[1.10.1] SCANsat [v20.4] -- Real Scanning, Real Science, at Warp Speed! [September 9, 2020]

[madindehead]

I have read the wiki and the documents, but I'm still a bit confused about how I go about doing a biome scan using SCANsat. 

My resource settings are

Resource Biome Lock: ON
Require Narrow Band Scanner: ON
Instant Resource Scan: ON
Disable Stock Scanning: OFF

Basically I want to have the mapping features of SCANsat without making things too complex for myself (which I why I didn't disable stock scanning). I want to be able to scan a planet (currently looking to start with Kerbin) with the M700 scanner and then use the M4435 Narrow-Band Scanner to give me a high resolution scan. I think my settings allow me to do this? I'm a bit confused however how to get a biome scan using SCANsat. I know that for stock you would use a probe core and it would use the KerbNet functionality but of course that doesn't display all the time. I want to use the SCANsat map to always see a map of the planets biomes without cheating via the Alt-F12 option. Right now I'm not sure how I would achieve a biome scan using a Probodobodyne HECS2 in a 100km polar orbit (what I launched to last time) and SCANsat. Am I doing this right? Sorry if I'm being thick just some of the explanations are a bit confusing for me  

This seems like a really cool mod and I really just want it to complement and slightly enhance what exists from stock - I want SCANsat maps of my biomes, I'm happy to use the new SCANsat parts but I want it to be completed via 2 to 4 scanning probe launches (maybe a few more if it needs it) but nothing too complex. 

Any help is appreciated. Or even a link to a good video tutorial for the most recent version before the new release - I couldn't find many good ones last night sadly. 

Update: Of course I forgot that there is a KSPedia section in game for SCANsat - I feel like an idiot now.  I read that I think I understand things a bit better now - I need to use the Multispectral Sensor to generate any biome data. Going to launch and see if it works!

Edited July 8, 2019 by madindehead
Found some info that made me look like more of an idiot.

[OhioBob]

@DMagic, can you explain what's up with the new Color Management screen.
(1)  The sliders are now in percentages rather than meters.
(2)  Both the current and new palettes are white.
(3)  No matter what I do, I can't get any changes to apply.

 

[DMagic]

@Horus  @Tabris 

Does the zoom map/instruments window problem happen all of the time, or just with certain planets. I'm fairly certain gas giants or the sun are going to break it, since I missed a null check in there at some point.

@OhioBob

Those labels are the defaults for the UI in Unity, which would suggest that the UI is not getting properly initialized for some reason. But it's hard to say why without more information.

@madindehead

With those settings the SCANsat resource maps would function similar to the stock resource map. The M700 would provide a full, instant scan, which would show up on the big SCANsat map or the SCANsat planetary overlay map at a low detail level (rounded to the nearest whole percentage number, I think). The "Require Narrow Band Scanner" option means that the resources won't show up on the zoom map unless you have a narrow band scanner in orbit. So I think those settings will get you what you want.

The wiki on GitHub has a little bit more detailed explanation of the resource scan settings than you'll find in the KSPedia entry: https://github.com/S-C-A-N/SCANsat/wiki/SCANsat-Resource-Settings#top-requires-narrow-band-scanner

For biome scanning nothing has changed since version 1 or 2 of SCANsat, so any old video showing how that works would still apply. 

[madindehead]

Thanks @DMagic I managed to get a satellite up today with a scanner on it for the biome scan. 

[Jognt]

I have to admit I'm confused. I've read the wiki on the resource scanning but since it's written more from the perspective of the code than from the result I just cannot figure it out

What I'd like is to scan for resources just like I scan for high/low altimetry and biomes, basically the SCANsat way. And dump any arbitrary/confusing limitations/changes stock has.
In short: I want it to make sense from a "oh I can believe this is how it'd work" way. Whether that means a low reso scan from orbit and a high precision scan on-site or just a high reso scan from orbit, I don't care. As long as it makes sense.

