[1.12.x] BetterBurnTime v1.10: Provides extra burn-time indicators on the navball for suicide burns & target rendezvous.

[Snark]

13 minutes ago, Apollo13 said:

Don't include Module Manager.  Inevitably, a new MM will come out and the one you include will conflict with it.

Pretty much all my mods that use MM (which is most of them) include it.  I've never had any problem with it myself, nor have I observed anyone else having a problem with it.

Fortunately, ModuleManager is designed with this very problem in mind-- it assumes that it's going to be bundled, and that multiple versions are going to be present, so that it actually has code in its startup routine that checks for conflicts and picks the newest one to load.

13 minutes ago, Apollo13 said:

I've had a situation where my mods install had several MMs stored in multiple mods GameData files.

Okay, but it ought to be pretty obvious at installation time if this is the problem.  The correct place to install MM is in the root of GameData itself, not buried in some folder somewhere, so if multiple mods install different versions it'll be pretty obvious that they're all sitting right there in the same folder as each other.

13 minutes ago, Apollo13 said:

Or, include MM outside your GameData directory.

Which is exactly what I do.  I install MM not in the BBT directory, but in GameData itself, same as every other of my mods and pretty much every MM-bundling mod I've ever seen.

Look, if my mod needs ModuleManager, I'm not going to ship without it, because that would be making life harder for folks who want to install.  Pretty much every MM-using mod in the universe bundles the mod-- it's the common practice, and MM has code in it to make that a friendlier situation.  So I don't expect to change that practice anytime soon.

 

10 minutes ago, Nik Power said:

I think, Github is what You need https://github.com/SuicidalInsanity/Mk2Expansion/releases

Thank you, this looks like exactly what I need!  I'll give it a whirl and see what turns up.  (I also note that the mod looks as though it comes with B9PartSwitch bundled with it... which has been previously mentioned as a possibility just a few posts above.  So it may be that B9PartSwitch is causing issues.  Anyway, I'll see if I can reproduce it, thanks!)

[Snark]

Hi all,

Thanks to @Nik Power's tireless detective work in running down a repro case, it was pretty straightforward for me to find a fix for the hang-on-load bug that folks are reporting.

Turns out that B9PartSwitch is the culprit.  Apparently it's more finicky than the stock game is, when it comes to processing stuff that adds new info to the tooltip in the editor.

Anyway, it was a simple one-line fix that appears to have resolved the matter.  I've released BetterBurnTime version 1.8.1 with the fix in place.

Many thanks to Nik, for taking one for the team!    Your name shall go down in legend and song.  (Well, in the changelog.txt that goes with the mod, anyway...)

Enjoy!

[Nik Power]

17 hours ago, Snark said:

Hi all,

Thanks to @Nik Power's tireless detective work in running down a repro case, it was pretty straightforward for me to find a fix for the hang-on-load bug that folks are reporting.

Turns out that B9PartSwitch is the culprit.  Apparently it's more finicky than the stock game is, when it comes to processing stuff that adds new info to the tooltip in the editor.

Anyway, it was a simple one-line fix that appears to have resolved the matter.  I've released BetterBurnTime version 1.8.1 with the fix in place.

Many thanks to Nik, for taking one for the team!    Your name shall go down in legend and song.  (Well, in the changelog.txt that goes with the mod, anyway...)

Enjoy!

My pleasure, Man!

Me and my elder kid like to kerbalize those cucumbers to space,

so it really upset us, when our KSP-kerbalimulator does not give us our fun :))

Edited December 3, 2018 by Nik Power

[Eaten by Black Hole]

Indicator enters the navball.Idk if its known issue.

[Snark]

2 hours ago, Eaten by Black Hole said:

Indicator enters the navball.Idk if its known issue.

Yes, known issue-- it can happen if you rescale the navball.  It's been a known issue (i.e. without my fixing it) for quite a while, mainly because,

• it doesn't affect me personally (since I don't rescale the navball), which impacts my motivation, and
• it involves Unity UI arcana (which means that it would be a big hassle sucking up a lot of my time in frustrating trial-and-error to try to figure out how to solve)

I'm sure the solution will turn out to be something super simple-- I'm guessing just a line or two of code for me to tweak.  But it's figuring out how to fix it that would be the large time consumer, which is why I keep procrastinating finding a fix for that issue.  If some public-spirited person could ever do the legwork for me and point me at what exactly I'd need to tweak, then that would change this bug from "ugly time-consuming hassle" to "simple quick fix" for me, and then I'd be more likely to address it. 

[RealKerbal3x]

Hey @Snark, great work on this mod! I've always wanted a burn-time indicator for rendezvous!

