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

[DMagic]

Would it be possible to add some way other than just resizing the big map window in the flight screen to increase the output resolution of the png. I am trying to use the mod to get custom heightmaps of a resized kerbin and I want to get 4k resolution maps. I dont have a 4k monitor, and it is hard to resize the window; wait for it to render; then output it, so I can find the resolution since it is larger than the monitor. I would greatly appreciate this, and I know this is a request others probably wont need and may be asking a lot so please feel free to say no. Either way thanks for the great mod!

If you just want heightmaps, not colored maps, I would use [THREAD=111101]Stupid Chris' HeightMapExtractor[/THREAD]. You can extract grey-scale height maps of just about any size using a much simpler interface (I think, I've never used it), and it also generates data files with all of the terrain height info.

[Kurld]

Again with the zoom box: right clicking doesn't seem to do anything either.

[LordFerret]

Again with the zoom box: right clicking doesn't seem to do anything either.

On the big map, right-click on the spot you want to zoom in on... then, to zoom in more, right-click IN the little zoom box. Works for me.

[Aghanim]

Is it possible to have MechJeb integration with big map created with this? I want to be able to set rover waypoint by placing waypoint in the big map

[StahnAileron]

Okay, fairly silly question: Does SCANsat have any type of support for increasing FOV by using multiples of the same scanner on the same satellite? Or are multiples of the same scanner on one satellite useless/pointless?

The main reason I'm asking this is for craft mass balancing. I prefer making autonomous probes i.e. they have full engine systems onboard for final orbital insertions or later changes. Because of this, I try to make sure they are balanced to prevent torque during burns. I have a decent number of mods (Near Future set, B9, several USI sets, RemoteTech, OPT, DMOrbitSci, UniStorage, etc.), so trying to balance satellites with different scanners while making sure they look decent AND fit within certain design restrictions gets tedious. (For that last part, I mess with spaceplane designs a lot, so much of my design goals have to fit within the various cargo bays sizes, preferably without clipping ). I tried looking up this aspect via Google for about an hour and couldn't find an answer (though I did come across tidbits of other useful info). I want to just use pairs of scanners for simplicity, but I wondered if there would be any benefit beyond my want of mass balancing. If not, I have to go back to the drawing board...

One last thing, regarding scanner altitudes: While trying to find an answer to my above question, I read that the "ideal" altitude for scanners is the minimum alt needed to have full FOV. Anything above that (up to the max alt spec) provides a bonus. Is that still true? (I read this on reddit, but the post was from 10 months ago or so.) As an example, if I take a Karbonite Scanner (from USI; 500km max, 100km ideal) and a Multi-Spec (500km max, 250 ideal), then shove them into a 400km orbit, both would get a bonus to FOV? I don't have to pick between either 100km or 250km first and then move the satellite to the other ideal alt later?

[micha]

Multiple scanners of the same type on a probe don't affect the FOV.

Balancing -is- a touch tedious, but unless vastly out of whack launches tend to be barely affected. I usually balance using solar panels on one side, and the scanner on the other, and having the more massive scanners stack-attached so they are inline with the thrust. Then for orbital manoeuvres I've found that by using low thrust, the probe SAS can usually override the torque.

[BudgetHedgehog]

The main reason I'm asking this is for craft mass balancing. I prefer making autonomous probes i.e. they have full engine systems onboard for final orbital insertions or later changes.

What I do is offset the engine so the CoT and CoM are in line. KER has a 'torque' column and if it's 0, it means there'll be no torque (and even if you can't make it exactly 0, gimbal, SAS and RCS will cope). RCS Build Aid has a similar setting, too. I don't believe multiple scanners increases the FOV.

[Marcelo Silveira]

[...] The main reason I'm asking this is for craft mass balancing. [...]

You can offset the engine like ObsessedWithKSP (cool name ) just said or you can add weight like a small monopropellant tank at the other side of the probe. RCS build aid is very useful for this because it shows the resultant torque.

Other option, more sophisticated, is to make a module menager cfg enabling tweakscale, so bigger scanners will have different parameters depending on the code you make.

