Orbital Survey [v0.9.4 for KSP2 v0.2.1]

[Falki]

1 hour ago, Rezania said:

Science Arrive seems to suggest that we are able scan Kerbal for extra science, is that true? Because I checked orbital distances needed for scanning a large body like Kerbol and I think my ships will just burn up at those distances to the star.

No, it's not possible, thanks for the report

[Schneider21]

6 hours ago, Falki said:

No, it's not possible

Well not with that attitude!

[Deadly_Laser]

3 hours ago, Schneider21 said:

Well not with that attitude!

*altitude

[Schneider21]

Does Ike take an extraordinary amount of time to map, or am I orbiting it wrong somehow? I'm in a 90 deg polar orbit at ideal altitude, and just hit 75% scanned 13 years into this satellite's mission. Granted, some of that early part was me not launching during a good window, but this craft has been in orbit around Ike scanning for at least half that time. Duna's already fully scanned and I started that one after, but it's obviously larger with a different orbit for its scanner.

Spoiler

Edited February 5 by Schneider21

[Falki]

7 hours ago, Schneider21 said:

Does Ike take an extraordinary amount of time to map, or am I orbiting it wrong somehow? I'm in a 90 deg polar orbit at ideal altitude, and just hit 75% scanned 13 years into this satellite's mission. Granted, some of that early part was me not launching during a good window, but this craft has been in orbit around Ike scanning for at least half that time. Duna's already fully scanned and I started that one after, but it's obviously larger with a different orbit for its scanner.

Recently I've added this to the mod description in the first post:

Quote

• Be careful not to lock yourself into a resonant orbit. If you notice your map isn't being revealed, that your vessel keeps orbiting over the same patches of land it already scanned, you're likely in a resonant orbit. Tweak your apoapsis and periapsis a bit to leave orbit resonance. You don't have to be exactly at the Ideal altitude.

The altitude revamp had an unfortunate consequence of making some Ideal orbits to be in a resonant orbit for some bodies (Ike, Jool...). I'll likely tweak this a bit to push them out of resonance, since I feel lots of people will have this issue without realizing it.

[Schneider21]

1 hour ago, Falki said:

Recently I've added this to the mod description in the first post:

The altitude revamp had an unfortunate consequence of making some Ideal orbits to be in a resonant orbit for some bodies (Ike, Jool...). I'll likely tweak this a bit to push them out of resonance, since I feel lots of people will have this issue without realizing it.

Oh, yep. Totally missed that note. Thank you!

[Schneider21]

How much effort might it be to add lat/long or inclination lines to the map (or hashmarks on the side). When trying to set orbits to pass through specific regions, it'd be super useful to be able to see where things are.

Also, any chance of projecting your orbit onto the map, along with any planned maneuver paths? Again, would make collecting all the science for various surveys much more doable.

Loving the mod thoroughly, though! It's a fun and relaxing way to engage with the game and still progress the Science tree.

[Falki]

1 hour ago, Schneider21 said:

How much effort might it be to add lat/long or inclination lines to the map (or hashmarks on the side).

Oh that's a nice idea, don't know why I haven't thought about that yet. I'll add it to the list.

 

1 hour ago, Schneider21 said:

Also, any chance of projecting your orbit onto the map, along with any planned maneuver paths? Again, would make collecting all the science for various surveys much more doable.

That's on the TODO list, but it probably won't come soon.

[dmsilev]

Doesn't the "overlay survey image onto the regular map mode" function give you most of the functionality of the second request? I guess that doesn't give the legend identifying the different science regions, but other than that?

[Schneider21]

42 minutes ago, dmsilev said:

Doesn't the "overlay survey image onto the regular map mode" function give you most of the functionality of the second request? I guess that doesn't give the legend identifying the different science regions, but other than that?

Oh yeah, I forgot the overlay applies in map mode, too! I'll give it a try. Thanks!

[Falki]

v0.9.0 "Wayfarer's Waypoints"

Added Waypoints

• Add, Edit or Remove Waypoints by right-clicking on the Map canvas
• Waypoints show in the Map UI, Flight view and in Map3d view
• You can define Waypoint names and colors, however in Flight and Map3d view waypoints will always be yellow (limitation of the game)
• Mouse-over Waypoint markers to show their name and geographic coordinates
• Toggle the side controls to permanently show Marker names and Geo coordinates

Note: waypoints will be usually created on the surface of the celestial body, however if you create a waypoint on a body that isn't loaded (for example you're controlling a vessel on Kerbin, but you're adding a waypoint on the Mun), then the waypoint will be created at a certain altitude above the surface of the body (several kilometers). That's normal behavior.