What combination of settings would best match such behavior?

[OhioBob]

4 hours ago, DMagic said:

Those labels are the defaults for the UI in Unity, which would suggest that the UI is not getting properly initialized for some reason. But it's hard to say why without more information.

So I guess what you're telling me is that what I'm seeing shouldn't be.  If that's the case, I can do some more investigation to see if I can find a cause.

[Tabris]

@DMagic

i'm experiencing it in any situation.

in my current save i only have 3 Scansats, one in Kerbin Orbit, one in Mun Orbit, one (inactive) in transit to Duna.

i'll edit and attach logs.

Logs, Screenshot, craft file, Scansat Settings, Modlist OneDrive Link

 

the "Zoom Map" also doesn't open

Edited July 9, 2019 by Tabris
logs

[Brigadier]

7 hours ago, OhioBob said:

So I guess what you're telling me is that what I'm seeing shouldn't be.  If that's the case, I can do some more investigation to see if I can find a cause.

I don't know if it help your investigation but I'm not seeing your problem on a KSP 1.7.1/GPP/GEP install and SCANSat v18.11 (+ 135 other mods).  If you would like something to compare against, let me know.

[OhioBob]

20 hours ago, DMagic said:

Those labels are the defaults for the UI in Unity, which would suggest that the UI is not getting properly initialized for some reason. But it's hard to say why without more information.

@DMagic, I've traced the problem down to something with Rational Resources.  That makes sense because Rational Resources is a resource mod, and ScanSat is a resource scanner.  So there could be some configuration in Rational Resources that's causing the problem in ScanSat.

Pinging @JadeOfMaar.  Be advised that there is apparently some interaction between Rational Resources and ScanSat that's causing ScanSat's Color Management screen to break.

 

[Angelo Kerman]

@DMagic I see that you updated SCANsat to work with the Breaking Ground surface features, thank you! Do I understand correctly that ROCs will appear on the orbital scanner, or just on the BTDT? Are they flagged as anomalies? If not, thinking ahead a bit on a project that I have in mind, could there be a way to tell SCANSat to flag specific ROC types as anomalies on the map?

[DMagic]

@Angel-125 They only show up on the smaller, 'zoom map', and only for the area immediately surrounding the current vessel. The surface features seem to load to a distance of about 7-8km from the active vessel, and there is no way that I can see to figure out where the features will be until they are loaded. So there is no way to display them until they are loaded (it could be possible to record the position of each feature when it is loaded, but that would quickly lead to data storage problems, as there are so many of the features). 

The limited load distance makes displaying them on the big map useless (the features would all clump together with the current vessel icon). Even on the zoom map you have to zoom in to about 50-100X for it to really be useful.

Their status on the zoom map is tied to the BTDT scanner, so they will only show up in a given region if that region has been scanned with the BTDT scanner, similar to how anomalies will show up when scanned with the multispectral scanner, the major difference being that the BTDT only works to an altitude of 2000m. So you don't necessarily need a BTDT on the current vessel for them to show up on the zoom map, as long as the region has been scanned at some point.

[Spagoose]

I have been playing with instant resource scan turned on and I want to turn it off to make things a bit more involved and I have 2 questions:

 

Will changing this setting mid game work? Will future planets I scan with the M700 require each biome to be covered or will I need to start a new game?

 

 What happens to planet maps that have been scanned and filled out automatically with the instant resource scan? Does it stay filled out or does it go back and remove resource data that wasn't scanned? Or would I need to delete the resource data and rescan?

[Neil Kerman]

Is it possible to change the map displaying the location of ore deposits to a heat-map, with lower concentrations of ore represented by one color and higher concentrations by another?

[bigbadvoodoodady_1]

Instrument Readout... not working?

Used to give me real time readout on a planet, but now it just says "NEW TEXT".

Any ideas?

[DR_RDR]

On the Rational Resources and Scansat not working together topic, I found my issue came from using RR that came with JNSQ.  On the RR thread, there's a new release that fixed all my scansat problems.

