[0.22] ISA MapSat 4.0 Dev Build

[theSpeare]

It occurs when loading up a vehicle, e.g. switching to it from the Tracking Station. Had to wait a good minute before the ship would load, and over time the delay would increase. Eventually I tried removing Mapsat, and it fixed the problem.

[Montieth]

Was there a way to get the Anomalies to show back up in the Mapsat interface?

[cxg2827]

Was there a way to get the Anomalies to show back up in the Mapsat interface?

there should be a radio button to select "show anomalies"

[Innsewerants]

@innsewerants I know how you feel getting mentioned by someone else. Thanks for reading my post.

I realy do like mapsat and thank you for that. one of the required mods as far as I am concerned.

I just want to be clear about the Eeloo thing I experienced, not sure if I need to clarify anything but here I go anyways.

My Hilo.dat file did exist but when I opened it there was no entry for Eeloo.

Thanks for letting us know what to expect if its missing.

In the version I downloaded from the spaceport (uploads_2012_12_ISA_MapSat-3.3.4.zip) there is no Eeloo entry in the hilo.dat file in it either.

It may be worth just checking the Dev copy so the new version has it, maybe .. i dont know .. im not a modder and know little of the magic you wield.

There's an updated hilo.dat on my blog and in the thread here somewhere, easiest just to check my blog, you can also manually have mapsat rebuild it by deleting it and starting a flight with mapsat, it will seem to hang for a while before its done building, it's meant more for me as the dev but will fix your hilo.dat.

3.3.4 came out around late in 17.x I think, I've had a seperate new source since and because I'm changing a lot both in code and the superficial features of mapsat I just try to avoid wasting too much time on fixing 3.x.

I don't think that's the issue, at least not on mine. It turns the game into a slideshow at launch if map drawing is enabled. Turn it, off, and the lag goes away. I'm gonna play around with it a bit and report back later. :|

Edit: Quick report:

Re-activating at 17km caused massive lag. At 33km caused maybe the slightest, most minor of hitches. Once. Seems to be a 'scanning at low altitude' problem. Since the scanning is enabled by default...

Edit2: The lag breakpoint is somewhere between 25 and 26km.

Edit3: Don't occur during descent, only initial launch...that's weird.

This bug is fixed in the next release/current dev build, it's caused by all the new models around ksc, because my filter for anomalies is based on exclusion (I exclude things that are definitely not anomalies instead of look for things that definitely are anomalies) it finds a zillion of them around ksc.

Combined with some old and now replaced saving code that caused a lot of lag whenever ksc is in scanning range. All this is fixed in my current build.

Well there's about a dozen people complaining about it in the comments on the spaceport, and nothing helpful comes up on a google search. Given it's such an easy work around...ought to be a note somewhere.

It's noted on my blog and in the thread here somewhere. 4.0 isn't too far of now I think. I think the best way from now on to keep up to date about mapsat is my blog here on ksp. I only recently started it but I am liking it as a way to report news about mapsat a lot.

Greetings

I been having a few strange crashes as soon as i put on an ISA mapsat module onto my spaceships, Get Thread Conect failed is the error.

Probably another mod causing it or the combination of another mod + mapsat. If you like please investigate and report what mod it is, I'll try and get in touch and see if we can resolve the issue.

I haven't had this happen with just mapsat in my clean testing install nor on my main game install with the few mods I always use. (mechjeb, robotics, engineer)

Noob question, can I view the data i've collected from MapSat on other vessels, for instances of I wanted to land on Mun, I would first send a map sat probe, map it could I see that info on my lander that doesn't have the mapsat dish?

Yes you can, I made the gps for that, it esentially uses the same code and interface but excludes scanning from running so it's light on performance and portable as far as model size goes o you can put it anywhere.

Also, I was looking to add the GPS functionality to an avionics nosecone (as well as RemoteTech and MechJeb), but it doesn't seem like the part.cfg has any special module or anything specifically for this. How then does the mod identify what parts have the MapSat and GPS functionality? Is it hardcoded into the .dll files? Am I missing something or is it just not possible?

