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Surface Map

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Kerbal Space Agency edited this page Oct 10, 2018 · 10 revisions

When in the Orbital View you can select a body and be given the option to view its surface map if such data is available. Clicking this option will hide the Orbital View and load a Leaflet map you can interact with in various ways. You can return to the Orbital View by clicking the Close button beneath the Zoom & Fullscreen controls.

NOTE: The map is currently a bit finicky on load sometimes but can generally be fixed by selecting the Fullscreen option beneath the Zoom controls

Map Interaction

The map needs focus in order to be interacted with, so some times you may need to click anywhere on the map to make it the active control, after which you can do the following:

  • Zoom - using the mouse wheel will zoom the map in and out, focused on the current position of the cursor
  • Pan - clicking and holding the left or middle mouse button will let you drag the view around. There is no bounds checking or wrap-around tiling and you can pan well off the map, but zooming out will re-orient you quickly
  • Context Menu - right-clicking on the map will show a context menu with various options, depending on whether you clicked on the map itself, a marker, a path, etc. If additional explanation of these options is needed, you will find it in the Wiki section that it applies to

Clicking on paths and markers can open popups with additional details. Multiple popups can exist on the map at once and some can be closed individually with X markers in the upper-right corner. All popups will close upon clicking anywhere on the map surface, however clicking and dragging will not close popups.

Map Controls

In the upper-left corner you will find the Zoom control, which you can click to zoom in and out until the max/min zoom levels are reached, at which point the + or - will become disabled. Beneath the zoom control is the option to take the map into a fullscreen view, which you can exit out of with the Esc key. Further below is an X button that will close the map and return you to the Orbital View. You can also do this by clicking on the planet in the Operations Menu. Additional buttons may appear here and are detailed in their related Wiki areas.

In the lower-left you will find the Cursor Information control, which will tell you details about what lies beneath the current cursor position. You can click on the control to change the latitude and longitude readout between decimal degrees and degrees, minutes, seconds. Below the control is a scale bar for the current view.

In the upper-right corner you will find the Layers control, which you can use to show and hide various elements on the map, and is covered in detail below.

All map controls are hidden when the cursor is not over the map.

Layers Control

The Layers control will contain any elements that can be added or removed from the map. At the top will be a listing of different Base Layers, which can include aerial/satellite, terrain elevation, slope or biome depending on the data that is available for that body. This will determine the tiles that show for the surface.

Beneath the Base Layers will be optional layers that can include markers and paths. Any of following layers can be found on all bodies that have a surface:

  • Flags - Any flags that have been planted on the surface of the body will show up at their locations, and you can click on each of them to learn more about the flag and possibly jump to a mission report or image that provides additional context and information
  • Points of Interest - Locations on the surface that one might find interesting are marked with these pins. Clicking on them will reveal what makes this location worth mentioning
  • Anomalies - Strange signatures picked up by orbiting probes or surface exploration are marked with these pins. Clicking on them will reveal whatever additional information, if any, has been collected about this signature
  • Labels - The names of craters, rivers, lakes, cities, locations, etc will be marked with labels. Hovering over the label marker will show the name of the feature, clicking on it will center and zoom the map all the way in on that location
  • Custom Pins - This layer will include any pins added to the map through the URL Commands
  • Sun/Terminator - This layer will show the current position of the sun and the night/day areas of the body. It is updated once every second.

While this data is being loaded into the map the Layers control will remain expanded with a loading icon visible.

Measurement Control

Clicking on the ruler button in the upper-left of the map will allow you to measure distances across the surface of the currently loaded body. Click anywhere on the map to begin drawing a line that will read out distance as it is extended across the map. Clicking again once will place a waypoint and allow the path to move in a new direction. Double-clicking will end the path and display a list of all the points placed. You can then start to draw as many additional paths as you want. Clicking the ruler button will deactivate the measurement tool and erase the paths - they are not saved. If multiple paths are laid down, you can click once on the end measurement bubble if you want to re-open the popup containing a list of the waypoint coordinates.

NOTE The original plugin was giving results that were off roughly by a factor of 10. This has been corrected but not with much accuracy over long distances. If you are covering more than a few hundred kilometers we recommend using the waypoint coordinates output and copying them into our online tool for more accurate distance measurement (in the above screenshot, the final distance was off by 134.877km). We will look into a more accurate correction for a later update.

