New idea: Make planets in the map view blurred until you did a flyby

[PrimeVest]

Hi there, 

This is something I was thinking about while I was actually playing KSP 1 for the first time. 

I think it is cool especially for first time players to make the planets in the map view blurred until you did a flyby. I feel that this way you get a more 'explorative' feeling while going to space. You mentally set up milestones to visit each planet. Perhaps go even as far as making the planets slightly less blurry after each tracking station upgrade.

Just like how in reality Pluto was just a few pixels until new horizons did a flyby in real life

 

What do you think of this idea? 

Cheers: PrimeVest

 

[Superfluous J]

That's been on the wish list as long as I can remember. There was even a mod that kinda simulated it in KSP1, though the name escapes me. Planetary Fog of War or something like that?

I personally would love it.

[Jacke]

@Superfluous J, do you perhaps mean ResearchBodies?

Quote

This mod will Make Celestial Bodies invisible at the start of a new game. You can change which celestial bodies are visible by default by changing the difficulty setting in the Difficulty Settings Menu. This mod should be played in Career mode as it offers contracts.

At the beginning of a game you can only see a few bodies. First you have to gain enough funds to upgrade your Tracking Station to Level 2.
This will unlock the Observatory Facility. - Yes this mod adds a new Facility to the KSC that acts like a stock facility (destructible and upgradable).

Entering the Observatory you can find out information about the Celestial Bodies you know about, or what research level you are up to for discovered bodies and information about TesearchBodies related contracts.

You will be offered contracts to Search the Skies via the Observatory - or via a Telescope. This mod comes with it's own infrared telescope, but also modifies the stock infrared telescope (That has been included from Asteroid Day).

You can also install my TarsierSpaceTechnology Telescopes  which also integrate with this mod and perform in a similar way (But also can take pictures of the celestial bodies and you can see their details become progressively clearer as you research celestial bodies).

Yes that's right - This mod also alters the physical characteristics of the celestial bodies. So when you first discovery them they are just a grey blob.
As you progressively research them they will progressively become clearer.

This mod also alters the Mapview/Tracking Station so you cannot see celestial bodies you know nothing about. And gradually as you research more about them, things like their characteristics and orbits, etc become known to you.

 

[Superfluous J]

46 minutes ago, Jacke said:

do you perhaps mean ResearchBodies?

Yes! It's been too long but yes that's the one.

[PrimeVest]

oh wow I didn't even know there was a mod for that! I guess the idea is pretty well known already then 

[zeekzeek22]

Yeah this is a common wishlist item, and possibly my biggest. It is a huge "discovery" motivator. There are varying degrees...you could say planets don't even show up until you have a certain science module do a thing, and an easy way for it to not be a frustration is for there to be a tutorial that walks you through making a "planet-hunter" satellite that will pretty much find everything for you in one go. But yeah. I really would love a thing where you build a satellite, do a scan, downlink the data, and your first view of Rask/Rusk is a blob that makes you go "OH MAN I want to know what weirdness this is, just by the shape!"

[rjbvre]

I really like this idea too. All I would add is I hope it would be done in a way that's at least mostly consistent with how our understanding of the solar system and exoplanets evolved irl. This would mean planets are somewhat fuzzy spheres (how fuzzy depending on distance), large moons would be completely featureless blobs, and small/far moons could be completely unknown before probes are sent there (Mun and Minmus would start with full info though). This could be a fun way for the devs to secretly add moons to Jool (we've discovered at least 12 moons around Jupiter in the last few years), or other bodies in Dres's orbit. Space based telescopes similar to Hubble and Webb could be used to figure out the number of exoplanets around a star, as well as their orbits, sizes, and a rough idea of their compositions. I'm leaving out ground based observatories because those aren't flown missions, but they could probably be worked into the colony system.

Not having it mimic real life would be a missed opportunity. It would make it subtly educational and give gamers (especially kids) a good feel for how discoveries were and still are actually made.

[Rpatto92]

Like the idea but maybe shade planets darker or low the opacity, like perhaps they would be in the night sky before using more powerful telescopes. 

[last-stop-till-titan]

I strongly agree with this idea as a difficulty option for a career/science campaign.

[Cailean_556]

This would be great. I like it. Also didn't know it was a mod for KSP1.

