Altimeter on probes

[ScarM]

Is there an altimeter on stock probes?  Or, is there a clever way to get distance to terrain when using only a stock probe?

Why do I feel like I'm opening a can of worms?

[Snark]

13 minutes ago, ScarM said:

Is there an altimeter on stock probes?  Or, is there a clever way to get distance to terrain when using only a stock probe?

Why do I feel like I'm opening a can of worms?

Nope.

(See, some questions have simple answers.) 

There are plenty of mods that can provide this info, of course, presented in various ways depending on what you're looking for.

For example, there's *cough* my own BetterBurnTime, which doesn't explicitly tell you the altitude, but does tell you seconds-until-impact and seconds-of-engine-thrust-needed-to-kill-velocity-at-surface, i.e. the info that you actually need for landing, which is very often the reason why people want radar altimetry in the first place:

 

 

Edited January 30, 2016 by Snark

[wibou7]

3 hours ago, Snark said:

For example, there's *cough* my own BetterBurnTime, which doesn't explicitly tell you the altitude, but does tell you seconds-until-impact and seconds-of-engine-thrust-needed-to-kill-velocity-at-surface, i.e. the info that you actually need for landing, which is very often the reason why people want radar altimetry in the first place

Tss tss Snark, shamelessly pushing your own mod again?

...

Well it worked, downloading it right now. I've been wanting to try it for a while, it seems today is the day.

[Reactordrone]

As a work around, if you have the surface scanning module it will start to display ore concentrations at 1km above the surface. For places like Minmus a 1km warning is plenty of time to stop but it's obviously not as good as the 3km warning that the radar altimeter gives you.

[Snark]

28 minutes ago, wibou7 said:

Tss tss Snark, shamelessly pushing your own mod again?

Well, heck, it does the job.  It's not my fault if I happen to be the one who wrote it.