Kerbnet Map Updating

[Waxing_Kibbous]

I'm really excited for 1.2 and all the cool new features and tweaks, and have been watching all of the 1.2 videos that I can find. I love the new Kerbnet feature, but the fact one needs to constantly click the "update" button to refresh the map seems like it will get old fast. Can we get an auto update option that updates every X amount of seconds- 10 seconds seems like a reasonable option (or even faster? Is Kerbnet a resource hog? How will timewarp handle it?). Kerbnet could be a nice replacement for some mods, but I know I'll end up using mods instead because they handle things in real time without the need for constant button clicking.

[Arsonide]

KerbNet takes a snapshot of the ground below, then allows you to get data about individual locations using the targeting reticle. If it auto-refreshed that would be pretty difficult and confusing. Besides that, it's a rather intensive process to build the map, so you wouldn't want it happening automatically.

[OHara]

The similar zoomed map in the mod ScanSat updates on-demand only and that works nicely.

You don't want the view in the map to be moving by while you are planning setting a waypoint.

[Armisael]

28 minutes ago, Arsonide said:

KerbNet takes a snapshot of the ground below, then allows you to get data about individual locations using the targeting reticle. If it auto-refreshed that would be pretty difficult and confusing. Besides that, it's a rather intensive process to build the map, so you wouldn't want it happening automatically.

If my usage of this is anything like the narrowband scanner then a lot of the time I don't care about the precise surface data. The colormap provides enough detail for me to isolate regions of interest; I'll look at snapshots once I've found those. If I'm in low orbit looking for biomes (for EVA reports or gravioli science or another landing site) or looking for favorable landing terrain (on Eve, say), then I really do want a video feed. I daresay that anytime you see a player hitting the update button at sub-second intervals you should consider that a request for a pauseable video feed.

I'll have to take you at your word on the computational cost, though I'm a little concerned if a once-per-second refresh mode would be a realistic problem.

Edited September 11, 2016 by Armisael

[lajoswinkler]

I agree with this. It should be able to refresh (as an option) each n seconds.

[Waxing_Kibbous]

3 hours ago, Arsonide said:

KerbNet takes a snapshot of the ground below, then allows you to get data about individual locations using the targeting reticle. If it auto-refreshed that would be pretty difficult and confusing. Besides that, it's a rather intensive process to build the map, so you wouldn't want it happening automatically.

So, far, in the Squadcast 1.2 preview, the Hazard-ish preview, and Scott's below I have seen lots of manual updating. I could be misled and it may not be an issue in actual gameplay, but the update button is getting pretty abused already (you guys added a lot of really cool stuff in 1.2 and I don't want to appear overly critical, just giving some feedback based on gameplay videos):

 

[Wyzard]

3 hours ago, Arsonide said:

it's a rather intensive process to build the map, so you wouldn't want it happening automatically.

Maybe just once every few seconds, rather than every frame?

Or maybe an alternate "live video" mode that just does normal polygon rendering with a zoomed FOV, instead of raycasting.  (Though I know that's likely to involve code-architectural changes that are too big for 1.2 at this point.)

Edited September 11, 2016 by Wyzard

[Pthigrivi]

Any chance we could get a global overlay in map mode like the ore scan at some point? 

[OHara]

37 minutes ago, Waxing_Kibbous said:

So, far, in the Squadcast 1.2 preview, the Hazard-ish preview, and Scott's below I have seen lots of manual updating. I could be misled and it may not be an issue in actual gameplay, but the update button is getting pretty abused already

Probably the repeated clicking is for demonstration purposes only.

When I first used the similar map from the ScanSat mod, I clicked update three times in a row, to understand what it did.  After that I only want on-demand snapshots. I don't see any requests for a live update directed at ScanSat. 

Live updating might be convenient for similar maps centered on a rover location, as opposed to the location under a satellite in orbit.   I would wait to try the feature, before making the request here.

