â€å“if Youã¢â‚¬â„¢re a Normal Kid, Reading This Because You Think Itã¢â‚¬â„¢s Fiction, Great. Read on.ã¢â‚¬â

So here’s the story. I got tired of lining up my protractor on my screen every 20 seconds for orbit transfers so I put on my goggles and dove into the trash pit that is the internet to try and find some screen angle measuring software that wasn’t awful, actually worked and didn’t cost an arm and a leg. And I found this picayune gem. It’south a small application made past a small visitor and it’southward freeware. It’south become one of my go-to tools, specially in 0.17. This'll only exist useful until at that place'south a better way (such as a modern or better withal, in-game support for such things) and I'm well aware that simply the perfectionists will use it, simply hey rocket scientific discipline is all about perfection right? So there yah go. Promise it’south helpful folks! Relish.

Oh and 1 more than thing. This isn’t a addon/mod. It has no connection to KSP, also being somewhat useful imo. I didn’t create it, nor do I accept whatever credit. Any Copyrights etc. are held by Talon Designs LLP. Retrieve that’s everything.

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Screen Scales

Screen Scales is a screen measuring programme made past Talon Designs. It provides the user with a simple interface that aids the measuring of distances and angles on your screen. Installing it is pretty simple. Go here and click on the â€Å"Install Now†button in the Flash pane to the acme right. It requires Adobe AIR to run but that’ll exist installed outset if you don’t accept it, though chances are you practice cause it’southward bundled with most Adobe products these days. If AIR is installed a window will popular-up asking you to save or open information technology. From there it’s just like installing any other program.

The software is pretty cocky-explanatory but for those who might need a hand with it, here’southward a quick rundown. Feel gratis to skip the balance of this post if you’re savvy with this kinda thing.

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Upon opening, ii points are displayed on screen with a line betwixt them. Further points can exist added or removed by correct clicking one of the points and clicking Add or Remove indicate. Points can exist dragged around to display the distance between them and more points can be added to make up one's mind the angles between lines. To enable angle display right click and select Show Angles. From here it’s simple enough to place the points over the ships, planets, moons, or Dominicus and have the display read out the advisable bending(south) between them.

To shut the program, right click and select Close or but close the tab on your taskbar. There’southward no Get-go Carte folder so to open it yous need a link on your desktop from the install or you accept to dive into your Plan Files and detect the .exe file. By the same token, to uninstall information technology you need to practise and so from the Control Panel.

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Another fun things if you’re interested or are having trouble:

â€Å"Assist, I can’t even come across this thing!â€Â

You can modify the colour of the interface in the context carte. Turns out the default colour is black. When I start opened the thing I actually couldn’t detect the interface on my nighttime desktop background and to modify whatever options you need to right click the points. Oops. So I had to change my groundwork to a brighter i but to find the points and change the color to something with better contrast. Doesn’t exactly assist against a black map screen in-game either. I can’t find any .cfg files or annihilation to modify information technology so if y'all can’t find information technology, alter your groundwork like I did or stab around your desktop till you discover information technology. Ha-ha.

â€Å"Tips?â€Â

I’d recommend focusing your map display on the body you’ll be orbiting during the transfer so you lot don’t spend as much time chasing your targets with the points when you’re fourth dimension accelerating.

If you’re chasing a Phase Angle for a transfer, place one point on the origin body, a second on the body you’re orbiting and a 3rd with the Stage Bending on the destination body’s orbit path. Now time accelerate and spin the photographic camera to keep the first point stationary on the origin torso and look till the second point lines up with the destination body. Easy transfer windows indeed.

For goodness sake, make sure your camera is perpendicular to your focuses orbit when taking measurements (direct above or beneath for anything with 0 degrees inclination) or whatever angles yous have volition exist off by a sizable amount. This is simple enough for 0 degree inclinations because y'all can just motion the camera upward or downward until it stops, but could be more than difficult for, say, a polar orbit when you need to just guess and promise. Use your best judgement.

â€Å"Any swell tricks with the overlay?â€Â

Like near window based applications, you can set it to be Always on Top in the context menu. Useful if yous're time accelerating to find an appropriate Phase or Ejection Angle because when yous click dorsum on KSP, Screen Scales loses focus and won't appear until you lot re-focus it. Juggling windows is no fun. In a like vein, because this is a window based application, it CANNOT be overlaid on a full-screen application. I.eastward. You demand to run KSP in windowed mode to brand use of Screen Scales.

â€Å"I need a vertical or horizontal line! STAT!â€Â

1 of the options you lot can enable is Testify Deltas which brings up the horizontal and vertical components between any ii points. From there, you tin actually click on whatever of the numbers on any line and enter your ain values with the line changing to conform. Setting a lines’ horizontal component to ‘0’ volition make it a vertical line, and vice versa. Yous can exercise the aforementioned past just lining up the points pixel perfect but I remember this is snazzier! Y'all can employ the same system to alter things in some creative ways, but I won’t go into that.

â€Å"So information technology's, like, really accurate then?â€Â

The angles are authentic to within 1 pixel of error horizontally and vertically bold they're expressionless on the center of your target and plainly to 2 decimal places numerically because that's all it displays. You might lose a few degrees because of that. In that location's some fun things too when you put lines on top of each other: you often can't read the text, and information technology says at that place'south 90 degrees between the lines ... yeah. Lol. It'southward not infallible but it's flexible plenty for what nosotros need methinks.

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â€Å"Screen Scales†by Talon Designs LLP

http://www.talon-designs.net/screen_scales.htm

also available via

Softpedia (just be conscientious what â€Å"Download†button you click on this site as most of them are adverts)

http://www.softpedia.com/get/Desktop-Enhancements/Other-Desktop-Enhancements/Screen-Scales.shtml

Edited Oct 12, 2012 by sal_vager
[Tutorial] Making the title a little more descriptive, added "Angles"

carrillosillon.blogspot.com

Source: https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/19947-screen-scales-freeware-%C3%A3%C2%A2%C3%A2%E2%80%9A%C2%AC%C3%A2%E2%82%AC%C5%93-orbit-transfer-angles-made-a-little-easier/

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