Introduction

A Radar device is a single block structure used to detect other objects in space or the orbited planet.

General principle

A radar emits pulse of energy into space and detect the echo wave from objects. Depending on echo direction and delay from the initial ping, a radar can determine those objects position in space.

When orbiting a planet, a radar can also detect objects in that planet, from space.

When flying or landed on a planet, you can detect objects in space and on that planet.

Objects can hide themselves by absorbing the ping energy instead of reflecting it, this is typically done with a Warp field isolation block.

Usage

A radar needs power and a computer to operate. For power, any EU or RF power source is accepted. With ComputerCraft, an Advanced computer is required. With OpenComputer's, any computer will work.

As you increase scan radius, scan duration will take longer, and energy requirement will increase exponentially.

There's 2 pre-loaded scripts for you to use:

• 'ping' does a single sweep in the provided range

ping 500

• 'scan' continuously sweeps 500m around and shows results in a GUI. You need to reboot to exit.

scan

Universal coordinates

Radar can get echo from other dimensions, hence it's using universal coordinates which are defined relative to hyperspace. In other words, for a given echo, universal coordinates are always the same whatever your current dimension is.
The X/Z coordinates are taken from hyperspace.
The Y coordinate gives you the dimension type: 0 to 255 is for planet, 256 to 511 is for space, and 512 to 767 is for hyperspace.

History

As of 1.3.x, ship cores and radars can be detected up to 10k radius.