Altitude indication on suits

[HRDiagram]

It would be nice to have an altitude indicator on suits.
Just like the ships, a number that indicates the relative altidude (i.e. with respect to the gound) would be lovely.
In addition, it would be great if the Artemis suit had also an additional altimeter, that tells the elevation from the reference geoid.

I believe this is a suggestion that comes up every now and again, but not frequently enough to elevate it to bingo material!

 

[Greybeard Seawolf]

It would be nice to have an altitude indicator on suits.
Just like the ships, a number that indicates the relative altidude (i.e. with respect to the gound) would be lovely.
In addition, it would be great if the Artemis suit had also an additional altimeter, that tells the elevation from the reference geoid.

I believe this is a suggestion that comes up every now and again, but not frequently enough to elevate it to bingo material!

The Low G Icy Geyser Jumping Community applauds this suggestion

 

[HRDiagram]

The Low G Icy Geyser Jumping Community applauds this suggestion

I wasn't even thinking of that, but this made me chuckle!
Absolutely! That would become a proper sport then, with serious record keeping!

 

[varonica]

I wasn't even thinking of that, but this made me chuckle!
Absolutely! That would become a proper sport then, with serious record keeping!

Can you get some idea by just looking at how far away your ship or SRV is?

 

[HRDiagram]

That's something for the geyser jumpers, or the low G flights, but being able to quantify is better than a guesstimate.

What I would be more interested in, however, is an the altimeter on the Artemis suit.
Knowing how deep a crater is, or how tall a mountain is while hiking, finding a correlation between plants and their chosen habitats (some cactoida or concha, for example, lurk at the bottom of the deepest places of planetary surfaces).

Something to expand the scope of the Artemis suit, really.

 

[varonica]

That's something for the geyser jumpers, or the low G flights, but being able to quantify is better than a guesstimate.

What I would be more interested in, however, is an the altimeter on the Artemis suit.
Knowing how deep a crater is, or how tall a mountain is while hiking, finding a correlation between plants and their chosen habitats (some cactoida or concha, for example, lurk at the bottom of the deepest places of planetary surfaces).

Something to expand the scope of the Artemis suit, really.

It's....difficult, what do you count as zero altitude? Theoretically we count it from sea level, there are areas on earth below sea level so they measure in the negative, but there is no water on these bodies, so you are going to have to decide on a point on the surface to count as zero. If you take the average height across the surface that not going to work for how high is a mountain. What I would suggest is that the player can set the point they are at as zero and measure above and below that, but an altimeter would be difficult to implement accurately. That way the player can just set zero and climb that mountain to see how high it is!

 

[HRDiagram]

It's....difficult, what do you count as zero altitude? Theoretically we count it from sea level, there are areas on earth below sea level so they measure in the negative, but there is no water on these bodies, so you are going to have to decide on a point on the surface to count as zero. If you take the average height across the surface that not going to work for how high is a mountain. What I would suggest is that the player can set the point they are at as zero and measure above and below that, but an altimeter would be difficult to implement accurately. That way the player can just set zero and climb that mountain to see how high it is!

What I do now (and I guess everyone else), is measure heights but just using the vertical thrusters of my ship, while keeping it horizontal.
With regards to an absolute altitude however, the problem would be indeed determining what is the reference geoid (on Earth we use sea level, but that's just a convenience, and is generally a barometric measurement).

This is now purely in the realm of speculation, but my guess is that the game has in fact a reference sphere for each planet, and a height map is applied to it.
That could be the starting point. Every planet has a radius clearly stated on its information sheet.
Moreover, when we approach a planet, we can see how the gravity pull changes with the distance to its centre: there has to be a (very basic) gravimetric gradient and therefore a reference point (the centre of the planet, I suppose for these calculations the planet is considered to have its mass all in its central point, rather than a three dimensional distribution): at any point, the game knows how far we are from it, because the gravitational pull (already shown on our HUD) changes with altitude. (Notwithstanding the fact that a change of a few meters will not affect the number shown on the gauge because it is well below its sensitivity - by design).

I am not saying it is not hard, but all things considered, I don't think it is such an outlandish suggestion, considering that most of this information is already available in game in some form or another.

 

[varonica]

This is now purely in the realm of speculation, but my guess is that the game has in fact a reference sphere for each planet, and a height map is applied to it.
That could be the starting point. Every planet has a radius clearly stated on its information sheet.

Well you see that's the problem, it has 2 height references and it switches between them sometimes depending on how high you are and sometimes what mode you are in. If you are in orbit it uses the orbital calculation, which is a perfect sphere calculated using the radius of the planet, below a certain height it switches to an actual calculation based on the height above the terrain. The radius gives you a perfect sphere, and jumping into SC from just above the surface you will often notice a dramatic change in indicated height, I have at times noticed my ship height above the surface to be negative, up to -20klms. It depends on the shape and size of the planet or moon, some of them are decidedly not round!

 

[GroG79]

We could do with some Augmented reality bits. Like a indication of peak height. Distance to bio structure, distance to ship or srv. Some coordinates etc

 

[HRDiagram]

Well you see that's the problem, it has 2 height references and it switches between them sometimes depending on how high you are and sometimes what mode you are in. If you are in orbit it uses the orbital calculation, which is a perfect sphere calculated using the radius of the planet, below a certain height it switches to an actual calculation based on the height above the terrain. The radius gives you a perfect sphere, and jumping into SC from just above the surface you will often notice a dramatic change in indicated height, I have at times noticed my ship height above the surface to be negative, up to -20klms. It depends on the shape and size of the planet or moon, some of them are decidedly not round!

Small moons look like tangerines indeed, but the game still sees them as spheres: my guess is that it would just take the game to show the difference between the reference sphere (gravimetric? purely geometric?) and the local altitude (as measured by the ship) and we would have the conventinal altitude.

That means that on small moons these altitude swings would be dramatic, but that's expected, they are potatoes, after all.

I would not underestimate the ability of the game to know our position and local conditions at any point: we already know our horizontal datum (latitude and longitude) even on pear shaped rocks (so our projection on a sphere is already being calculated), our vertical datum in terms of gravitational pull (rounded to the second decimal because who cares of 0.001g within the game, tbh) and even the level of radiation we are subject to! (The temperature varies when we are not directly exposed to the main star, i.e. when we walk in the shade). Our position is well identified.

Perhaps they tried to do it in the past (converting that vertical datum into an altimetric value) and it went bad, perhaps they didn't even think of it.

My hope is that we will see something along these lines, in the future.

 

[Treya]

I will have to check later to verify but there is a chance the game keeps reporting the height above ground via the status.json file when being out on foot (as it already does while in ship or SRV). If that is the case it would be rather easy to show on screen.

 

[varonica]

Small moons look like tangerines indeed, but the game still sees them as spheres: my guess is that it would just take the game to show the difference between the reference sphere (gravimetric? purely geometric?) and the local altitude (as measured by the ship) and we would have the conventinal altitude.

That means that on small moons these altitude swings would be dramatic, but that's expected, they are potatoes, after all.

Don't forget that most large planets aren't sphere's either, depending on the rotation speed they can be quite oblate.