-Naval identification symbols-

I would like to suggest/ask if the blip shapes can have a distinct front and back to serve as a form of vector indicator which SE is lacking and is much needed. I would like to propose the following ID symbols based on the Fleet Command series:
Red Pyramid (tip being the nose) enemy large grid ship
Red Chevron (point being the nose) enemy small grid ship
Red Cube (no point) enemy station
Green Cone: Allied large grid ship
Green D shape: Allied small grid ship
Green sphere: Allied station
-Neutral objecs would use same shapes as allied ones but yellow in color-
-Voxels remain black/gray
-Astronauts and floating objects remain purple. An object that small with little RCS should need V-ID to fully discern either way. I think it would add to the immersion and gamplay, rather than having an omniscient radar.

Keep up the good work! this mod restored my hopes of having useful sensors in SE.

Hmmm, I don't know about orientations, but I think that shapes would be do-able. Part of the problem I foresee though is identifying them. The cone and pyramid would look near identical at first glance. The D shape would be quite tricky, unless it was a sprite.

It'd probably easiest to follow just a simple set. Pyramid=large ship, chevron=small ship, sphere=station, box=voxels, color code based on alliance.

Orientation is locked to the base 6 directions (up, down, left, right, forward, backward) at this moment.

Yeah I think you are right about the shapes, they should be different enough to be able to understand them at a glance. Too bad orientation is locked :( I have been wanting to get vector indicators for this game since it came out hehe.

Its something i can possibly include in the future, I put it in the bucket :). There are always ways to trick the game engine to do what you want.

But are those tricks not very vulnerable to updates? (one of the biggest threats for my own mods)

Possible ideas/ inspiration from me:

- Friendly ships display ship names (toggleable?)

- Display ships as arrows instead of cubes to indicate orientation. Direction of "forward" determined by main cockpit/ direction most cockpits face. Possibly for friendlies only to balance. If it is too complicated to check for all ships in range, at least make the white dot an arrow so it's easier to judge orientation.

- Scale ship and station signals based on grid mass/ block count (Cubes might also become more transparent with increasing size so large ones don't overshadow small ones.)

- A way to judge distance. The easiest way would probably be a fittingly scaled coordinate grid texture that can be displayed on the screen below the hologram.

- Make the blocks available for small ships (perhaps with shorter range?)

- Ships with activated (counting down) jump drives might indicate this on the radar. Interesting for PVP

- Similarly the location a ship jumped in/ out might leave a residue on the radar for some time.

- A small ship version of the holoscreen meant to project the radar image into a cockpit as a HUD. (Similar to this mod: https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=538279319&searchtext=cockpit+screens)

- Active Radar does a small hit on my simspeed every time the image is updated. My PC is struggling a bit with the game anyway though.
I'm no expert with how this works, but couldn't you split the workload of refreshing over several physics steps instead of doing everything at once? It would also be nice to have a way to adjust the refresh rate.

Oh, also, could you maybe adjust the colors of grids to match the faction identification codes (blue for owned, green for friendly, red for neutral/enemy, etc.)

Would it be possible to make a bigger display? let's say, a 2*2 block or even 3*3? atm it is quite difficult to see something when in an area with a lot of asteroids...

@hellothere it already does that, radar result only updates every few seconds. I do have a few ideas on how to improve performance a bit.

Originally posted by DraygoKorvan:

@hellothere it already does that, radar result only updates every few seconds. I do have a few ideas on how to improve performance a bit.

I notices that the radar doesn't update constantly, but ca once a second. What I meant is that the moment it does update the game freezes for a tiny moment, which is quite unnerving.
I don't know whether the fault of my graphics card or my processor but something about the updating process slows the game enough to noticable.
My suggestion was to split the updating process over several frames. Couldn't you like only update half of the screen in one physics cycle and do the rest in the next one? Or split it over even more? That way you would still experience a performance drop, but you can easier cope with a slightly lower simspeed constantly than having a single frame that feels twice as long each second.
Again, all of what I wrote is completely based on assumption of how your mod works and this might very well be completely unfeasible. Sorry if I'm stupid and this wouldn't work ;)

I do as little in the main thread as possible but yes in the main thread I have to spawn the radar grid and remove the old one, this is probably causing the hitch. I will at some point split the radar grid into sections and update one at a time which should alleviate this issue when I can get to it.

Currently doing that is behind proper FoF identification, and color customization of radar results, but in front of programming block access to the data and triggers.

Jammer block which stops the radar picing up a ship or station?

Plannet version that does not pick up plannets but picks up ships at diffrent altitudes

I was thinking for a jammer block it would just fuzz the radar its jamming with useless data. I feel that you should know that you are being jammed.

I will include options in the future to exclude certain results, such as voxels. Which would give you the option of a clean planet version.

why are not using the settings that you cound make in the sensor block? like large ship, small ship ,station and so one?