Determine facing of a turtle

Hello everyone,

I was tinkering with a turtle and decided to try a multiple turtle quarry (which I have possibly seen in an old video of Eloraam) and I was wondering about how you could determine the facing of a turtle as efficiently as possible. I thought about moving one way, see what the x- or z-axis would do, but that would be inefficient. Is there another way?

you could use a compass peripheral which is added by a few peripheral mods. otherwise you'll just have to use the movement technique.

You can also use placement preference (of torches for example), which works even if you don't have any gps, but it's less efficient.

The most efficient way to know where your turtles are facing is to remember it (and tell them when you place them. Placement of turtles by other turtles follow deterministic rules you can easily figure out, so you can for example always place turles facing north, or tell them their facing by redstone(analog) signal)