Just a thing: have you thought of changing the name of the mod? Since 1.5, it no longer actually fixes the manoeuvre node indicators, so maybe something like 'Extended Burn Time'?

[Snark]

2 minutes ago, RealKerbal3x said:

Just a thing: have you thought of changing the name of the mod?

Nope, I like it the way it is. 

(And thank you for the kind words.)

[EchoLima]

@Snark, I have a suggestion: if the time to impact is less than the estimated burn duration (when landing), could you make the text turn red? It would help for visibility. 

Edited January 20, 2019 by EchoLima

[Snark]

6 hours ago, EchoLima said:

@Snark, I have a suggestion: if the time to impact is less than the estimated burn duration (when landing), could you make the text turn red? It would help for visibility. 

Nope, because that would be misleading and wrong.  After all, you want the time-to-impact to be less than the estimated burn time duration when you start the burn (typically 60-70% of it, depending on your descent angle and local TWR), as has been discussed many times in this thread.  (It becomes obvious if you stop a moment to think about the physics of the situation.)

That means that the point where "estimated impact time" happens to precisely equal "estimated burn time" is not particularly noteworthy or important, so having the text suddenly turn red at that time would be misleading-- it would, 1. make players freak out when there's nothing to freak out about because it's still too early to do the burn, and 2. teach players to start their burn too early, thus wasting fuel and largely defeating the point of the mod.

So no, ain't gonna do that because it would be the wrong thing to do and what it does now (i.e. nothing) is the correct thing. 

[1straycat]

Is the latest version (1.8.1) working properly for  KSP 1.6.1? I can see time to reentry, but not time to impact or the dots that countdown to burn.

[Snark]

1 hour ago, 1straycat said:

Is the latest version (1.8.1) working properly for  KSP 1.6.1? I can see time to reentry, but not time to impact or the dots that countdown to burn.

Sure, it's working just fine.

Time to impact is displayed normally, same as it has always been.

As has been discussed previously in this thread, there's no maneuver-node "countdown until burn" in BBT anymore, by design, since that's been a stock feature since KSP 1.5 and therefore is unnecessary anymore. Therefore I removed that feature in BetterBurnTime version 1.7 (see the change log installed with the mod).

[1straycat]

Aha! I just upgraded to 1.6 from 1.3, and haven't quite assimilated all the changes yet. The new stock indicator is pretty nice! And my first test with the impact indicator must not have been from low enough to the ground; testing again now showed it working fine indeed. Sorry to bother, and thanks for the mods and response

[Nozza]

Where IS the stock indicator anyway? I've played a few hours of 1.6 now and still haven't found it whenever I'm doing maneuvers.

[Marschig]

4 hours ago, Nozza said:

Where IS the stock indicator anyway? I've played a few hours of 1.6 now and still haven't found it whenever I'm doing maneuvers.

Check the option "Extended Burn Indicator" in Game Settings is turned on.

[Tyko]

5 hours ago, Marschig said:

Check the option "Extended Burn Indicator" in Game Settings is turned on.

You can turn the stock indicator off??? wow...never knew   

[RealKerbal3x]

Just now, Tyko said:

You can turn the stock indicator off??? wow...never knew   

It’s just the ‘Start Burn In’ indicator... the rest you can’t turn off.

Interestingly, it’s actually off by default.

[Snark]

Hi all,

I'm pleased to announce the release of BetterBurnTime version 1.9, now with geosynchrony tracker!

The idea is to make it easier to put satellites into synchronous orbit.  I dunno about you, but I've always found this to be a massive pain, mainly because I can't see whether I've got my orbit too big, too small, or just right.  Well, this takes care of that. 

The tracker displays a time delta (positive or negative) showing how far off your current orbital period is from perfect geosynchrony. It shows hours/minutes/seconds until you get within 10 seconds, then switches to milliseconds display. (The transition point is configurable, see below.)

This makes it easy to put satellites in synchronous orbit. If the value is negative, thrust ; if positive, thrust . Goal is to get as close to zero as possible, for synchronous orbit.

All of the following conditions must be met for this indicator to be displayed:

• No other tracker is currently active.
• You're in a stable orbit (e.g. not suborbital or escaping).
• The period of your current orbit is within 5% of the current celestial body's rotation period (this is configurable, see below).
• Your ship has been "idle" (defined as, no throttle and no control inputs) for less than 10 seconds (this is configurable, see below).

In addition, this tracker also supports an override key that allows manually forcing it to display, even if the above conditions aren't met, as long as no other tracker is active. By default, the override key is the right Ctrl key (this can be changed via config). Also, by default, the override is only active while you're actually holding the key down; however, there's a config setting that lets you make it "sticky" (i.e. press once to turn on, press a second time to turn off).

