Contract Targets, Creating Dummy Markers

[arq]

Setup ---

One persistent point of annoyance for me is the inability to see contract markers in flight view. They are visible in the map view and even add a marker to the navball, but missions such as 'perform seismic scan at XXX' often require me to land once near the target (after using the map and navball to get very close) and then a short hop to actually make it to the proper zone (which I usually overshoot because I don't know when I'm almost there). Trying to walk to a zone on EVA is even more difficult because there is no navball to give a bearing, so it involves stumbling around making rough guesses from the map.

For these reasons I would like a mod that allows targeted contract markers to be visible in the flight view. This would make landing in a zone much easier to do on the first try, and considerably easier for EVA kerbals. This could be done by spawning a part at the location so that it may be targeted, though ideally this would be possible to do partless-ly.

My questions ---

If someone gets the strong desire to make this mod, go ahead. Otherwise I'm going to start plugging away (but I have limited modding experience).

First off, does anyone know how to retrieve contract objective coordinates? Or, even better, the coordinates of an objective with "activate navigation" enabled? I really know nothing about accessing contracts through the API, as most of the wiki documentation and tutorials don't touch on it (most pre-dates contracts).

Secondly, does anyone know how to create a dummy target? Spawning and despawning a vessel (ie a cubic octagonal strut or a flag) at the desired location should be easy enough, but it would be cleaner if I could force the target marker to a specific location without a vessel to target, or setting the marker itself to be targeted using the normal system.

Any answers or references regarding the above information would be greatly appreciated. I don't expect I'll have the patience to finish this without a little guidance.

[cvod]

I think this might be what you're looking for.

[arq]

I think this might be what you're looking for.

Even better. Thanks! I hadn't seen this before. I found it hard to believe that nobody had done this yet...

I guess most of my questions should be answered by digging through that source code.