[DMagic]

One last thing, regarding scanner altitudes: While trying to find an answer to my above question, I read that the "ideal" altitude for scanners is the minimum alt needed to have full FOV. Anything above that (up to the max alt spec) provides a bonus. Is that still true? (I read this on reddit, but the post was from 10 months ago or so.) As an example, if I take a Karbonite Scanner (from USI; 500km max, 100km ideal) and a Multi-Spec (500km max, 250 ideal), then shove them into a 400km orbit, both would get a bonus to FOV? I don't have to pick between either 100km or 250km first and then move the satellite to the other ideal alt later?

It was described in some detail a little while back, but the FOV is at the maximum value everywhere between the "ideal" and the "max" altitude. Above max it won't work, below ideal it decreases linearly until it gets to the min altitude, below which it won't work.

If you aren't trying to find the best possible orbits for scanning, then all you really have to worry about is that you are above the ideal altitude and that you're orbits are well spread out (the tick marks along the equator on the big map). If your orbits are grouping up you won't get a complete map; getting them spread out is usually only a matter of a few m/s of dV.

[moronwrocket]

@Kurld,

Wait for the main image to finish processing, then right-click to bring up the smaller box. Right-clicking again within the smaller box to keep zooming. It isn't much per step (perhaps this can be increased?), but if you do it several times you should start noticing the increased zoom. It is more noticeable if you have SAR data vs low-resolution radar data.

[StahnAileron]

Multiple scanners of the same type on a probe don't affect the FOV.

Balancing -is- a touch tedious, but unless vastly out of whack launches tend to be barely affected. I usually balance using solar panels on one side, and the scanner on the other, and having the more massive scanners stack-attached so they are inline with the thrust. Then for orbital manoeuvres I've found that by using low thrust, the probe SAS can usually override the torque.

It's one of those moments when I wished all the scanners had the same mass... (I did notice the Multi-Spec and DTS-M1 have the same mass though, so that helped a bit.) The problem with your method is that I'm trying to cram several, different scanners onto one probe/satellite. In-line stack attaching isn't viable for many of the scanners. (Of all the mods I have, there is only 1 scanner than can be attached to.) I was able to mitigate a little bit by creating a "new" part: I was able to rescale a 2.5m-class hollow skeletal frame from Near Future Construction to 0.75m-class. I can mount one or two (really just one though) 0.625m-class parts inside that. It looks and works JUST right for that.

What I do is offset the engine so the CoT and CoM are in line. KER has a 'torque' column and if it's 0, it means there'll be no torque (and even if you can't make it exactly 0, gimbal, SAS and RCS will cope). RCS Build Aid has a similar setting, too. I don't believe multiple scanners increases the FOV.

I use both tools, which is why I'm fussing over this . I don't like offsetting engines much. I prefer aligning the mass to thrust than thrust to mass.

I wonder if they'll consider allowing multiples of a scanner to "stack" the FOV. (Even with a 5 degree FOV, you'd need 36 of them to get 180 degree coverage anyway...) Maybe with diminishing returns rather than purely linear scaling.

[Kurld]

@Kurld,

Wait for the main image to finish processing, then right-click to bring up the smaller box. Right-clicking again within the smaller box to keep zooming. It isn't much per step (perhaps this can be increased?), but if you do it several times you should start noticing the increased zoom. It is more noticeable if you have SAR data vs low-resolution radar data.

Thanks, I'll give it a shot. The zoom window itself is very tiny. Any way to make it bigger?

- - - Updated - - -

On the big map, right-click on the spot you want to zoom in on... then, to zoom in more, right-click IN the little zoom box. Works for me.

As I replied to another, I'll try it again. I'm pretty sure I've clicked every way possible already.

I run at 2560 x 1440. Would that make a difference?

[Kurld]

Chalk me up as Mr Impatient. Indeed right-clicking does work, you just need to right click several times before it makes a noticeable difference.

[smjjames]

How do you zoom back out in the little zoom square while on the big map? I don't mean exit, I mean back up a few zoom levels. I thought it was supposed to be the left mouse button.