[Tonas1997]

Cosmetic idea: different scanner beam colors and shapes, as rendered on this ESA video of the JUICE spacecraft:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGkW__sEDHA

[Metalmasher]

Wanted to note that I am having same issues as the OP with the instrument readout saying "NEW TEXT".  I also have the zoom map function working on Kerbin but not on The Mun or Minmus... haven't tried any other bodies.   The log is throwing the exception below.   (About 40 instances or so in the log.) Most likely the 40 occurances in the log are due to me clicking like a mad fool possessed during my testing ;-). At any rate... I have a new plain install of 1.7.3 KSP x64  with only ScanSat installed.  

 

[LOG 21:45:07.187] [SCANsat] Height Map Of [Mun] Completed...
[EXC 21:45:12.413] NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
    SCANsat.SCAN_Data.SCANdata.ROCS (Boolean refresh)
    SCANsat.SCAN_Unity.SCAN_UI_ZoomMap.get_ROCInfoList ()
    SCANsat.Unity.Unity.SCAN_ZoomMap.SetIcons ()
    SCANsat.Unity.Unity.SCAN_ZoomMap.setMap (ISCAN_ZoomMap map)
    SCANsat.SCAN_Unity.SCAN_UI_ZoomMap.Open (Boolean v, Double lat, Double lon, SCANsat.SCAN_Map.SCANmap m)
    SCANsat.SCAN_Unity.SCAN_UI_MainMap.OpenZoomMap ()
    SCANsat.Unity.Unity.SCAN_MainMap.OpenZoomMap ()
    UnityEngine.Events.InvokableCall.Invoke ()
    UnityEngine.Events.UnityEvent.Invoke ()
    UnityEngine.UI.Button.Press ()
    UnityEngine.UI.Button.OnPointerClick (UnityEngine.EventSystems.PointerEventData eventData)
    UnityEngine.EventSystems.ExecuteEvents.Execute (IPointerClickHandler handler, UnityEngine.EventSystems.BaseEventData eventData)
    UnityEngine.EventSystems.ExecuteEvents.Execute[IPointerClickHandler] (UnityEngine.GameObject target, UnityEngine.EventSystems.BaseEventData eventData, UnityEngine.EventSystems.EventFunction`1 functor)
    UnityEngine.EventSystems.EventSystem:Update()

 

[jaunco325]

Is there any way to change the color palette of the biomes for one that is not so progressive? I find it difficult to identify the biomes since there are two or more biomes with similar colors.

Sorry if someone already asked this but I will not read 106 comment pages.

[Pretender6]

Is it possible to, instead of having a all grayed out map, how about having a old cartographer style of map? or option to switch out the default grey map and tweakable translucent?

[RRflash]

Hi,

I am having a problem. Already scanned the biome and resources (usi) of kerbin but i cannot see ONLY BIOME map.

Some resources are being overlayed on the biome or altimetry map.

Always some resources are displayed... Cannot remove them.

Help..!!!

[Jognt]

@DMagic any plans to make the big map zoomable google/Apple/bing -maps style?

It would make scansat feel even better to use. 

Also, I noticed physics time ratio shooting up while refreshing the map. Is it perhaps possible to do this in a separate process thread ‘on the side’?

I figure it would speed  up map-drawing while maybe not slowing down the main thread? Though I admit I don’t know the precise inner workings of KSP. 

Edited August 15, 2019 by Jognt

[DMagic]

On 7/22/2019 at 7:04 PM, Neil Kerman said:

Is it possible to change the map displaying the location of ore deposits to a heat-map, with lower concentrations of ore represented by one color and higher concentrations by another?

 

On 8/2/2019 at 5:17 PM, Tonas1997 said:

Cosmetic idea: different scanner beam colors and shapes, as rendered on this ESA video of the JUICE spacecraft:

I like both of these ideas and am adding them to the GitHub tracker so I won't forget them. They should both be doable, just probably not right now. 