I realize I could just slap the GPS box on the craft, but in the effort to reduce overall parts count, it made sense to me to try and put it in the nosecone.

Sorry about that, once upon a time I thought it would be easy and convenient to differentiate between the gps and dish part based on model names. Unintentionally excluding any easy use of the code with other parts. This is on my to do list to change for the next release.

Reading about some of the issues that users are having with the instant on scanning and fitting of the part, I was thinking about some ideas about this mod. It needs to change the dish part in to something more like what they use on real satellites. Say like a sensor box or pod that has a door that can be opened when in use. This would keep the sat from scanning until you turned it on with an action key. A box would be used if you wanted to mount it directly to your probe body. Or use a round pod that can rotate 360 and tilt 180 as well a door that can be opened. You could mount this to a folding or telescoping arm that can be deployed after launch. Then use the box or pod and fill it with different sensors of your choosing. Want a visible light camera? Need a kethane scanner? Want to scan in infrared or any wavelength? Add any sensor you want when someone makes it. Make them in different sizes for adding more than one sensor to that pod or what your needs require. Heck, add more than one pod. Then go one step further, and have your sat keep the data until it is able to beam the images back to Kerbin before you can look at them using something similar to the RemoteTech mod. Just some ideas.

Real topography scanning satellites? They either look like boring grey boxes or they look like my dish except instead of an antenna in the middle there's a radar or laser emitting bar on it like

and even that dish is normally hidden inside the fuselage. (it uses radar which just penetrates the protective hull casing iirc) and it doesn't auto look at the ground either! lol

I might change the design and quality of the dish model but the basic idea will probably stay. I am however going to change my method of differentiating between gps and dish which will get rid of the problems of using the dll on other parts, custom dishes etc.

pod animations and stuff is not what determines if the scanning code runs lol, the other way around is more likely (game code not real life ), The new default for scanning is off anyway. 50% want it off at default 50% want it on. So I'm just picking what I prefer and I prefer to start scanning when I am finished getting into my mapping orbit lol.

As far as all the animation model suggestion go, great. But, if I spend the little time I have for mapsat on making a nicer model and model animation gimmicks I won't get work done on the core functionality of mapsat which I would guess is more important? I might do more work on the look of the thing when mapsat is up to date again and I have enough time.

As far as all the different scanning goes, there's just nothing to scan really in ksp and I'm not going to make fake datasets to scan. There essentially is only topography right now, there's no ground temperature really, I've been playing with doing that and the temp. curve but so far nothing interesting, no magnetic fields to scan, visible light is not going to work either I wasted a few hours on that yesterday. I'm not allowed to readpixels from the diffuse maps so that comes down to having no data.

I have an idea for old school realistic photo mapping like space agencies do in real life, but that's quite a large undertaking and probably not suited for just a feature in mapsat and mapping would be slow because to keep lighting consistent you can only map strips of the planet that are in between a few degrees of "noon" when the sat passes over.

I can code it no problem but would it be fun? Many people think mapsat as is takes too long, this would just take "forever". I will look at mapping resources when they become official though. And if they ever add anything interesting to map I will definitely check it out.

I don't want to sound like a downer, they are all great idea's but as you might have noticed I get way too little time in on mapsat work as it is and compared to functionality and bugs superficial models and animations don't add that much. A definitive might do though but that all depends on time and despite (or maybe because) mapsat being the usual free mod, money.

As far as the beaming goes, no sorry. It's just makes for a less enjoyable user experience, Or do you really like sitting and waiting for a at to pass over ksc to transmit it's data. never mind waiting for the one around eeloo to come into line of sight with ksc?

Also this comes back to multisat mapping, pqs reading is just too heavy for so many simultaneous scans everywhere. I've improved mapsat performance a lot lately but it's still a limit.

I'm thinking about having a transceiver gps type part that will let scanning continue with mapsats that orbit the same planet as the vessel you are controlling so people can do stuff while mapping. Just an idea atm though. might be in 4.0 or a later incremental update if I decide to do it.

Sort of an intermediate between full multisat and having to be on the same vessel as the satellite.

