Painting the map!

[Whirligig Girl]

Camera

The camera, when activated, can be used for science. Taking a picture will give you science, and it can be transmitted at 75% return. It can be pointed 45 degrees off center, zoomed to 200%, and it is controlled by the science UI box. You can press the capture button to take the pic, which is stored in a subfolder of the screenshots, and the game will let you look at the pictures in the R&D facility.

Telescope

The telescope can go from 400% zoom to 1000% zoom, and after that the images become fuzzy as you zoom in more. Telescope observations will paint the map view, which at first is fuzzy and represents just the color of the object in question. Telescopes can not be aimed without aiming the entire spacecraft.

Invisible Light Telescope

After telescope, you unlock IvLT, which takes pictures in infrared, Radio, or Ultraviolet. This telescope is very heavy, however. It can also be pointed away from planets, moons, or the sun to take a picture of space skybox, and each square of the skybox that is pictured will get more science, and the further from the sun you are the better it will work. In the map view you can toggle to infrared, ultraviolet, or radio.

Scanning satellite

Automatically produces more "paint" to the map as it orbits, it does not need to be loaded. It will also slowly produce small amounts of science over time (10 science/year?) It requires a constant communications, but as long as the scanning part and the antennae is activated, it will draw charge (much slower than bursts of science data). Better have solar panels!

Chemical Scanner

It can produce accurate height map from higher altitudes, and it scans for ores and resources. In the map view you can toggle the areas where certain resources have been found.

Observation and mapping of planets

In the map view, at first, only Kerbin is fully mapped, and it's in low resolution. The near side of the Mun is also mapped in low resolution. Areas of unobserved or mapped planets will be smooth flat texture with no height map that is the proper size and the color of the planet's orbit line. There are four types of mapping resolution:

None: Flat map with basic orbit line color. No height map.

Very low: Resolution given to the Mun's near side and Kerbin. No height map.

Low: Resolution given by telescope observation of a planet or camera picture in orbit of the planet, basic height map.

Medium: Resolution given by high orbit scanning satellite, has an accurate height map. (keep in mind you can get more of the planet at high altitude)

High: Resolution given by low orbit scanning satellite, has an accurate height map. (better resolution, takes more time)

Very high: Resolution given by having a "chunk" (square where ground scatter will load) loaded. Amazing height map. (Mapping a planet in this way would be hell)

Edited December 1, 2013 by GregroxMun

[MSD]

I kinds agree, even thought I would just warp .x10000 because it would take to long

[Whirligig Girl]

The difference is that it can be done passively, so you can just let it fill in while you do other missions.

[Whirligig Girl]

updated the post!

[Luis]

My favourite part of this is the camera. I would love to have a system that rewarded science for snapshots of a planet from orbit and from the ground, and kept a library of these images for me to browse later. (I already do this of course, but integrating it into the game would be even better).

I like the basic idea of mapping planets with satellites but you need to be careful to avoid it becoming grindy. Mapping the sky box, one square at a time, for example, doesn't sound fun at all since presumably you'd need to manually point the telescope at each point in turn on an imaginary grid. That's not something you can do automatically with an orbit.

Mapping planets from orbit could be done automatically - at least above the atmosphere - but even then I would hope that the swathes covered by the satellite could completely map the planet in a handful of orbits, rather than hundreds. The challenge is building the satellite and getting it to the correct orbit. Waiting for the map to slowly build up over years, in between other missions, would be fairly frustrating.

[Spacemarine658]

My favourite part of this is the camera. I would love to have a system that rewarded science for snapshots of a planet from orbit and from the ground, and kept a library of these images for me to browse later. (I already do this of course, but integrating it into the game would be even better).

I like the basic idea of mapping planets with satellites but you need to be careful to avoid it becoming grindy. Mapping the sky box, one square at a time, for example, doesn't sound fun at all since presumably you'd need to manually point the telescope at each point in turn on an imaginary grid. That's not something you can do automatically with an orbit.

Mapping planets from orbit could be done automatically - at least above the atmosphere - but even then I would hope that the swathes covered by the satellite could completely map the planet in a handful of orbits, rather than hundreds. The challenge is building the satellite and getting it to the correct orbit. Waiting for the map to slowly build up over years, in between other missions, would be fairly frustrating.

I agree

[Unfawkable]

This would be a nice addition to career mode, a fogged map that you need to actually explore to know what's out there. But you should also be able to do parts of it with observatories on Kerbin.

[Algiark]

Maybe the planets could start off in some sort of 'fog of war' and you roughly know the location of the planets, but no other information whatsoever apart from their shapes. At first only the larger planets are known, but as you develop better observatory or send a probe to the planet, whichever first, you discover the smaller moons. From there, it's just a matter of mapping the celestial bodies you want.

