@Razzafrag or
@Alec Turner
I was gonna just wait for the official release to figure out if this can be done... but since you're here.... (Ship canyon tracks, not like space that doesn't have lat/long)
The Exobiology tools are aware of how far I've traveled from last sample collected whether I'm in a SRV 'Fly'ving' or flying my ship. So there does seem to be some mechanism tracking ship position in air above ground, although the journal entry only occurs 'on touchdown'.
I see that the SRV tracks have a certain circumference that they have to be in to start a race... so I'm guessing you set the radius to 25/50 or so from the lat/long and it provides you with a 50/100 meter starting area (repeated for the additional checkpoints).... Is that a flat circumference or is it spherical? For instance could I 'touch-down' at every turn of a Canyon track for ships or SLF's (creating a lat/long touchdown point in the journal for each turn) and set a radius of 500/1000m, would that be spherical and could that act as a gateway when a ship passes through. (and possibly 2 radius's, with the larger second one being 'out of track limits' or 'cutting corners' for '5 second penalty lost')?
Yes you are correct. In the same folder as your journals look for the file status.json ... when you are on a planet this has the current surface coords in it. This file is updated approx every 1-2 seconds if you move a certain minimum distance, or if you change some of your ship / SRV settings that alters its flags. See the description here:
https://elite-journal.readthedocs.io/en/latest/Status File/
Each of the points in the Time Trial route are simply a latitude and longitude, and a user configurable proximity around that point. So in essence it creates a flat circle on the ground centered on the coordinate provided. It isnt spherical, just circular. Imagine a cylinder standing on its end, so even if you flew over it at 500 metres it would still register as being in that "circle". I intend to add some altitude checking / limitations for when i attempt canyon ship flying (and as you say would use a much larger proximity/radius around the waypoint for ships). When EDCoPilot detects you are within the circle, it marks that waypoint complete and sets the target to the next waypoint. There is a Time Trial definition file i have created that you can use to author your own tracks, and i will be publishing an example for users to create, test and publish their own courses, after i put the feature live.
When i get to ship races through canyons, i will be adding a max altitude to the waypoint, so you have to be under that to count as having hit the waypoint. This will help keep the player actually in the canyon and not just flying over the top of it. It would also be good to enforce some low-level skimming over flatter surfaces, eg. keep under 100 metres, maybe give a couple of warnings if you are under, and then disqualify on the third consecutive time they are over the minimum altitude (gives a user time to adjust their error)
I havent put any "out of bounds" functionality in, but am considering it, to tell the player they missed the waypoint, or are going the wrong way
I'm considering making those boundaries as "rectangles" so you can bound a track on all sides, or put "guardrails" to the sides of waypoints. Rectangles are also super-easy to check if your current coord falls within the four limits of the rectangle, so less compute needed.