Mouse-over shows Region names and Geo coordinates

• Toggle the side "NAM" and "GEO" controls to activate showing of Region names and/or Geographic coordinates while mousing-over the Map canvas
• LAT/LON will display if "GEO" control is toggled
• Region names display if "NAM" is toggled, but only if the body is 100% mapped

Other

• Chinese translations updated by @fengyuan0529
•  French translations added by @Olympic1 & @Spicat
•  German translations updated by @Olympic1

Edited February 10 by Falki

[rogerawong]

Fantastic features, Falki!

[bmcmahonwrx]

This is amazing! This will fundamentally change the gameplay once again. Keep up the fantastic work @Falki!

[Kayser]

A fantastic mod!

Instead of dynamic calculation of scan altitude, I would propose a fixed minimum and maximum altitude per antennae. It would mean:

• You have to carefully select antennae based on which body you are planning to scan, to stay out of atmosphere, inside SOI, and avoid moons.
• It more accurately reflects how a lens would need to stay within a distance where it can focus.
• Region size scanned would depend on altitude and antennae field of view. Closer = smaller region but faster speed across surface. Further away = larger region but slower speed across surface.
• More advanced antennae can still be "better" in terms of wider min/max altitude and FOV.
• Less risk of getting stuck in resonant orbit when there is no "ideal" distance to aim for.
• It may be easier to understand in general.

Edited February 11 by Kayser

[Falki]

On 2/11/2024 at 9:59 AM, Kayser said:

Instead of dynamic calculation of scan altitude, I would propose a fixed minimum and maximum altitude per antennae.

This suggestion is more realistic, but would cause more issues. Biggest reason for the scanning altitude revamp was impact on performance, especially for small bodies. If we have a FOV concept, then altitudes need to be vastly different between small and large bodies. Given enough altitude, even a tiny FOV while scanning a small body can mean that a large area of the body is covered by each scan, which drastically impacts performance.

We could eliminate FOV and have a fixed scanning area, but I like having it, seems more realistic, more fun gameplay wise, and simply more fun to see dynamic scanning areas on each body. If this was a feature that was brought to the stock game, it would probably be that each antenna (or scanning part) has a fixed scanning area for all bodies. Later parts would simply have a larger scanning area. But this is a mod and mods tipically introduce more complex concepts that cater more to advanced players, to challenge them; that's my personal view anyway. So in a way I actually like that resonant orbits are a thing that you need to account for  - but at the same time, yeah, it might be too much for an average player to grasp that without an introduction/tutorial.

Overall I'm pretty happy with the current system. In a later patch I might tweak the altitudes a tiny bit to avoid worst resonant orbit lockings. And next revamp would probably be when custom parts come one day (not soon, because I want to focus first on meaningful additions that expand functionalities, and then later worry about nice to have things).

[Cyal]

Hey @Falki, i absolutely love your MOD! Many many thanks for your work!

I think a current, prev & next trajectory overlay could be very useful overall ... and also in visualizing and preventing orbital resonance.
In this overlay, the viewing angle could also be shown, to calibrate an ideal scanning pattern.

But i think you will already have this in mind...

Something like this would be simple and helpful:

[silvermistshadow]

I'd like the map to eventually also display non-survey vessels as well (that is, ones without big antennae) so that my mun/minmus landers can know exactly where they are too. Right now even 'active vessel tracking' set to 'on' doesn't actually display my lander or my EVA kerbals' positions. I assume that my later missions to other planets, since the landers will carry long-range antenna (because right now docking is a bit buggy so I'm not planning Apollo-style missions with a separate lander and orbiter), will be displayed on the map of course.

[magnemoe]

Love this mod, note that markers does not require body to be mapped, nice for landing at locations you only have coordinates for. Before only way was to orbit over and mark or screenshot the location then land. 

[Falki]

2 hours ago, Cyal said:

I think a current, prev & next trajectory overlay could be very useful overall ... and also in visualizing and preventing orbital resonance.