Edited November 21, 2013 by Algiark

[peadar1987]

I'd like Mods like ISA Mapsat or ScanSAT to become stock, and you get science points for the proportion of a planet you map, and the resolution the maps are at (so you could map most of the planet from a high altitude at low resolution in a few orbits, or park in a very low orbit, get high resolution maps, but only sweep across a narrow band of the planet each time)

[Whirligig Girl]

Yeah. sure.

[S4qFBxkFFg]

This needs to happen - less concerned with the details, but actual observation, and the concept of mapping, is sorely missed (by me, at least) in the game.

[Monkeh]

Actual exploration is a key drive behind any space programme surely. If mapping and scanning don't make it into v1.0 then Squad are idiots.

Pro tip: Squad aren't idiots.

[Whirligig Girl]

Maybe to not have the mapping of the sky.

[Whirligig Girl]

Updated the front post

[mahparson]

I like this idea a lot

[austincurr]

If discovering the heightmap and texture of the body in this way is not acceptable, how about instead (or in addition) let you map the BIOMES so that you know where to go for more science, and maybe even with a notes section so you can note down that you have already been to a given biome or that you need to go back to a biome with your new science equipment. That might be like mapsat- I haven't used it.

[spinomonkey]

Please, just...yes. So much yes.

[technicalfool]

That might be like mapsat- I haven't used it.

It's pretty much exactly like Mapsat and SCANsat. I would recommend SCANsat though. Much, much more developed these days, plus you earn science based on how much of a given planet you have mapped, and with what scanning instruments.

As a rough guide, going to somewhere like Eve or Duna with a polar-orbit satellite can get you something like 200 science per scanning antenna, once you've covered 100% of the planet. You also get incredibly useful and pretty nifty altimetry and biome maps, along with a less than useful, but still pretty, slope map.

[Doozler]

Yes, this.

Will add a sense of discovery and give a justification to putting a probe(s) around each planet. Will go really well with contracts.

To make it simpler on the more long-winded tasks, rather than having to individually map parts of the planet or skybox, it could just get filled in base on how long the telescope/ camera has been placed in the "correct" orbit.

P.S. What's the accepted way to "like" or upvote suggestions? Is it just "reputation"?

[Dooz]

Nice IdeaI thought of photographs once.

similar name?

Edited February 21, 2014 by Dooz

[jwenting]

sigh, yet another variation on the stupid "we don't know anything about the universe until we've actually been there" theme.

[coolitic]

I kinds agree, even thought I would just warp .x10000 because it would take to long

Which is why time-based experiments fail.

[Whirligig Girl]

sigh, yet another variation on the stupid "we don't know anything about the universe until we've actually been there" theme.

That's a bit rude.

[SpaceKadet]

I love the idea of probes having a use, along with cameras, mapping, etc all sound like good ideas. However, I would like to see the Mapping tool as something less passive and more interactive. I would like to see the mapping module have the ability to only map in a 10deg arc so that in order to create the perfect map with out gaps one would have to make at least 36 orbital inclination changes. Also to represent the probe scanning only a small portion of that 10deg arc it should take ten (or x amount of) orbits to complete one section.

So really next we need a why, science, money, and or reputation would be good things to get out of this complicated process. However, a tool for mission planning should be the ultimate aim of any mapping project. The current map in the game is only so zoom-able and doesn't contain any information about bio-mes or anomalies like the lunar arch. A mapping project should give you a high resolution (as opposed to the current low res 3d map currently available in flight) 3d map that you can zoom in on so close you can see the anomalies (if you know where to look) but also find perfect base placement amongst several bio-mes. This high res map would only be available at the space center mission control.

Cameras are something interesting, because you want to create photo albums like Nasa does but at the same time this is a game. Photos shouldn't be spammed in the name of science. Certain players will only take one picture of each thing like a checklist to milk the most science out of each mission. I know I would probably do it too. Yes photos are clearly scientific in nature from plain visible light photos to radio wave photo representations they provide a wealth of scientific knowledge. Photos should have two uses game play wise. One is purely about gaining scientific knowledge. The other is to bring our community together by sharing our missions with each other. The same is true about the real world, these photos bring humanity together in triumph and tragedy. So I suggest a collective photo bank in mission control that allows us to follow your triumphs and tragedies (if you post them to the service) and players can vote on pictures/stories they like the best for a small reward of money, and the highest voted pictures get varying amounts of reputation.

As far as telescopes go, well I can't think of a use for them outside of discovering new planets, potential warnings of meteorites/asteroids, or gaining science from studying stars (but that last one seems a bit out of scope of this game since we will never be able to go there (un modded).

[Holo]

sigh, yet another variation on the stupid "we don't know anything about the universe until we've actually been there" theme.

Tell me: What does NASA know about the surface of Pluto? What will NASA know in 2016, having sent a robotic probe there?