Surface Tracks

Flight Plotting

Aircraft in the Inactive Vessels section of the Operations Menu can be selected to show their flight history as a surface track on the map. If Kerbin is not yet loaded, then the orbital figure will update before the surface map is displayed, otherwise the map will be shown if it is not. You can add as many aircraft plots to the map as you wish by selecting them from the menu. They will not appear when viewing Vessel Details but will be re-loaded when the surface map is displayed again.

You can hover over the surface track for details of that point in the flight. Clicking on the line will create a static popup with the data from that point in the flight along with the following options:

Mission Information

This information appears in a dialog box and allows you to see where any mission waypoints are located, get a photo from the flight, details about the mission itself and a link to the mission report. If you are in fullscreen map mode, the popup will inform you that you need to exit fullscreen via the Esc key to see the dialog. To prevent you from selecting another path, the dialog will not allow other interactions on the page until it is closed.

Remove Track

You can also remove the path from the map, although this can also be done using the Layer Control. The only difference is removing the path will make it no longer selectable in the Layer Control and you will have to select it in the Operations Menu to bring it back into view. Removed paths will also not be re-added to the map when returning from a Vessel Details page.

Flight Data

Showing the flight data will redraw the path as a heat line with various colors representing various values. This is currently only set to show variations in elevation above sea level, but future plans will include the option to switch to velocity as well as display a key with value ranges so you can interpret the colors.

Timeline Playback

Above these three options are buttons that will allow you to traverse the mission timeline forwards or backwards. To do so in single-step increments use the < and > buttons. Clicking once on either the << or >> buttons will update the timeline and then continue to automatically update it in the given direction once every second. Click the same button to stop the update or click the other button to reverse the update. If the timeline is auto-updating you can still use the single-step buttons to work the opposite direction or speed up the current direction but this will not stop the auto-update. The popup will stay centered in the map to keep the mouse cursor over the buttons. When you reach the start or end of the mission the appropriate buttons will grey out and become unusable until the timeline is advanced in the opposite direction.

NOTE: because you can't (yet) zoom in very close the flight data is loaded in 15s intervals for faster loading of very long flights

URL Commands

You can add several commands to the end of the URL to perform actions to the surface map upon page load. Variables enclosed in <> are required whereas variables in [] are optional. These commands will only have an effect for bodies with a surface map available. All commands can be used together unless otherwise specified.

  • &loc=<lat>,<lng>,[popup text] - Adds a pin to the map at the given coordinates, with an optional popup. If only one pin is added, it will be focused on and the popup made visible after page load. If multiple pins are added, the map will zoom in as much as possible while still being able to see all the pins. Example showing three pins: http://www.kerbalspace.agency/Tracker/tracker.asp?body=Kerbin-System&loc=12.3658,-2.241587,1st pin&loc=-6.354,25,2nd pin goes <b>BOOM</b>&loc=55,105
  • &center=<lat>,<lng> - Will zoom in and center the view at this point upon loading the map. Example: http://www.kerbalspace.agency/Tracker/tracker.asp?body=Kerbin-System&center=0,-74
  • &layer=<layerNames> - Display the given layer(s) upon map load, using their names or in some cases shorthand. Example 1: http://www.kerbalspace.agency/Tracker/tracker.asp?body=Kerbin-System&layer=poi,label. The comma separator, or any separator, is also not required. Example 2: http://www.kerbalspace.agency/Tracker/tracker.asp?body=Kerbin-System&points of interest flaglabel will show three layers. Layer names will always include the least possible term, so flag or flags, anomaly or anomalies will all work. Custom pins layer will always show on load, so that is not included. This command works with any layer name you see appearing in the Layer control, not just the examples shown in the image above
  • &flt - the name of a flight database to load to display a surface track. Can be chained, currently only recognizes the actual database name
  • &map - all the previous commands will display the surface map upon page load but if you want to show the map without doing anything else to it, use this command without any variables. Example: http://www.kerbalspace.agency/Tracker/tracker.asp?body=Kerbin-System&map. This command is not meant to be used with any other commands as that would just be repetitive.
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