Elite Observatory - Search your journal for potentially interesting objects, or notify you of new ones on the fly while exploring!

I've seen lots of worlds just over 3g and very, very few just over 4g so far, so ≥5g seems right as far as I can tell.
Conversely I've seen exactly eight worlds over 3g and zero over 4g (in my current readable journal, I know that I saw higher prior to what I'm parsing).

One thing I want to make clear is that I don't intend for Elite Observatory to be used only by the record setters scouring the galaxy for only the nth top placement in a particular category or better. I want a fresh starting bubble skipper to be able to grab it and find something that might make them say "neat!" before they get bored. The built-in checks are meant to maintain a fairly steady stream of things that might be interesting to go look at or land on.

Of course, people that want to find the biggest and best are welcome to use it too, and I'm more than happy to support them in doing so (varonica's dump of new worlds in the largest planet thread was fantastic), just keep in mind that the target audience is a little wider than just that. If you want to tighten the tolerances of what's searched for to remove some of the "cruft" then by all means disable the built-in checks you consider too lenient and add some custom criteria of your own. I provided a >5g one above, and I'll help with creating others if anyone isn't quite sure how to make it work.

edit: Changed phrasing to make it more clear that I do want record setters to be able to use it, just not them alone.
 
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Alright, understood. And thanks for posting the XML for >5g. I don't understand it yet (A value of 49.05? A multiply? Huh?), so I guess I should really read your documentation already...
 
Alright, understood. And thanks for posting the XML for >5g. I don't understand it yet (A value of 49.05? A multiply? Huh?), so I guess I should really read your documentation already...
Heh, I can run through what is going on in that xml.

49.05 is just 5g in m/s² (5 × 9.81), which is the unit used in the journal files.

The multiply is used with the "landable" status, which is 1 for landable, or 0 for not, so any planet that isn't landable comes back as zero and doesn't trip the criteria, and landable planets will report their gravity normally.

Or, written differently, it's checking to see if (surface gravity) × (landable) is greater than 49.05m/s².
 
I'm trying to get it to flag Class V Gas Giants but I'm not having much luck (unless I shouldn't be pasting this into the ObservatoryCriteria.xml file in the same folder as the observatory.exe?):

Code:
 <Criteria Comparator="Equal" Value="Class V">
          <FirstValue Type="EventData">Class V</FirstValue>
    <Description>Class V Gas Giant</Description>
    <Detail>
      <Item>Mass</Item>
      <Item>Period</Item>
    </Detail>
  </Criteria>
 
You just want to find any Class V gas giant?

Code:
  <Criteria Comparator="Equal" Value="1">
    <Operation Operator="Multiply">
      <FirstValue Type="EventData">PlanetClass:Sudarsky class V gas giant</FirstValue>
      <SecondValue Type="Number">1</SecondValue>
    </Operation>
    <Description>Class V Gas Giant</Description>
  </Criteria>

I need to update the readme as the note about how to use "PlanetClass" eventdata is buried away in a patch note, but it's "PlanetClass:{class name}", where "class name" is an exact match for the way that class of planet is recorded in the journal files. Its value is 1 when the class matches, 0 otherwise.

I should probably add some way to just use a single value as well, so people who want to check just one thing don't need to multiply by 1 or add 0 or whatever.
 
Thanks, that worked! I wonder if it might help if you listed the xml codes for some/all of the criteria that can be ticked off in the checkboxes in the Settings, so that people can see how they're formatted and then can use those as a base for their own criteria?
 
I'm pretty sure that regardless of whatever reasons they gave for using this this tool, it is specifically to find raxxla and the dark wheel station.



Also, is this on the play store?
 
Another criteria I was thinking of was to notify when at least one of each class gas giant is in the system, I know people are looking for this particular feature and It appears it can be done from the example of jumponium presence, I had a look at creating my own custom criteria for large bodies however I got bogged down in trying to work out what flags did what. It appears it should just need a nested criteria list that return true when all values for each gas giant returns true.

Been a long time since I have messed about with this stuff but it seems to be straightforward.
 
Is it possible to use Ring parameters for criteria? I'd like to see if it's possible to flag "Ringhugger" moons (moons that orbit only 1-3 moon radii from the outer edge of a ring, or within say 5000 km if you want a hard number) but the OuterRad parameter for rings doesn't seem to be listed as an option in the readme.
 
Thanks, that worked! I wonder if it might help if you listed the xml codes for some/all of the criteria that can be ticked off in the checkboxes in the Settings, so that people can see how they're formatted and then can use those as a base for their own criteria?
That's a fair point. They're currently listed on the github main page, but if you're going directly to a release link you never see that. I may just expand the comments in the sample xml that gets generated on first launch of the program to be much more thorough.

Also, I do want to make a UI for it at some point, which would obviate the issue entirely.

Another criteria I was thinking of was to notify when at least one of each class gas giant is in the system, I know people are looking for this particular feature and It appears it can be done from the example of jumponium presence, I had a look at creating my own custom criteria for large bodies however I got bogged down in trying to work out what flags did what. It appears it should just need a nested criteria list that return true when all values for each gas giant returns true.

Been a long time since I have messed about with this stuff but it seems to be straightforward.
That one would be tricky as a custom criteria, since you need to reach out to other recent scan events and read those as well. If there's specific demand for that in particular though it wouldn't be hard to add it as a built-in.

I want to add the ability to check against the current scan's moon or parent object, but referencing everything else in system isn't something I'd considered at all yet in the customization. As you say, the jumponium in system check does do exactly that, but C# is a little more robust than my janky xml criteria. ;) It's not a bad idea though, I'll have to put some thought into it.

Is it possible to use Ring parameters for criteria? I'd like to see if it's possible to flag "Ringhugger" moons (moons that orbit only 1-3 moon radii from the outer edge of a ring, or within say 5000 km if you want a hard number) but the OuterRad parameter for rings doesn't seem to be listed as an option in the readme.

Not yet, but that's one I definitely want to get added. I'll let you know as soon as it is. That said, "ringhugger" is probably a worthwhile built-in check. I'll probably just add it directly (in addition to exposing ring parameters for other custom checks).
 
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Just wanted to share two moons that triggered my close orbit check, one of which was nested (moon of a moon).
 

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Quick question-- Any plans to have it save the settings? Every time I launch the program, I have to re-enable the voice alerts, set the volume again, turn on monitoring, etc. Unless it's already there and I've somehow missed it? ;) :unsure:
 
It should already be saving. A config file should be placed in %localappdata% with all your selected criteria, volume, and notification settings.
It's a new file for every version, so updates will reset everything, and the default behavior in .NET is apparently to hash the settings folder with the location and name of the exe, so moving the program resets it as well (edlaunch.exe seems to do the same thing). Something I want to address soon.
 
Just took a quick look at checking the latest release version on github, looks super easy so that should be no problem. I'll see about cooking up a new release this weekend.
 
It would be cool if third parties making tools for elite realized console players are getting no love from them for the most part. Eddb works a little bit but I've noticed it's not as accurate as it used to be. Edsm hasn't been able to properly sync to my profile since June. And now this one is for PC players only.

Thanks for making stuff for everyone else😔
 
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