A discussion on 'Time-displays'

[Flush Foot]

I would like to know what people are likely to prefer to see in-game when "Jool orbit capture-burn" is 4 years, 23 days, 5 hours, 12 minutes, and 17 seconds away, do you want the game to show the largest 2-3 items in the Maneuvre Planner? The smallest?

• 4Y:23D:5H
• 5H:12M:17S
• Other?

Personally, I would prefer the first option; show me a less-precise (but “more complete”) time rather than telling me my 3200 m/s dV ion-stage will “only” last for 25 minutes and 43 seconds (as that staging-menu seems limited to 'two values'), please tell me instead I’m good for 1d:5h (then adjust/scale to 5h:59m when under 1 day and then 'down' to 59m:59s when under an hour)

List of 'times' shown in-game (not necessarily exhaustive):

• Time for stage to consume all propellant
• Time until start of planned burn
• Planned burn's duration
• Time to next Ap/Pe

(Ex: stage propellant-consumption duration seems to only show minutes & seconds, which can make gigantic Xenon/ion engines look like “45 minutes to run out” whereas you likely have days of available thrust)

 

But what are yall's thoughts?

[Skorj]

Obviously you show the most significant digits if you need to truncate a display.  Time, distance, mass, whatever.  Not really a question IMO

[Hotel26]

Another option is any variation on:

Period	Shown as
4y 23d 5h 12m 17.5s	4y 23.9d
23d 5h 12m 17.5s	23d 5.2h
5h 12m 17.5s	5h 12.3m
12m 17.5s	12m 17.5s
17.5s	17.5s

A simpler variation would be 4.06y for the first row, for example.  (Just use (e.g. 3 significant figures) decimal with the most significant unit present.)

Another variation drops the decimal: e.g. 23d 5h or 4y 24d (rounding)

(I think this is likely what @Skorj had in mind.)

Edited March 17 by Hotel26

[Flush Foot]

@Hotel26 I’m also a fan of the decimal values, but ‘until last night’ I didn’t think KSP 2 even knew how to use decimals in their displays… while in Interplanetary Space, I saw my craft’s velocity changing by tenths of a m/s, but I don’t think I see such precision while in Kerbin’s SOI (so I opted for their easy-out of just dropping / ignoring less-significant values outright)