RTF Target Seek

[Jon]

***Updated Dec-12-2010***

When using the FTL Jump or Warp drive in RTF ships it is kind of hard to target your destination.
This is a small pop-up that will aid you in doing just that.

Installation.
**NOTE**
You need the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package installed.

It can be gotten HERE.

Sorry about that.

UnZip and move to your Orbiter Modules/Plugin folder.

To use the pop-up you will have to activate RTFSeek via the Orbiter Modules Tab during start-up of Orbiter.

To access the Pop-up while in Orbiter press Ctrl F4 and select RTF Auto Point from the menu.

RTF Auto Point allows you to target and automatically point at any solar system body, ship or station. It will also target UMMUs that may have wandered to far from the ship.

How to use.
It's pretty simple really. (refer to the attached picture).
You have two target selection drop-down menus.
Body  Allows you to target anything defined as a "body" in Orbiter. This includes Planets, Moons, Comets and a couple of other objects.
Ship or Station Allows you to target anything defined as a "vessel" in Orbiter. This includes spaceships, space stations, satellites and UMMUs.

On the right are five data areas.
T:  is the currently selected target.
D:  is the distance in meters to the target.
X:  represents how far to the left or right your target is.
Y:  represents how far above or below your target is.
Z:  represents how well you are pointed at it. It is very important that this number is positive after the auto point has taken place. A negative number means you are pointed away from it.

To start the Auto Target click on Start
To stop the Auto Targeting click on Stop.

As soon as you click Start you will start to rotate in an attempt to find the target. The ship will seem to wobble about and may even pass by the target a number of times as it zeros in. The more mass your ship has the more pronounced the wobble will be and the longer it will take to zero in.

The wobble will get smaller and smaller as it zeros in and when it looks like the X and Y are a close to 0 or matching you can click on Stop to shut down the auto targeting system.

I suggest that you practice using the F9 labels and targeting closer planets that show up in the HUD.

Two new features
RCS% drop-down
The default is 10% of the RCS thrust.
You can use the drop-down on the right to select any value between 10% and 90% inclusive in increments of 10%.
I thought it would be useful with high mass ships or ones with less powerful RCS but in my opinion it has limited if any value. The best bet is to keep it at the default 10%.

MV
Clicking MV lets you match velocities with the target. It is nothing fancy and kind of a cheat but I like it during docking and attaching to stations or other ships.  It may also be useful to get into an orbit after dropping out of warp or FTL. I don't know if it will help because I suck as a space pilot.


That's about it.

Things to note

The Auto Target uses 10% of the available RCS thrust so ships with little RCS thrust or that are very massive will take a while to zero in on the target. To make this faster you could manually control the RCS and use the X, Y and Z to get pointed close to the target and then do the Auto Target or try changing the RCS% value. (good luck with that   )

Remember that nothing is stationary and when using the RTF built in FTL Jump or Warp you are traveling in a straight line so course corrections will be needed during your flight. While in Warp you can either drop out and do another Auto Target or you can do it while in Warp.

It is not recommended that you do the Auto Target while using time acceleration. The results can be interesting to say the least.  

Let me know what you think and how it works.

[Seahawk72s]

Maybe someway of indicating which fuction button is active..?

To get out of MV mode is it a case of pressing either the "Start" or "Stop" targeting buttons..?

[festivefire]

When I use mv mode. The way it seems to work for me is that it is an instintanious thing, and if you want to match velocitys with an accelerating vessel you will have to click mv. Over and over till the vessel isn,t accelerating anymore, I.e. it shuts of its engines.

[festivefire]

You could probably set missles from the raider or the lok battlestar to home on a target using the auto seek. Haven't tried yet thouugh. Just thought of it now.

[Jon]

Maybe someway of indicating which fuction button is active..?

To get out of MV mode is it a case of pressing either the "Start" or "Stop" targeting buttons..?

MV is instant and works only one time. It only matches the liner velocities and not  rotational. If you target is rotating MV will not match the rotation.

