]Scanner 8[/TD]

[TD=align: right]5km[/TD]

[TD=align: right]500km[/TD]

[TD=align: right]250km[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]SCAN Been There Done That® (BTDT -- short range anomaly ident)[/TD]

[TD]Scanner 32[/TD]

[TD=align: right]0km[/TD]

[TD=align: right]2km[/TD]

[TD=align: right]0km[/TD]

[/TR]

[/TABLE]

Edited by lincourtl
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Do you have RemoteTech2 mod, perhaps? Somebody on that mod thread wrote it was causing duplication of crafts.

I do have RemoteTech2, yes but it seems to be Kerbal Alarm Clock that was interacting with something (I assumed it was ScanSat because the issues started after it. I removed KAC and I haven't had a problem yet.

EDIT: Just happened again, trying without RT2, seems that the combo of RT2, KAC and ScanSat just makes it happen more often, though RT2 would appear to be the root of the problem given what as been previously posted.

Edited by Bean
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The complex animations (there are four of them) require a separate plugin to work correctly, and don't work well with damny's plugin. The scanner function works, but it ignores the animations or whether or not the dish is deployed or not. My thinking is to make the orange light and text flash while no anomalies are nearby, then switch to the green light when an anomaly is detected. I don't know how to do this, or if it's easily possible.

I can make SCANsat trigger more animations. I just don't have anything I can test it with. If you release your part then I will have something :)

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You're way too low. Each scanner has a maximum, minimum, and optimal altitude. They're defined in part.cfg for each part, but they really should be mentioned in the description so you can see the values when you're building your craft. The MapTraq is used for accessing the maps on craft without any of the sensors -- sort of like a GPS receiver.

[TABLE=class: grid, width: 85%, align: left]

[TR]

[TD]Part

[/TD]

[TD]Part Folder[/TD]

[TD]Min. Alt.[/TD]

[TD]Max. Alt.[/TD]

[TD]Opt. Alt.[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]SCAN RADAR Altimetry Sensor (Low-Res Altimetry)[/TD]

[TD]Scanner 1[/TD]

[TD=align: right]5km[/TD]

[TD=align: right]500km[/TD]

[TD=align: right]5km[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]SCAN SAR Altimetry Sensor (Hi-Res Altimetry)[/TD]

[TD]Scanner 2[/TD]

[TD=align: right]5km[/TD]

[TD=align: right]800km[/TD]

[TD=align: right]750km[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]SCAN Multispectral Sensor (Biomes & Anomalies)[/TD]

[TD]Scanner 8[/TD]

[TD=align: right]5km[/TD]

[TD=align: right]500km[/TD]

[TD=align: right]250km[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]SCAN Been There Done That® (BTDT -- short range anomaly ident)[/TD]

[TD]Scanner 32[/TD]

[TD=align: right]0km[/TD]

[TD=align: right]2km[/TD]

[TD=align: right]0km[/TD]

[/TR]

[/TABLE]

Great table! Thanks for this explaination.

But why is my small mapping window not updated, but my big map is?

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@Horman I only had that happen a couple of times once screen stayed black and once grey think it was a missing a part or a conflict with a part on that craft will try to remember. :confused:

P.s Some mods power generators jack with the scan's, I'm thinking.

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Great table! Thanks for this explaination.

But why is my small mapping window not updated, but my big map is?

Hah! Good question. I got so fixated on your altitude that I missed that part of your original query. I've never had a situation where the minimap wasn't updating unless the sensors were out of range.

I have had weirdness where the sensors would report being out of range, even though they weren't. For instance, I was doing an altimetry scan of Duna the other night at an almost perfectly circular 750km polar orbit, but my SAR sensor kept blinking out as I passed over the poles. Reducing my altitude to 725km solved the problem. I have no idea what could have caused that.

My only other issues with this mod are 1) I'd really like it to use Blizzy's toolbar, and 2) the settings are never retained.

BTW: I used ModuleManager to add Maptraq to all my spacecraft. If you already have ModuleManager installed, just stick a file named something like 'add-maptraq.cfg' in your GameData with this code:

@PART
[*]:HAS[@MODULE[ModuleCommand]]
{
//enables SCANSat MapTraq on all pods and probes//
MODULE
{
name = SCANsat
sensorType = 0
fov = 0
min_alt = 0
max_alt = 0
best_alt = 0
power = 0.01
}
}

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