What are the differences between the conics patch modes?

[bigyihsuan]

So the settings.cfg has these two lines:

CONIC_PATCH_DRAW_MODE = 3
CONIC_PATCH_LIMIT = 3

And I would like to know, what are the differences between the draw modes?

Yes, the wiki mentions it, but there's almost no documentation.

[Pecan]

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/11322-Different-Conic-drawing-modes

Possibly a bit old (2012 IIRC) but probably helpful.

[KSK]

I used to find Mode 0 helpful for tweaking interplanetary trajectories from 'encounter' to 'reasonably close approach at roughly the angle I want'. That's slightly out of date now since you can Focus on your target in the Map screen and get much the same information.

[KerikBalm]

"That's slightly out of date now since you can Focus on your target in the Map screen and get much the same information."

Really? I can go set my conics mode back to default?

It will display the trajectory around the planet, not where the planet will be (which you couldn't focus on, making precise burns extremely difficult to set up)?

As to the conic patch limit, it determines how many SOI transitions it will show... increasing that number could be very usefull for navigating the Jool system

[FenrirWolf]

Yup. When you're on the map view focused on your ship, it will display the conics in whatever mode you have selected (mode 3 by default). When you click on a planet/moon and focus the camera on it, the conics change to mode 0 while in that view.