Is there a visual representation of spheres of influence?

[SignalCorps]

In the Android (and others) app Simple Rockets, you can see the size of the sphere of influence for each body as a shaded circle. Like the moon will have a circle that once you enter, you will be subject to the moon's gravity, and if you zoom further out, you can see the Earth's SOI (which of course envelopes the moon) and then if you zoom into different planets you can see how far out the SOI extends for each of those.

When plotting courses in KSP (for example) to the Mun, I can see the icons for where I encounter and escape it, but I really don't have any idea of how big the SOI is, so it makes it a little harder to plan. Also in simple rockets, it shows how gravity affects your flight path. Like you are flying right on a path to the moon, but then the line curves to show what happens when you enter the SOI as you close in. In KSP I can see the flight path to the Mun, but no representation of what path my ship will take once I get there. Is there a way to see this, or am I not understanding what the game is already showing me?

Edited January 22, 2015 by SignalCorps

[Starhawk]

In answer to your title question, no there is no visual representation of spheres of influence.

If you are playing in career mode, you will need to upgrade the tracking station, I believe, in order to see patched conics in the map. This allows you to focus on your target body (Mun for instance) in the map and see what your trajectory around that body will be.

Hope this helps.

[AlexinTokyo]

There's no way to see the SoI boundaries in the stock game. There may be a mod which displays them, but I've not heard of one.

KSP does display your trajectory after crossing the SoI, but there are a couple of settings that affect how.

First is the conic patch limit, which controls how many future paths are displayed. Increasing this will show your path across more SoI boundaries.

The second is the conic patch mode. This determines how the future trajectories are displayed.

There is a tutorial explaining the different modes here.

In the current game, the default mode is mode 3 (draws relative to the body you are orbiting now), switching automatically to mode 0 (draws relative to each body's current position) when you focus the map view on a body whose SoI you are going to enter.

Unfortunately, there's no way to change these settings in game in stock.

You can, however, edit the settings.cfg - the settings are PATCHED_CONIC_LIMIT and PATCHED_CONIC_MODE (I think, not at my KSP computer right now).

Alternatively the PreciseNode mod allows you to change both settings in game from the map view, in addition to giving you very nice (I consider essential) maneuver editing options.

[SignalCorps]

Thanks guys