Orbital path display - RSS

[leroidangleterre]

Hi all,

I recently installed RSS and I face a "visual incomfort" in map view. As soon as I zoom out enough to see the whole planet, the orbit is displayed in full, overlayed on the image of the planet. So I cannot tell which part of the orbit is in space or in the atmosphere, vs. which is inside the planet.

https://imgur.com/gallery/mEOsagK Top image: zoom slightly below limit, we see where the orbit intersects the planet; bottom image, zoom out a little, we see the whole orbit.

That phenomenon happens at a given zoom level, so my question is:

Is there a way to increase that limit zoom level ?

Thanks.

Edited May 9, 2020 by leroidangleterre

[CFYL]

I don't know if that "limit" could be increased but there is a solution, though I don't really know what you want for it either.

Perhaps you could rotate the map view up or down continuously until you can't rotate it in this direction any more, and you will face one of the poles. If your orbit's inclination is small, you can now tell which part of the orbit is inside the atmosphere/planet. Or rotate the map until you are facing the normal/anti-normal direction of the orbit so it will become clear, too.

Of course, you may have to focus the planet to do this. And the orbit's intersection with the surface as you see will be really near the actual point so you know if the part that the orbit is inside the planet or atmosphere.

If you just want to know if your orbit is stable around the planet, you can look at the left bottom. There, below the "staging" icon(which is shown by default), are three other icons(docking, map, maneuver mode). Click on the maneuver mode icon and you can see the ap, pe, period and other information about your current orbit. Above these indicators there is also an icon for details like inclination and eccentricity. Or, in map view, simply move your mouse to the ap/pe icon and their height will be shown. If the pe is below 0, it won't be shown in map view so the only way to see it in this case is to look at the maneuver mode (not the maneuver node!).

If you want to know where exactly will the impact or aerobraking take place, try installing Trajectories by @Kobymaru.

Edited May 13, 2020 by AllenLi