Those are nice looking mockups, thanks . Yes, I had something like this planned. Either full orbits or just those little dashes at the equator that SCANsat has, depending on how resource heavy it turns out to be.

 

2 hours ago, silvermistshadow said:

I'd like the map to eventually also display non-survey vessels as well (that is, ones without big antennae) so that my mun/minmus landers can know exactly where they are too.

There's an easy solution right now that you can do yourself to show any vessel on the map. In "Kerbal Space Program 2/BepInEx/plugins/OrbitalSurvey/patches/" there's a file named "orbital_survey_module.patch". It's a text file you can open in notepad or something similar.

There's a line that says:

:parts #antenna_0v_dish_ra-2 {

If you want, you can add additional parts here. For example:

:parts #antenna_0v_dish_ra-2, #antenna_0v_16 {

This will add the OrbitalSurvey module additionally to all Communotron 16 parts. If your lander has this antenna, it will show up on the map. You can add any part here really, doesn't even need to be an antenna.

[Kayser]

4 hours ago, Cyal said:

Hey @Falki, i absolutely love your MOD! Many many thanks for your work!

I think a current, prev & next trajectory overlay could be very useful overall ... and also in visualizing and preventing orbital resonance.
In this overlay, the viewing angle could also be shown, to calibrate an ideal scanning pattern.

But i think you will already have this in mind...

Something like this would be simple and helpful:...

I thought of calculating some number, like the ratio of number of orbits, but this is much cooler and more elegant. Although I think it has to consider more than the previous, current, and next orbits to ensure we don't end up in a higher order resonance (like 3:5). In fact, you want the simulation to stretch as far into the future so that you can see the adjacency/overlap and fine tune it.

10 hours ago, Falki said:

This suggestion is more realistic, but would cause more issues. Biggest reason for the scanning altitude revamp was impact on performance, especially for small bodies. If we have a FOV concept, then altitudes need to be vastly different between small and large bodies. Given enough altitude, even a tiny FOV while scanning a small body can mean that a large area of the body is covered by each scan, which drastically impacts performance.

We could eliminate FOV and have a fixed scanning area, but I like having it, seems more realistic, more fun gameplay wise, and simply more fun to see dynamic scanning areas on each body. If this was a feature that was brought to the stock game, it would probably be that each antenna (or scanning part) has a fixed scanning area for all bodies. Later parts would simply have a larger scanning area. But this is a mod and mods tipically introduce more complex concepts that cater more to advanced players, to challenge them; that's my personal view anyway. So in a way I actually like that resonant orbits are a thing that you need to account for  - but at the same time, yeah, it might be too much for an average player to grasp that without an introduction/tutorial.

Overall I'm pretty happy with the current system. In a later patch I might tweak the altitudes a tiny bit to avoid worst resonant orbit lockings. And next revamp would probably be when custom parts come one day (not soon, because I want to focus first on meaningful additions that expand functionalities, and then later worry about nice to have things).

I wouldn't mind if it took vastly more time to scan Jool than Gilly. It would make it even more of an accomplishment to scan that big boy.

Obviously if there is a performance impact which renders the concept void, I bow to the semiconductor gods.

[Kayser]

And last: is there a way to remove a waypoint??

[Falki]

22 hours ago, Kayser said:

And last: is there a way to remove a waypoint??

You right-click on the waypoint, then click Remove.

[PTNLemay]

I'm hoping to try this on my next playthrough.

Has anyone tried running it with cheese3660's 2.5 upscale mod?  Any big issues?

I was also thinking of adding Were's My Crew Capsule, but that might be too many things at once.

[Kerbal410]

do locations for vessels like rovers show up when mapping?

[Spacecat2000]

Great job falki, love the new waypoint functionality.

Though I have a little something on my wishlist:   I currently have a surveyor sat in orbit around Gilly, and the ideal altitude is so high compared to Gilly's limit that the sat is actually 'below ideal' altitude still...   And with the measly orbital speed around Gilly (especially so close to its SOI limit), even a single orbit takes ages.
2 months later, I still haven't hit 25% covering for the region.

Sooo, the wish: Any chance you could notably reduce the ideal altitude for small bodies as you tweak the altitudes anew?   Perhaps improve the angle for region mapping (small bodies) just a notch?    That poor Gillysat would thank you dearly.

Edited February 16 by Spacecat2000