and instantaneously maybe make it able to have live video feed on lcds

can you make a version of this script that uses Whip's Image Converter so it can get display a image in better quality

@Into Yes unfortunately, since each camera has to "charge up" enough before casting. Doubling the number of cameras you have will halve the "charge" cost for each cast. Note that the total "charge" cost is: RESOLUTION * TARGET_DIST / (# of cameras).
Currently, only mods can remove the need for "charging".

It takes quite a while (minutes) to cast a single picture, is it normal?

very intresting proof of concept, I don't see an immediate military application but it stays an important breaktrough for futures ideas and scripts (forgive my bad english)

Sequel just dropped: https://psteamcommunity.yuanyoumao.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3155617021

looking forward to it

@kinngrimm It appears that the only info able to be retrieved via the ore detector's scripting interface is the distance to only the nearest voxel chunk of ore. Not even the type of ore can be determined, which is actually quite disappointing. There is, however, this mod that seems to allow camera-like raycasting of ores, which might actually make this possible. As the original mod has been deprecated, the derived mod I linked claims it can scan at 100km without charging, so that could be an excellent solution. Browsing the workshop brings up nothing like this exactly, so I'll test this out as soon as possible.

@rob That exception is most likely due to a missing block in setup. If you are certain you have all of the blocks correctly named, and the issue still persists after re-setting the script on the programmable block, then post a comment into the bug discussion .

it just says caught exception on execution of the script object reference not set to an instance to an object ples help

Could ore scanners be used to make visual representations of the complete field no matter its depth?
Background would be scarcity/depth and other mods where it may become important to have some knowledge about the form, size and exact positioning below once feet before starting to digg down.

@dRuPpl This script can only obtain distance information from the point of view of any number of cameras. To retrieve information about any/all grids in an active game session/server, you would have to use the entity list feature of the admin tools window (alt+F10). This however, would require you to be an administrator in the server/game. For this reason, I don't think it is possible for an in-game script to perform such a task, although other scripts do exist that use cameras for pinging grids at long distances in order to obtain limited information on them.

I hope you find a viable solution!

can this be used as radar to scan a server for all grids?

Just a thought but, woudn't this help in creating a script that just like the Camera LCD plugin from a few years ago enables LCDs to show what cameras can see in real time ?

Wow!

My voice in the video 💀

Feel free to leave me a script suggestion in the comments and I'll likely try to make it, with it being significantly more efficient and easy to use. Thanks for checking out my (rather user-unfriendly) script!

@Jacko Unfortunately there is no way to get unrestricted raycasting capacity for rendering very fast, though there may be a mod out there that allows for unhindered raycasting for cameras, in which case the script (last time I checked) will automatically accommodate for the increased rate of camera "max range" accumulated per tick. If such a mod exists, I don't think this script will work with it without some potential bugs.

The script tells you in the programmable block how many credits are required (alongside the current progress of the scan) for whatever your settings are for the current scan.

also, how are credits calculated, and is there a way to cheese them

how long, at 4000 resolution, with a 2 degree fov, from a few hundred kilometers away, would it take to scan the earth, and how many credits

ah yes, Iron Lung camera script. I wonder if anyone else is looking for scripts like these for recreating Iron Lung

what is the distance (in meters) to time for render? Could this possibly used to create a LIDAR image in space? With lack of light, if this could reliably generate an image at say, 10km with enough resolution to discern a spaceship from background clutter it would be very useful

this is very interessing stuff you did using raycasts.. trying to find a use for it thou lol, was thinking if its possible to display different colors on areas with certain Ores, then this might be a nice ore detector for asteroids.

@T-80U Using multiple cameras is entirely optional, but it reduces the wait time for rendering, so if you are only using one camera, it will take longer for the required "distance credits" to be accumulated.
This is especially the case for longer distances at higher resolutions, so using 1 camera wouldn't be optimal except in 20 resolution and 50 distance without waiting for ages.

Do i have to use multiple cameras? because im using 1 and the pb says its not ready and it just keeps counting. or am i just to impatient?

@Zachnad0.64bitOS Yes i understand SE has limits.
I remember i once made camera mod for my server that was basically copy of camera_block that has offset set to 25km. I used range finder to be like 26km from surface (camera was 1km near surface). Used "Whip's Image To LCD Converter" to make monospace font map on LCD from screenshot. (Not very smart but works).
https://psteamcommunity.yuanyoumao.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1829613906

@Rusted Droid unfortunately each camera can only generate some ~130m of available scanning range allowance per tick (1/60th of 1 second). If you are referring to scripts like jTurp's LiDAR Mapping Script, those no doubt use very low "resolutions", as their purpose is solely for getting the properties of an entity that it hits and raycasting as fast as possible, whereas this script is for generating visual information based on physical collisions. So sadly the main limitation to this script (or any that use cameras), is Space Engineers itself.

@Zachnad0.64bitOS
Well with zoom in you can make simple map of area. I was searching for something able to create maps like in Minecraft you hold map and move around.

I had some LiDAR mapping script that was able to scan 5-50km away so not think big problem to scan like 1/10 of planet area of interest.

@Rusted Droid currently it only scans it's maximum available FOV, which is 90 degrees. It'd be very easy for me to make that an option.

@Unruly I could certainly add an option for those with the mod to enable that would allow a fully variable and adjustable color scheme.

Thank you for your suggestions, these will be added (hopefully) in a couple days!

Would https://psteamcommunity.yuanyoumao.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2174915662
give you more colour resolution? It seems to specifically about expanding the available colour bit depth available to lcd's displaying pictures.

With this you can make 2D height map of area far away same as telescope can zoom in 1000km and make B/W photo.

Interesting.. Do this work for full 80° FOV (field of view) or can be set to scan like only 1/4 from center to simulate camera zoom?
No zoom fov 80°
Zoom in fov 12°

@Gouranga That shouldn't be too hard to implement with the way I've structured it, thanks for the suggestion!

This is amazing! It's a very broad program that can have many uses, it can greatly increase situational awareness with large ships, please don't stop updating it!!
It would be nice if we could have more than one camera per ship, "mapcam1" talks to "mapdisplays1", "mapcam2" talks to "mapdisplays2" and so on

this is as cool as that one in the link imo :)

@The_liminator indeed it is, I suspected I couldn't have been the first to do something like this. I ought to see how they did it.

i found something similar to this on the workshop made by Loues.S.Cat ( https://psteamcommunity.yuanyoumao.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=802373836 ),anyways pretty cool script.

This looks impressive, glad to see more use with the camera-to-lcd pluggin.

It's an outlandish idea, though a 3D heightmap using hologram projectors would be dope as ♥♥♥♥, obviously unrealistic though.

I can see some use with the water mod, maybe underground radar mapping. maybe if it can render blocks differently later on.

Good Work!!