If the target is under acceleration it will not try to match the constantly changing velocities of the target.

I could take a look at changing it to continually match velocities until you tell it to stop. I looked into matching rotational velocities but couldn't find any functions that would capture the target ship rotational velocity. 

[Jon]

When I use mv mode. The way it seems to work for me is that it is an instintanious thing, and if you want to match velocitys with an accelerating vessel you will have to click mv. Over and over till the vessel isn,t accelerating anymore, I.e. it shuts of its engines.

That's right.
It only matches the velocities for one time cycle. If the target is under acceleration it will not try to match the constantly changing velocities of the target. I could take a look at changing it to continually match velocities until you tell it to stop.

[Jon]

You could probably set missles from the raider or the lok battlestar to home on a target using the auto seek. Haven't tried yet thouugh. Just thought of it now.

The prototype seek was built into the ship. It would be better if it were built in because the current pop-up only applies to the focused ship. It would take a complete redesign to create what you have in mind.

[Seahawk72s]

It only matches the velocities for one time cycle.

Thanks, I'm good..

[Jon]

Well I have changed it to continually match velocities. It's an interesting change. The focus ship will pretty much match the target ship even though it's mains are not running.

I've attached it for anyone that wants to check it out.

When you click MV it will match vel until you click it again.
You will not be able to override the action. You can have full thrust and you will not move because the MV overrides your attempts at changing velocity.

If it looks good I'll add  something that shows it is on.

You can backup your old one or just download it from here again.

 

[festivefire]

a continuous mv will be usefull for buety shots in orbiter, so you can fire the engines and not have to worry about losing your orbit.

[Jon]

Here is a slightly different one.
It has both the MV and a new MC which is Match Continually.
I also add a box under the Start and the MC to tell you if they are on or off. It's lame but until I can figure out how to change the butto style it will have to do. The stock VC++ is pretty limited in regards to changing the button styles in real-time. 

[Captain Rodolphus]

Where were you guy's in the beta test phase?  Lol ... Anyway I was going to argue against the MC on the basis of if you match a "fleeing" ships velocity and your ship had inferior engines then you could never catch it.  But the way it works out is you MC and then if you apply the mains you will gain on the ship because O perceives your actual thrust as 0.  Which turns out to be very cool.  You can catch any ship in O.  So that's quashed. Or is it?  Simple math question.  Can you have two velocities?  No, so no matter how much you try to accelerate you are only going to go as fast as your target accelerates so you will never catch it.  I have yet to try that out, but I will in a bit.  As far as having a ship (can only have one with the pop up at a time.  If it where in ship based as the Stinger you could set a few of them up to target, MV or MC a lead ship and have a "loose" fleet) follow another at speed or faster this is a great tool.

You could probably set missles from the raider or the lok battlestar to home on a target using the auto seek.

No you couldn't.  And here's the reasons why at the moment.  Well the gimble problems of the AA missile don't apply because of the target seek,  the main issues at the moment are you cannot select any RTF ordinance as a ship therefore you can't use seek with it.  Also you couldn't set seek before the missile was launched because it would point the ship at it.  If you set it after it's launched its not going to zero  in on the target in an arc it's just going to orientate just like the ship so you are going to have ordinance coming right back at you in some cases.  And as Jon said it would be a major retool.  Also the missiles that exploded in '06 don't seem to want to explode in '10.  And since you can't blow anything up in O anyway, pointing at the target and firing is the best your going to get at the moment.  And trust me we've been trying to blow stuff up in O for years.  But you have given me an idea.  Senior Officers to Blowing stuff up.

[Jon]

Where were you guy's in the beta test phase?  Lol ...

I was thinking the same thing.

[computerex]

Hey Jon. Thanks for the awesome utility. May I know how you calculate the deviation from the target? (x, y, z).

[gamma7897]

Heureka all my jumping problems solved. Well for those ships wich use the new ftl layout. I dont know squat about ths mod how it works so could someone please help , please make a target seek wich show the distance to target in the same way as the Battlestars ftl jump to distance shows.