[zeekzeek22]

I'm interested in, if there are telescopes as part of discovery/progression, what the relationship between ground/in-space telescopes is. I'd be fine if there is a blanket "ground-based telescopes only work when not facing a star" so that the only ground based telescopes you make are only useful at night, while space-based telescopes produce discoveries at all times? Or there is some sort of "sensitivity" variable that increases with distance from the star...incentivizing an exoplanet hunter to Jool's orbit as opposed to doing all your planet hunting around Kerbin. Just thinking about how to implement it without it being a whole game mechanism that is completed in a single kerbin-orbit mission, but also not feeling needlessly tedious.

[rjbvre]

Good question. I imagine keeping it like the tracking station upgrades or asteroid hunter telescope in KSP1 just for simplicity's sake. Ground based upgrades would show more at each tier and reveal things as soon as they're purchased. The same for space-based, but they would reveal things once they're in the correct orbit. I think requiring line of sight and night/dark conditions would just make things too tedious, especially since for ground scopes you would just time warp until conditions are right, and space scopes would realistically want to be at lagrange points anyway which don't exist in game. For exoplanet hunting the size of the scope is much more important than distance from the star, though science points should be awarded for probes that are very far from Kerbol. Well after its Pluto flyby, New Horizons actually took images of the cosmic optical background because at that distance it could get more accurate readings than Hubble due to the much darker conditions. Even the really old tech on the Voyager probes is still giving us unique data because of their distance.

[Arugela]

I wouldn't blur it. I would make it realistic to what you can see inside the telescope/tech used from kerbin. Or from any previously accomplished missions. Then you realistic scale up as you go. This could ultimately include satellites that you scan the planet with including your ship to gain maps etc realistically. Although once you have gone over with a ship visual/recorded data could be applied to each orb. Maybe with filters to show different things you have collected. Make it realistic.

BTW, if you did the same to kerbin, couldn't this lower the problem with the massive resources used on the runway.

Edited March 18, 2023 by Arugela

[Donkey32]

A nice compromise to not having Lagrange points to park telescopes in would to be to require a polar orbit for them to work, like with the KSP1 orbiting resource scanner. Alternately, polar orbit could give a huge bonus to space telescopes.

I really like this idea and remember the old mod fondly. Would be a great addition to stock KSP2.
 

[ZeTechno]

That's a cool idea, it grants the same feeling when installing a planet pack for the first time!

But, instead of the blur :

16 hours ago, Arugela said:

Would make it realistic to what you can see inside the telescope/tech used from kerbin. Or from any previously accomplished missions. Then you realistic scale up as you go. This could ultimately include satellites that you scan the planet with including your ship to gain maps etc realistically. With filters to show different things you have collected.

It's a very cool idea, if I had the knowledge for coding I'd make a mod on this!

[rjbvre]

I'm not sure what you're suggesting instead of blurring? This is what a picture of Pluto from Hubble looks like (so basically our sharpest image of Pluto before the New Horizons flyby in 2015) and could be what Eeloo looks like after launching a Kerbin space telescope, but before sending a probe:

Spoiler

 

[Arugela]

Then whatever it would look like from kerbin. Would that change with the scaling of kerbol though? It is much smaller. Or would the atmosphere make up for it? I'm not sure how that works specifically.

Do we know what type and size of telescope and other tech they have at KSC?

Edited March 19, 2023 by Arugela

[rjbvre]

That would definitely have an effect since Eeloo is closer to Kerbin than Pluto is to Earth. Pluto is much bigger than Eeloo though so it would be a larger subject to image. I don't think it's been established what scopes they have at KSC, but we can estimate what their version of Hubble would be. In real life Hubble basically filled the diameter of a space shuttle cargo bay (4.2 meter satellite with a 2.4 meter mirror). The mk3 cargo bay has a max capacity of 2.5 meters so their "Hubble" would have about a 1.4 meter mirror, and therefore less resolution than Hubble. I don't really want to look up all the distances and do the math but it seems like it could be close to what we see irl. Honestly I think it would be more important that the game demonstrates the limitations of space telescopes for exploring the outer solar system, than getting exact resolutions correct

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

I have a weird suspicion that this may be an actual Feature - but waiting for Science or something.

I write this because on 3 of my 4 trips to Duna, the planet's image has been replace with a vaguely differentiated orange blob, instead of the highly detailed image I'm used to seeing.  It is entirely possible that this 'orange blob' is either some kind of graphical bug - or an actual asset that is getting incorrectly called in Sandbox.

Only way to tell would be to dive into the files -but I'm not that kind of guy.  Wouldn't even begin to know where to start looking.