[Armisael]

3 minutes ago, OHara said:

Probably the repeated clicking is for demonstration purposes only.

When I first used the similar map from the ScanSat mod, I clicked update three times in a row, to understand what it did.  After that I only want on-demand snapshots. I don't see any requests for a live update directed at ScanSat. 

Live updating might be convenient for similar maps centered on a rover location, as opposed to the location under a satellite in orbit.   I would wait to try the feature, before making the request here.

I already want the feature in 1.1.3 on the narrow band scanner and I don't see any reason KerbNet is different enough to make the judgement invalid. ScanSat has one huge fundamental difference: you can generate and store data when you aren't actively manning the ship.

Additionally, here's a use case in the new system where you do, almost objectively, want autorefresh: you're looking for anomalies. Most of the time the only thing the screen is telling you is "no anomalies here". While the satellite warps around you just sit there mashing the refresh key lest you miss the anomaly.

These aren't hard situations to come up with. I suspect that 

[Wyzard]

26 minutes ago, OHara said:

Live updating might be convenient for similar maps centered on a rover location, as opposed to the location under a satellite in orbit.   I would wait to try the feature, before making the request here.

This brings to mind something I've done a few times: build a rover with a narrow-band resource scanner on top, land it on a moon, drive it around to find the spot with the highest local ore concentration, and then use the rover's map marker as the target to land a drill/ISRU unit.  Live update would be handy for that, but it's a specialized sort of usage that doesn't necessarily apply to KerbNet.

(Of course, if the narrow-band resource scanner could generate map markers like KerbNet apparently can, I wouldn't have needed to land the scanner itself just to mark the spot I found with it.  It looks like it's really meant to be used from orbit, and putting it on a rover is a little silly.)

[Alshain]

5 hours ago, Arsonide said:

KerbNet takes a snapshot of the ground below, then allows you to get data about individual locations using the targeting reticle. If it auto-refreshed that would be pretty difficult and confusing. Besides that, it's a rather intensive process to build the map, so you wouldn't want it happening automatically.

Could there just be a checkbox to enable an auto-refresh?

[DMagic]

If you look at that video you might notice that the MET turns red every time refresh is clicked. Like Arsonide said, generating textures on the fly, and reading terrain, biome, or resource data, is a heavy duty process. It's not too noticeable in the video, but, in addition to the red MET, there is a little hiccup that accompanies every refresh. Whether it hiccups once every second, or once every five seconds, that isn't something you would want to put into stock KSP.

You could get around this, like SCANsat does with the small map. It continuously refreshes one line at a time and caches the terrain data. That way you can update the map without a performance hit, but that only works because the map shows the entire planet. If you are just showing one region you can't cache data, the updated section of the map might not line up well with the old sections, and it would make it very difficult to focus on any one area, since the map would be constantly moving out from underneath your pointer.

 

[Waxing_Kibbous]

25 minutes ago, DMagic said:

If you look at that video you might notice that the MET turns red every time refresh is clicked.

The early clicks when under normal speed don't turn red- the second batch of updates are under physics timewarp, those cause the MET to flash.

This was just an observation of people playing- maybe it's not a thing at all. The people who can really attest to the gameplay aspects of this currently are the testers, I have faith that they are giving good feedback.

(My a***-retentive tendencies always lean towards streamlining processes, this can annoy some people sorry  )

Edited September 12, 2016 by Waxing_Kibbous

[Wyzard]

The thing that's not clear to me is why raycasting is needed at all.  With the old map projection based on latitude and longitude, sure, but the new projection looks like it's just rendering the planet as a sphere at various zoom levels — which is something the game already does very well.  It seems like it ought to be possible to just draw the planet the usual way, with triangles, using its heightmap or biome map as a texture.  (In fact, the KerbNet biome view looks a lot like the biome view that's already present in the debug menu.)

