[1.3] Kerbal Flight Indicators (Release 15, 2017-08-14)

[DaMichel]

Kerbal Flight Indicators

Draws a couple of markers directly in your field of view. It shows

• Horizon
• Attitude
• Velocity
• Vertical direction

You can turn it on/off with the toolbar button.

Download

Release Page on GitHub

(Source code on Github)

Installation: Extract the contents of the zip file into the GameData directory.

Configuration:

Is done by editing settings.cfg in GameData\KerbalFlightIndicators\Plugins\PluginData\KerbalFlightIndicators.

To change colors, you'll see lines like "horizonColor = 0,0.5,0,0.8". The numbers represent Red, Green, Blue and Alpha components, going from 0 to 1. Alpha means opaqueness, where 0 is completely transparent. New values should take effect on the next flight scene.

To let indicators appear on top of the IVA cockpit again, change drawInFrontOfCockpit = False to drawInFrontOfCockpit = True.

Mod Recommendations

• If you want to see more information, have a look at SteamGauges and RasterPropMonitors (IVA) and NavHud.
• Mouse Aim Flight
• Supports Blizzys Toolbar. The KSP app toolbar is supported since KFI R11.

Picz

Quote

Sweet, I'd like to see a demonstration video, also with some camera movement in it.

My Imgur account is almost full of images so i'm probably going to delete the previous sequence. Have this instead.

Changelog on GitHub

Known Issues

* This release has the potential to cause strange issues with other mods, like HUD elements or use custom cameras. Please report odd issues.

Acknowledgement

* I used some code from SteamGauges http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/40730-0-23-SteamGauges-V1-5-Analog-Radar-Altimeter-and-More! by Trueborn. Thanks for putting it under a not too restrictive license.

* Thanks to Blizzy for his Toolbar.

* I would also like to thank Pizzaoverhead (KerbTrack) and Navyfish (DockingPortAlignment) for their plugins from which i learned how to do things.

License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/

Edited August 14, 2017 by DaMichel

[redteddy23]

This is going to be really helpful for long distance EVA. Nice job.

[falken]

Going to give this a go, hope it's compatible with 1st person mods!

[HoneyFox]

Awesome, I've been wanting real projecting-to-infinite HUD for quite a long time.

EDIT: BTW will you consider adding pitch ladder?

Edited May 20, 2014 by HoneyFox

[DaMichel]

@falken: It should and it should also work nicely with KerbTrack!

@HoneyFox: Probably not because i want to keep it minimalistic, basically just showing where you are heading since this is sometimes hard to see in 3rd person view and it is useful for landing in general.

[camlost]

Very nice! And I agree on keeping things minimalistic

[Trueborn]

Awesome, I've been wanting real projecting-to-infinite HUD for quite a long time.

EDIT: BTW will you consider adding pitch ladder?

Check out Steamgauges (link in sig). It has a full pitch ladder. There is also a lot more information, but most of it can be disabled if you don't want to see it.

[DaMichel]

Exactly. I guess you wouldn't mind if i put a link to SteamGauges on top of the thread?

[HoneyFox]

Check out Steamgauges (link in sig). It has a full pitch ladder. There is also a lot more information, but most of it can be disabled if you don't want to see it.

I've been using SteamGauges for quite a few months. it is quite useful but when I use it with this KFI, two HUDs clutter the screen quite much and it's not so easy to keep track both the pitch ladder angle and the KFI's symbols at the same time.

[Helix935]

you now this actually works surprisingly well with first person eva mods

[camlost]

It shouldn't be too hard to make a bombing reticle I suppose? I've been thinking about this

[DaMichel]

Not going to happen, sorry

Seriously, with stock aerodynamics it might not be too hard. But with FAR it becomes much more complex. You'd basically have to numerically integrate the flight path of your bomb, using the aerodynamic forces computed by FARs model. Coding wise this would require a lot of refactoring on FARs side and generally a lot of additional coding. Beside, i believe if your bomb is not properly designed its flight dynamics can become chaotic making an accurate prediction impossible. This means that small changes (your reaction time, round off errors, etc) in initial conditions cause huge deviations later on, for instance if the bomb begins to tumble or so.

IRL known ballistic data is available and used by the targeting computer. I know from playing Black Shark for example where there is a dial which you have to adjust for the type of rocket/guns/bombs that you have loaded. But in KSP that data would have to be derived first which is just as bad as what i outlined above.