[smjjames]

Okay, I'm not sure if this is a bug or not, but when I went to a 7% spot (according to SCANsat) of karbonite, but when my exploration rover/lander got there, it's actually more like 5%. I already ground truthed the biome some time ago, but shouldn't the scansat reflect the ground truthing and not decieve by 2%?

I already posted on the Karbonite thread but RoverDude has no clue. I've encountered a few more spots that aren't very accurate because it looked like it was a higher area, but it's more like 1-2% lower than SCANsat claims. If it's off by a few tenths or hundredths of a percent, that's fine because theres going to be local variation.

Also, screenshot for reference (sorry for massive screen clutter)

[DMagic]

Okay, I'm not sure if this is a bug or not, but when I went to a 7% spot (according to SCANsat) of karbonite, but when my exploration rover/lander got there, it's actually more like 5%. I already ground truthed the biome some time ago, but shouldn't the scansat reflect the ground truthing and not decieve by 2%?

One possibility is that this because of Regolith's handling of vessel coordinates. It takes its values directly from what KSP provides, this is a bad idea, they need to be clamped to -180 - 180 (Engineer also doesn't do this, it's annoying); you can see it in the resource scanner where it says -275, instead of 85. I can try changing that and seeing if fixes anything.

Otherwise I can't see why it would vary so much, it's possible that the mouse-over coordinates aren't perfectly accurate. But if you have the mouse over the zoom window and they match what Mechjeb is telling you then they should be correct. The coordinates shown on the bottom are the same as those fed into Regolith.

Both SCANsat and Regolith use the same method to read resource concentration, and everything except those unclamped coordinates is the same, so that's the only reason I can think of.

[Nothalogh]

Are there any plans for other scanning tools?

Perhaps something like spectrometer for atmospheric composition or some kind of optical instruments

[ghost0307]

Great to see this in the releases thread! Can't wait to get back to my main PC an get it downloaded!

[DMagic]

One possibility is that this because of Regolith's handling of vessel coordinates. It takes its values directly from what KSP provides, this is a bad idea, they need to be clamped to -180 - 180 (Engineer also doesn't do this, it's annoying); you can see it in the resource scanner where it says -275, instead of 85. I can try changing that and seeing if fixes anything.

Yep, it definitely seems to be this. I've submitted a pull request to Regolith, though it may be a moot point at this time.

[spacedoctor42]

I've found a major issue with SCANsat. I was using it with resource overlay and I right clicked on the map which caused all of the buttons to squish together in the upper right corner rendering the map completely unusable. I can't figure out how to fix it.

Anyone else experience this?

[LordFerret]

How do you zoom back out in the little zoom square while on the big map? I don't mean exit, I mean back up a few zoom levels. I thought it was supposed to be the left mouse button.

Left-click in the little box will zoom out.

[smjjames]

Wrong thread

Edited April 5, 2015 by smjjames

[futrtrubl]

Do you know what could be causing SCANsat to spam this error when I load a craft with the anomaly scanner or pull an anomaly scanner out of the parts inventory in SPH/VAB? Doesn't happen in flight.

NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object

at DMagic.Part_Modules.DMAnomalyScanner.Update () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0

(Filename: Line: -1)

I grabbed the 1.0 DMagic science DDS update, that's the only thing that I can think of that could cause it. Or maybe it's the map resource overlay.

Perhaps that should be in the DMagic orbital science post?

[smjjames]

Isn't it a SCANsat part?

edit: no wait, you're right, it's an orbital science part.

[moot187]

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3vOvGUMvgy-NG01OUJ1ZUR0YXM/view?usp=sharing

As you can see in the pick even though the altitude reads ideal the small map shows orange for all scanners. I can't get any scanners to work now. I've tried placing a new satellite in orbit around kerbin and got the same problem. I've also tried resting the map but still the scanners won't work. I also tried deleting scansat and re-installing. This all happened when I was adjusting of the altitude of the satellite in the pic while the it was scanning. I've got no idea how I can fix this