Maybe it's a Unity limitation?  I know what OpenGL can do, but I don't know Unity at all.  It might be that the engine doesn't provide a way to render an object into a texture each frame before displaying that texture in a scene.

[Arsonide]

2 minutes ago, Wyzard said:

The thing that's not clear to me is why raycasting is needed at all.  With the old map projection based on latitude and longitude, sure, but the new projection looks like it's just rendering the planet as a sphere at various zoom levels — which is something the game already does very well.  It seems like it ought to be possible to just draw the planet the usual way, with triangles, using its heightmap or biome map as a texture.  (In fact, the KerbNet biome view looks a lot like the biome view that's already present in the debug menu.)

Maybe it's a Unity limitation?  I know what OpenGL can do, but I don't know Unity at all.  It might be that the engine doesn't provide a way to render an object into a texture each frame before displaying that texture in a scene.

Raycasting allows custom (modded) display modes to display any information they like, rather than simply what is in an arbitrary texture.

I spent a bit of time tonight setting up auto-refresh and updating KSPedia for it. You should see it in today's streams if the streamers update.

[Superfluous J]

2 minutes ago, Arsonide said:

I spent a bit of time tonight setting up auto-refresh and updating KSPedia for it. You should see it in today's streams if the streamers update.

This is why we can have nice things. Thanks!

[Wyzard]

36 minutes ago, Arsonide said:

Raycasting allows custom (modded) display modes to display any information they like, rather than simply what is in an arbitrary texture.

Ahh, good reason.  Thanks.    I'm guessing this means the raycasting is done on the CPU, rather than the GPU in a fragment shader or something, so I can see why there's a performance concern.

BTW, any chance of giving the narrow-band resource scanner a "waypoint" button like KerbNet has?  (I know you're past feature freeze, but I figure it doesn't hurt to ask in case it's a very simple change that warrants an exception.)  Right now, the only way to mark a spot you find with the scanner is by landing the craft with the scanner at that spot, like I described above.

Edited September 12, 2016 by Wyzard

[Arsonide]

16 minutes ago, Wyzard said:

Ahh, good reason.  Thanks.    I'm guessing this means the raycasting is done on the CPU, rather than the GPU in a fragment shader or something, so I can see why there's a performance concern.

BTW, any chance of giving the narrow-band resource scanner a "waypoint" button like KerbNet has?  (I know you're past feature freeze, but I figure it doesn't hurt to ask in case it's a very simple change that warrants an exception.)  Right now, the only way to mark a spot you find with the scanner is by landing the craft with the scanner at that spot, like I described above.

The narrow band scanner now uses KerbNet. The old interface was merged into it, so this is already done.

[Alshain]

56 minutes ago, Arsonide said:

Raycasting allows custom (modded) display modes to display any information they like, rather than simply what is in an arbitrary texture.

I spent a bit of time tonight setting up auto-refresh and updating KSPedia for it. You should see it in today's streams if the streamers update.

Thanks for your attention to the community Arsonide.

[Bombaatu]

23 hours ago, Wyzard said:

Maybe just once every few seconds, rather than every frame?

That feature exists in the videos I've seen - refresh every 7 seconds, every 3 seconds, or manually.

[Pthigrivi]

Thanks so much @Arsonide! Thats awesome. So, gettin real greedy now, but is there any chance the narrow band scanner could have the same behavior? 

[Armisael]

I'm pretty sure I've read that the NBS uses KerbNet for display now so it should already have that.

Edited September 13, 2016 by Armisael

[Waxing_Kibbous]

Thanks for taking the time to look into this @Arsonide it's appreciated!

[Wyzard]

1 hour ago, Pthigrivi said:

Thanks so much @Arsonide! Thats awesome. So, gettin real greedy now, but is there any chance the narrow band scanner could have the same behavior? 

Well,

8 hours ago, Arsonide said:

The narrow band scanner now uses KerbNet. The old interface was merged into it, so this is already done.

It seems likely that this applies to the auto-refresh too.