 

On 8/4/2019 at 11:10 PM, jaunco325 said:

Is there any way to change the color palette of the biomes for one that is not so progressive? I find it difficult to identify the biomes since there are two or more biomes with similar colors.

Sorry if someone already asked this but I will not read 106 comment pages.

There are options for biome colors in the settings window. You can switch to use the stock color palettes, which are sometimes easier to read.

 

On 8/6/2019 at 2:18 AM, Pretender6 said:

Is it possible to, instead of having a all grayed out map, how about having a old cartographer style of map? or option to switch out the default grey map and tweakable translucent?

Like a "here be dragons" type of map? That would be kind of neat. It would require loading a fairly large size texture. An option to change the background color would be simpler, maybe with some way to add a vignette style border. I'll add this to the tracker, too.

 

On 8/14/2019 at 12:11 PM, RRflash said:

Hi,

I am having a problem. Already scanned the biome and resources (usi) of kerbin but i cannot see ONLY BIOME map.

Some resources are being overlayed on the biome or altimetry map.

Always some resources are displayed... Cannot remove them.

Help..!!!

Resources are always overlayed over other maps, there is no resource-only map. To turn off the resource overlay just toggle the resource icon on the left of the big map or the bottom of the big map.

 

On 8/14/2019 at 6:45 PM, Jognt said:

@DMagic any plans to make the big map zoomable google/Apple/bing -maps style?

It would make scansat feel even better to use. 

Also, I noticed physics time ratio shooting up while refreshing the map. Is it perhaps possible to do this in a separate process thread ‘on the side’?

I figure it would speed  up map-drawing while maybe not slowing down the main thread? Though I admit I don’t know the precise inner workings of KSP. 

Not really, as there is the Zoom map for that purpose.

 

The performance hit when rebuilding the big map is just how it works. It has to query KSP's PQS terrain system to get the actual terrain height at each position on the map, which is very slow. This data is cached, so that when you rebuild the map it should be much faster. Changing the map size, or changing to a new celestial body map resets the cache (storing the data for each planet would require way too much memory).

Running it on a different thread isn't really an option, since it is working through Unity components, which don't play well with threading and tend to have unpredictable errors (threading is used in SCANsat when possible, generally for math-heavy operations involving map interpolation; the resource overlay, for instance, is mostly generated in a separate thread).

You can change the map refresh speed in the settings window, it will adjust how many rows of the map are generated per frame, which can alleviate some of the performance impact.

Edited August 16, 2019 by DMagic

[jaunco325]

On 8/16/2019 at 5:11 PM, DMagic said:

There are options for biome colors in the settings window. You can switch to use the stock color palettes, which are sometimes easier to read.

Yes, but the standard palette is already very progressive (at least on the moon and minmus), and if I try to put one manually, it becomes even more progressive.

Edited August 19, 2019 by jaunco325

[Jognt]

For anyone else that noticed the performance impact: I’ve traced it back to EVE nuking my Physics Time Ratio, which meant even a tiny bit extra would cause simulation time to be exceeded. 

So if you’re noticing SCANsat lagging your game hard, it’s probably a symptom of another mod misbehaving. 

[DMagic]

SCANsat version 18.12 is out; get it on Space Dock.

It fixes some bugs related to the Breaking Ground surface features and the zoom map auto refresh.

It also adds the option to customize the color of the ground track indicators based on scanner type.

The basic SCANsat types (low and high resolution altimetry, biome, anomaly, and the low resolution resources) are all defined in the settings file found in the SCANsat/PluginData folder. The other resource types can be defined in the SCANResource.cfg file found in SCANsat/Resources. The default color is used for all resources now, to change it you would need to add a 'color' field to a certain resource:

SCANSAT_SENSOR
{
	name = Ore
	SCANtype = 256 //2^8
	color = 128,200,200,104
}

All of the colors are in RGBA, 0-255 format.

Colors are combined when a vessel has multiple different scanner types.