Any ideas why my satellite is working but I can't seem to get the GPS to attach to anything? I can see it but no matter where I try placing it it just turns red. Any help would be much appreciated.

There's a bug in the gps model vectors, it's backwards, rotating it should fix it, I will fix the model once the coding work for 4.0 is done.

How's the update for this one? I'm anxiously waiting a fix for the lag problem this mod causes when loading ships. Maybe we could get a link to the dev build?

Disable scanning while launching/landing at ksc for now.

Work on mapsat is going well. I managed to get a lot done over the past 3 day weekend (monday was a holiday here), I will blog about it later today or so.

--

Would people want an intermediate changelist of the current dev version?

I hope I didn't forget anyone since my last post. Keep an eye on my blog, I will update somewhere today probably about the work done in the weekend and I am fast coming to like it as the main way to post news about mapsats development.

Fans will probably be best of subscribing to it

Hope that answers all, Cheers Innsewerants!

Edited May 22, 2013 by Innsewerants

[Meatsauce]

You rock, Innsewerants!

Thanks for a great plugin.

[Fyrem]

indeed, thank you for your hard work.

[Innsewerants]

Heya meatsauce, long time no chat!

[KnutG]

The question is which release is earlier : ISA MapSat 4.0 or KSP 0.20 ?

[HoY]

I'd love to see the addition of a topigraphical scanner glad to hear your still working on the mod!!

[Castun]

Sorry about that, once upon a time I thought it would be easy and convenient to differentiate between the gps and dish part based on model names. Unintentionally excluding any easy use of the code with other parts. This is on my to do list to change for the next release.

Thanks for answering my question.

[cxg2827]

just went to one of my probes after updating to 0.20. It is remapping the planets from scratch, even though i completed the scans.

I checked the plugindata folder and my pre 0.20 maps are still showing. Any idea what I can do to fix this?

Edit: looks the issue is only with Gilly.

Edit2: all anomalies are not showing, but the .dat file still shows all coordinates.

Edited May 23, 2013 by cxg2827

[Gaius]

Hmm. I installed on a fresh 0.20, seemed to work, mapped Kerbin. However, after I quit the game and came back later, it had lost the map it made. "No Terrain Detected" it says...

Edited May 23, 2013 by Gaius

[Catullus]

This could be because the PluginData folder has moved.

[Aeshi]

So, if I wanted to start using this I'd probably be better off waiting to see if a .20 version comes out?

Also, does it matter how high above the surface the craft with the mapping dish on it is orbiting? (i.e. If I'm mapping the Mun, does it make any difference whether my craft is at a 3km orbit or a 30km one?)

[IllicitMedic]

So, if I wanted to start using this I'd probably be better off waiting to see if a .20 version comes out?

Also, does it matter how high above the surface the craft with the mapping dish on it is orbiting? (i.e. If I'm mapping the Mun, does it make any difference whether my craft is at a 3km orbit or a 30km one?)

The higher it is, the more it can map at once, at least to a point. I also keep mine about 10 degrees off from a polar orbit, seems to work well.

[recon_rabbit]

I take no credit for this, but I use it quite often. He breaks MapSat down to how it works, and the best alt. for each surface.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/27999-ISA-Mapsat-Ideal-and-Non-Ideal-Altitudes

[Laminator]

Hmm. I installed on a fresh 0.20, seemed to work, mapped Kerbin. However, after I quit the game and came back later, it had lost the map it made. "No Terrain Detected" it says...

I have found a quick & dirty workaround concerning maps not showing up after leaving the game.

2 ways to make the maps show up ingame:

1) copy both mapfiles for the Planet you have mapped right before from the new "your_KSP-install\plugins\plugindata\ISA_MapSat" folder to the folder "your_KSP-install\plugindata\ISA_Mapsat" (the old folder used to store your maps)!

As long as you have not reentered the game and are piloting the mapping craft again the Maps are in the new folder. As soon as you activate mapping again, the maps get overwritten with a blank white map.

2) a bit more complicated, but works allways:

activate "create RAW-Data" in the ISA MapSat GUI ingame. Map the planet. This creates a Planetname_elevation.csv file in the new plugin datafolder.

