Connection Diagnostics

[Starstrider42]

Original issue at Cilph/RemoteTech2#215.

Cilph wrote:

Proposition: mouse-over / click on a satellite in map view to either open the targeting menu or give a summary of distance and connections.

[Creat]

Transferring my post from the forum thread as per Starstrider42's request, slightly expanded and hopefully better explained:

One of the major causes of help requests stems from the fact that people get no connection but don't know why, often involving Active Vessel as a target somewhere in the network.
The reason is that It's not very obvious why a certain link is (or is not) active when looking at the map, which is the only/primary tool to diagnose a network.

Typical example: A player controlling a probe/sat currently above the Mün - intended as a relay for crafts in the Mün's shadow - can see a connection to their main network around Kerbin, because those satellites have AV as a target. As far as I know there is no way to see why the connection is made (is it targeted? inside a cone? due to active vessel?). Once he switches to the vessel behind the Mün - which would now need that relay to connect to KSC - he get's no connection and doesn't know why. He's not told "Active Vessel set, but no line of sight", "Out of range" or anything else along those lines.

All this information could be in a tooltip on the map (if plugins can create/override tool tips for objects on the map) or drawn as text next to either the satellites or their connection lines (with a new button in the lower-right corner to toggle this display). As a more minimal and less intrusive alternative would be color-coding the relay-satellite-icons (and/or the connecting lines). Preferably with a key drawn at the side to explain what it all means. Just for further illustration, a coloring/linestyle example:
Green (normal line): Connect/Targeted'
Green (dashed line): 'Connected/Active Vessel'
Green (dotted line): 'Connectec/In target Cone'
Yellow (normal line): 'LoS Obstruction/Targeted'
Yellow (dashed line): 'LoS Obstruction/Active Vessel'
Yellow (dotted line): 'LoS Obstruction, but inside of target Cone'
Red (normal line): 'Out of Range/Targeted'
Red (dashed line): 'Out of Range/Active Vessel'
Red (dotted line): 'Out of Range, but inside of targeting Cone'
Dark-Red or Purple (dotted line): 'Outside of target cone'
Dark-Red or Purple (dashed & dotted line): 'Outside of target cone AND out of range'

Related to that, it would be quite helpful in diagnosing issues if we had access to lists of what something is set to connect to. Basically a list of targets for a satellite. One way would obviously be a tool tip (again), but this could also be done visually by drawing lines - possibly labelled with the target name, as it might be way out of sight - to the set targets (possibly with the colors and/or line types from above). Obviously you'd need a way to select which target-list to show. The easiest would probably just to show them for whatever the map is centered on (if it's active, would obviously need another toggle in the bottom right).

[teleksterling]

Hi. Lurker here.
The suggestion of green dashed/dotted lines,etc really appeals to me, and would help me in diagnosing problems in my network. Extending the small mapview toolbar to be able to toggle the obstructed & out of range lines would be useful when you aren't trying to diagnose a problem and just want a clear view of your universe.

[jdmj]

Color-coded network would need a huge legend. For an active path I would prefer tooltips (alternate resource panel style) with uplink and downlink target name, antenna name and max range for every sat in the path, plus leg distance markers (like ap/pe ones). For managing satellites without switching to them there is a button with sat icon in map view already, but almost every time I try to use it I get infinite zoom out or Kerbin texture as a skybox bugs.

[Creat]

Color-coded network would need a huge legend.

Yes, this could become problematic. But do keep in mind that what I wrote is basically an exhaustive list, mainly for illustration purposes. In practice you'd have one part of the legend for colors and one for line-types, so no more than 10 entries. A tooltip would make for a cleaner screen, but would also remove the overview aspect. You can only ever see the status of one satellite at a time.

Real problems usually just arise with large-ish networks, where you have to figure out where on the way to your craft the signal breaks down. It's hard to mouse-over the right satellites when there's like 10 candidates for what may or may not be the shortest route. If you don't have a connection there's obviously not gonna be a nice green line, pointing out the sats you need to check.

In the end it's mainly about having tools to diagnose this situation at all though. So it's better to have something working soon-ish rather than something more visually appealing much later ;)

I also thought about the whole thing some more and noticed that I didn't even mention in the line-shape/color-coding parts, that every possible connection obviously concerns two satellites. Those potentially have asymmetric settings, like a relay for Duna will likely use a cone (or active vessel), but the receivers over there might target the relay directly (or also use a Kerbin-cone). Obviously it's not trivial how to show that. Using lines becomes difficult there for another reason, because any satellite with a cone might have multiple targets. It would be rather problematic to decide which lines to draw... Only the one that have something targeting back? So yea, I get that using lines has it's problems :)

For managing satellites without switching to them there is a button with sat icon in map view already, but almost every time I try to use it I get infinite zoom out or Kerbin texture as a skybox bugs.

Yea I had kind of forgotten that you can use the target-selection-ui for that, just ignore the last paragraph... Usually, the feature does work for me though.