When the override key is active and you're not currently in a stable orbit, it will just say gsync ~.  If the override key is active and geosynchronous orbit is actually impossible for the current celestial body (because the needed altitude would be outside the SoI), then it will say gsync X.  (These are only shown when the override is active, since if it isn't, in this case the tracker's not shown at all.)

The following things can be configured (for full details, i.e. specifically what to edit where, see the "How to configure" section in the OP of this thread):

• Which key is used for the "override", and whether it's "sticky" or not (defaults to right Ctrl, not sticky)
• How close to geosync you need to be, in order for the display to pop up (defaults to 5%; you can disable the tracker entirely by setting to zero)
• The "idle time" timeout, i.e. how long the display is shown after you touch the ship's controls (defaults to 10 seconds)
• The text label used (defaults to "gsync")
• The milliseconds transition point, i.e. below what time delta does it switch from hours/minutes/seconds to milliseconds (defaults to 10 seconds)

Enjoy! 

[RealKerbal3x]

@Snark, nice! That’s a useful feature. BBT has come a long way from its original purpose, and got a lot more useful along the way

[Zorg]

@Snark Very cool! I wast just literally just about to launch a GEO constellation. The fine tuning is always such a headache.

edit: Can't believe how easy that was!

Edited February 25, 2019 by Zorg

[Snark]

Hi all,

I'm pleased to announce the release of BetterBurnTime version 1.9.1, now with target synchrony tracker!

This works almost exactly like the geosynchrony tracker that was added in release 1.9.  It makes it easier to set up an orbit that's synchronous with your target, rather than with the celestial body you're orbiting.

This is useful if, for example, you want to have a constellation of satellites that are synchronous with each other but not necessarily with the planet they're orbiting.

There's nothing special to do.  It automatically appears when appropriate, same as the geosynchrony tracker-- only difference is that it's only active when you have a target, and that target is orbiting.

You can tell that you're seeing the target synchrony tracker rather than the geosynchrony tracker because the little label says "tsync" rather than "gsync".

Enjoy! 

[overkill13]

Any chance of returning the burn time calculations to this mod?  I'm really missing accurate calculations since Squad can't seem to get things straight. 

I regularly see the burn timer jump 10% or more as soon as I fire my engines, making my burns inaccurate.  Add this to the fact that the stock system doesn't seem capable of handling NERVs and monoprop engine calculations and I'm really lamenting that you dropped the burn calculations within BBT.

[RealKerbal3x]

8 hours ago, overkill13 said:

Any chance of returning the burn time calculations to this mod?  I'm really missing accurate calculations since Squad can't seem to get things straight. 

I regularly see the burn timer jump 10% or more as soon as I fire my engines, making my burns inaccurate.  Add this to the fact that the stock system doesn't seem capable of handling NERVs and monoprop engine calculations and I'm really lamenting that you dropped the burn calculations within BBT.

Are you on 1.5? There were several issues with the burn time system that were fixed in 1.6.

[Snark]

22 hours ago, overkill13 said:

Any chance of returning the burn time calculations to this mod?  I'm really missing accurate calculations since Squad can't seem to get things straight.

Nope.  I write code to make the game do things that I want it to do, and which the stock game doesn't try.  I don't write mods to fix bugs-- that's Squad's job, not mine.

And the reason Squad's dV tools have been as buggy as they have is because... well... it's a really gosh-darn hard problem.  If I tried to write code that could handle all the bits that Squad's stuff does-- staging and fuel flow, for example-- then I'm quite sure I'd have just as many bugs as they do, and I'd have to spend endless hours fixing them myself.  No thank you. Do not want.  I'd rather just wait for them to fix it themselves-- which I suspect they will, in due course, since this is a fairly high-visibility feature and will generate a lot of user chatter until the kinks are worked out.

Bear in mind that the old burn-time calculations I had for maneuvers did not handle staging or fuel flow.  They were reliable and "correct", simply because they kept things absolutely dead-simple and chose not to handle a variety of complex factors. 

Squad's stuff is much more sophisticated, and it does what I've always wanted it to do, pretty much.  It's just that it has some bugs in it, which I trust will get fixed in due course.

[Anth]

Snark....anyway I can locate a version of BetterBurnTime for 1.5.1 for my bug testing of a burn indicator bug?

[Snark]

13 hours ago, Anth12 said:

Snark....anyway I can locate a version of BetterBurnTime for 1.5.1 for my bug testing of a burn indicator bug?

Every mod that's hosted on SpaceDock has every prior version available. Just go to the changelog tab and all the prior versions are listed, along with a download link, labeled for which KSP version it's for.