[WIP] Persistent Trails Development Discussion

[SirJodelstein]

So, i have been working on a new plugin, and while there is still a lot on the bug/TODO list, i think its time to present an early preview of whats to come:

Persistent Explorer Tracks

The plugin tracks the movement of the currently active vessel and draws a line to show where it has moved. The tracks are persistent and can be shared individually (each track is saved in a small textfile).

Possible uses include:

- Documenting rover exploration courses through terrain

- Markers for runway liftoff and landing

- Tower buzzing attempt documentation

- Airshows

- Race track markers

- etc. etc.

Planned features:

- create geo-referened "Log Entry Nodes" on a track, which will be displayed as spheres with a Label and a description text.

- directional markers / arrows

- (maybe/future) real textured tire tracks for each wheel on the ground

Well, still a lot to do, mainly figuring out GUI/Window/Initialization stuff :-)

Comments and feedback welcome!

Edited September 8, 2013 by SirJodelstein

[SirJodelstein]

Well, here is my list of open problems / stuff i have not figured out how to solve. If someone knows a solution it would be great if you could point me into the right direction (Or just a plugin where i could have a look at the code):

- GUI windows open with the wrong size, and trying to force them to open with a given size has no effect. Using TACLib for the windows.

- billboarded 2D text that displays a text at a given 3D coordinate, and reveals addidtional text on mouseover. Something like the Apo/Peri displays in the map view.

- drawing 3D cones as direction indicators (without colliders)

[BlazingAngel665]

Could you add rover track type things that look semi realistic? Like rover tracks on the moon with this?

[sumghai]

One suggestion - RGB or HEX color code inputs would be a better way of allowing users to pick track colors.

[SirJodelstein]

Could you add rover track type things that look semi realistic? Like rover tracks on the moon with this?

Like i said in the first post: I will try to add that feature in a later version, once i have the line-renderer stuff done. While such "realistic" would be really cool to have, the line-tracks can be configured to be seen while zoomed out, so you can show a traverse course of your rover over a large strip of terrain. The textured tire tracks would be more of a "close-up" graphics enhancement.

One suggestion - RGB or HEX color code inputs would be a better way of allowing users to pick track colors.

well, i personally dislike typing rgb or hex codes for color input, so i looked for a Paint/Photoshop/Inkscape-style color picker. Couldn't find one, so this was the solution i found: Load image, click on image, detect RGB value of clicked position. You can use any image you like for this dialog.

Edited August 30, 2013 by SirJodelstein

[SirJodelstein]

Plugin is almost ready for release. Solved billboard-Labels, directional markers and gui stuff.

However, i keep getting seemingly random crashes from StackOverflows when dealing with really long tracks

[NGTOne]

This is actually really cool - I can't wait until it's finished!

[Reddot99]

Plugin is almost ready for release. Solved billboard-Labels, directional markers and gui stuff.

However, i keep getting seemingly random crashes from StackOverflows when dealing with really long tracks

Stack overflow might be from trying to draw too many lines, (maybe), could trying to read every 'Nth' entry in the tracklog solve that? I'm not sure how C# handles these things, much less how your code does. But if it isn't being tidy and clean in it's 'read tracklog->grab point, connect to last point->draw track->return to tracklog entry;' loop(or however you constructed this), it may be leaving junk on the stack after each iteration.

In any case, this looks like it'd be fun, are the tracks positions fixed based on position within a SOI?

[SirJodelstein]

Alpha version is out!

@Reddot: The crashing occurs independent of the number of track vertices drawn, even when i am not recording tracks and when all existent tracks are hidden.

And yes, all the tracks are stored as latitude, longitude and altitude relative to a celestial body.