So no this is very much out of the scope of this mod.

P.S.: colors and opaqueness are now adjustable in the settings.cfg file.

Edited June 1, 2014 by DaMichel

[camlost]

It's not necessary to calculate aerodynamics really. A pre-WWII low-altitude diver bombing is useful enough.

All it needs to do is select a target on the ground, so the program knows the target altitude, then solve a parabolic equation. If I find time I'll fork it.

[DaMichel]

@camlost: Sorry for the late reply. This is still not something i want to see in this mod. I'll try to keep the bloat to an absolute minimum. But really if you can hack a bomb sight in here, you might just as well write your own little mod and copy paste the boiler plate code from here.

I updated Kerbal Flight Indicators also. It is just a recompile for KSP 0.24 and comes with the most recent Toolbar 1.7.4. No new features were added. https://www.dropbox.com/s/yftm98jcj2d101y/KerbalFlightIndicatorsR3.zip

[DaMichel]

Bump for graphical update. Be careful not to overwrite your settings file if you don't intend to reset your colors to the new defaults.

[DaMichel]

Bump for a bigger update. I rewrote most of how the indicator orientation is calculated. It should be a bit better in the vertical until you are really close to straight up/down.

When you do point straight up/down it should fade out the roll alignment indicator. This is because of gimbal lock issues. But fear not. I added a new indicator for the straight up vertical direction. It does even show you where north is.

I further removed the roll indication from the velocity indication. It was just behaving too strangely, too due to gimbal lock issues. And also it was not really needed.

Finally, horizon and vertical indicators are now faded out if neither heading nor velocity vectors are nearby.

Next: Option to draw it behind the IVA cockpit. I think i learned how to do this now ...

Edit: quick update of revised graphics. I shamelessly copied BahamutoD's aiming reticle style

For now, just download the image and place it in GameData\KerbalFlightIndicators\Plugins\PluginData\KerbalFlightIndicators/

Edited October 17, 2014 by DaMichel

[starikki]

Great Mod! Nice and Simple!

It would be even nicer if we can tweak the scale of it.

I found the velocity vector drifted slightly from where it should be some how?

Edited October 18, 2014 by starikki

[DaMichel]

I found the velocity vector drifted slightly from where it should be some how?

Thanks, but i don't understand that. Can you elaborate on what might be wrong and how to reproduce it?

[Malah]

Waw thanks for this, I like when a mod is as minimalistic and stock as possible

[DaMichel]

Okay here is another update. Consider this as experimental. I've rewritten much of the gui code so it works completely differently. All for the benefit of rendering the markers between scenery and cockpit. I simply found it extremely confusing when KFI markers hovered over the navball.

However, this comes at the price of creating strange issues. In one instance i had crafts colliding with the marker objects. This has been fixed of course. But still ... You have been warned

Edit: Yet another update with a small fix for the markers not disappearing on F2.

Edit2: I'm just going to quote myself here

Another little update. I removed Toolbar as hard dependency. Without it, you won't have the means to turn KFI off, but it won't break. This lets me finally remove Toolbar from my archive. Most people will have it already installed anyways.

Moreover i release KFI now on GitHub. I'm only going to support one download site, so there will be no Dropbox releases until stated otherwise.

Edited November 12, 2014 by DaMichel

[Xenro66]

I haven't tried if this works in 0.90 yet, but if it doesn't, when do you think we will get an updated version?

[Oxmaster]

Mod works, except for toolbar

[drtedastro]

looking forward to getting this one updated....

thanks in advance.

Cheers.

[DaMichel]

Seems to work fine for me. I guess i just have to update the metadata in CKAN to tell it that Kerbal Flight Indicators is compatible (Edit: Done. Once the pull request is accepted and the bots ran over it, my stuff will be in CKAN again).

Blizzys Toolbar is not included anymore since it is no longer a hard dependency. If installed the Toolbar should show a button for Kerbal Flight Indicators tough.

Edited December 21, 2014 by DaMichel

[NathanKell]

Moved by request to Addon Releases.

However, please follow the addon rules by putting a License file (or a file saying what license the download is) in your release zip, and please either include source or a link to source (can be a link to this thread) in the release zip.