Copy the *.csv file to the "old" Plugindata\ISA_MapSat folder.

Execute "Render all textures from csv data.bat". This creates the Mapfiles for all Planets you have mapped with RAW-Data on! The *.csv files don´t get overwritten like the mapfiles and they stay intact when reentering the game and activating the mapping vessel.

Hope that helps at least some folk

Besides this inconveniancy ISA_MapSat works great for me, no problems at all.

Many thanks to the Creator of this phantastic Addon, can´t live in Kerbal Universe without it!!

[Gaius]

Hmm, thanks Laminator. After reading that though, I'm wondering if it would work to simply MKLINK /D (the Windows equivalent of ln -s) the old directory path to the new one... gonna try this:

cd KSP_win\PluginData

mklink /d ISA_MapSat ..\Plugins\PluginData\ISA_MapSat

...and see what happens.

EDIT: It works! I can now resume kerballing through the cosmos while waiting patiently for the next ISA MapSat update.

Edited May 24, 2013 by Gaius
It works! :D

[Innsewerants]

Heya, sorry about not posting the promised blog entry, something happened called 0.20 that interrupted that haha.

I just finished fixing my dev code for 0.20 and doing some tests if everything works.

4.0 will be using the new plugin lay-out, there were quite a few issues so I just moved over completely.

Anyhow keeping it short as I'm coding as I post this.

Depending on what I get done now I think I will be releasing a dev build, it won't have all the stuff I want to put in 4 and will be messy and have known bugs and unoptimized parts that are on my todo list. But it will have the new map sizes and be fully 0.20 compliant at least. Let me know if you want that and promise you won't flood me we reports about obvious and probably known bugs lol.

[edit]

O and I just made these screenshots when I tested my fixes for 0.20

I'm reserving the screenies of the new scanning beam I haven't told you about yet I think, lol, for the blog post I neglected to do about the changes done last weekend.

Edited May 24, 2013 by Innsewerants

[Castun]

Looks great, I want it now! BTW, are we able to move around the icon now, or at least customize the location? I think using a larger UI size meant that some buttons like yours were on top of interface bits.

[Voidryder]

All right! ISA is one of the last mod I'm waiting on to have my space program fully functional again. Thank you Innsewerants for such a great mod and for jumping so quickly on the changes necessary for .20.

[Innsewerants]

Looks great, I want it now! BTW, are we able to move around the icon now, or at least customize the location? I think using a larger UI size meant that some buttons like yours were on top of interface bits.

Yeah that was just a dumb thing on my part. In the dev version the icon is a fixed width away from the side. Since the ksp gui scales and stays a fixed width it shouldn't be a problem any more.

Just before I went on hiatus there was someone doing a mod to try and unify and interface for all mods that would auto arrange everyone's icons. I should check if that's still around now because I whole heartedly support it to try and promote everyone to switch to an agreed upon icon size and style and support the unification mod. I don't remember who it was back then who was doing that.

[KhaosCorp]

would love a dev version out while ya iron out the kinks or whatever...you get flooded with bug reports you tell me, ill regulate for ya =P

This is one of the very few mods I wont play ksp without. Noob like me would screw-the-pooch on every landing without glorious maps to consult...true story

[Scotius]

That's a very good news Innseverants. Flying around without ISA modules feels odd and wrong. Yes, please post anything working in 0.20

P.S. Scanning beam? Scanning beam!!! SQUEEEEE!

[Dweller_Benthos]

Hmm, thanks Laminator. After reading that though, I'm wondering if it would work to simply MKLINK /D (the Windows equivalent of ln -s) the old directory path to the new one... gonna try this:

cd KSP_win\PluginData

mklink /d ISA_MapSat ..\Plugins\PluginData\ISA_MapSat

...and see what happens.

EDIT: It works! I can now resume kerballing through the cosmos while waiting patiently for the next ISA MapSat update.

Sounds interesting, but when I try it, I get this: You do not have sufficient privilege to perform this operation.

I'm logged in as administrator for this machine, so I wonder where I need to tell it to go scratch and do what I tell it to.