Predicting Biome Encounters in Orbit

[Admiral Naismith]

It seems to me that it would be useful to be able to predict what biomes you will encounter and when in a stable orbit.

For example, I like to collect orbital science by sitting in a polar orbit and waiting for all the biome encounters, but this gets tedious, especially when waiting for small biomes like the Mun canyons, and too much timewarp makes it easy to miss those (even when using a mod that stops timewarp on a new biome - the encounter is too small and gets skipped). If there was some system to map out future biome changes on a timeline (or on the orbit) that would help a lot, and would be even better if there was a way to search for when a specific biome encounter will occur.

I think that this should be possible, though I'm not sure how much work it would take to implement. I doubt we would get this in stock anytime soon, but does anyone know if there is a mod like this? I tried searching for a mod that does this, but either I'm using the wrong terms, or it just doesn't exist.

[kerbiloid]

 

[Admiral Naismith]

Oh I didn't realize SCANsat would do that... is it actually possible to predict hundreds of orbits ahead with it? I tried it years ago but got a lot of lag so haven't used it since.

[BadOaks]

Scansat only predicts one or two orbits I think, but that should be all you need to see what biomes are coming up so you don't have be constantly spamming experiments. The Trajectories mod, besides its main functionality, can predict your position relative to the surface in map view an arbitrary number of orbits ahead, which you could combine with Scansat's overlay feature to see when you would over-fly specific biomes and adjust your orbital period accordingly.

Also worth noting is the Kerbnet feature included in stock, which is sort of a Scansat-lite. You can use it to see what biomes are coming up and put down waypoints near areas of interest.

[DeadJohn]

+1 for the SCANsat and Kerbnet comments above.

I'd just like to add that you can show biomes from the orbital map with an alt-f12 "cheat". I've occasionally used that as a time-saving convenience; I rationalize it by saying that the crew or probe would be searching for new biomes.