Live operations
8The live map
Today's task drawn on a map with every pilot live on top of it: what the shapes and colors mean, what a marker tells you, and what the popup, the pilot list and the task info sheet contain.
What the tab needs before it shows anything#
The Live Tracking tab needs four things at once: a competition selected, a signed in session, an internet connection, and a task published for today by the organizer. If any of them is missing you get a message instead of a map.
The map only runs while you are looking at it. Leaving the tab disconnects the live feed, and coming back reconnects and reloads. That is deliberate: it keeps the phone of somebody who is scanning all day from burning its battery on a map nobody is watching.
The header and the two badges#
The title reads Live Tracking followed by the task name. Next to it, a counter shows how many pilots are live, and how many retrieve drivers, when any driver is sharing their position.
The app reconnects by itself after a drop, backing off from one second up to twenty between attempts, so a tunnel or a lift does not need you to do anything. If the badge stays on Reconnecting for more than a minute, the phone's connection is the problem.
Caution
The live feed is not a real time picture. Positions arrive as pilots' phones send them, and the competition can be configured to publish them with a deliberate delay. Never treat a position as proof of where somebody is right now, and never treat a stale marker as proof that somebody has stopped.
How the task is drawn#
When the task loads, the map fits itself to it once, so you start with the whole task on screen. After that the camera is yours: pan, pinch and rotate freely, and the compass in the top right resets the rotation.
The ring colors follow the pilot app, so a briefing screenshot and this map read the same way:
| Color | Waypoint |
|---|---|
| Green | Take off |
| Blue | Start, the SSS |
| Amber | End of speed section, the ESS |
| Red | Goal |
| Gray | An ordinary turnpoint |
Note
If the organizer republishes the task, the drawing is replaced and the map fits itself to the new shape once. Trails and pilot positions are not disturbed.
Tip
Turn the phone sideways on the map. Landscape shortens the header and the tab strip, and on Android it hides the system bars, which is a useful amount of extra task on screen.
Pilot markers and their labels#
Every live pilot is a colored circle. Next to it, the label carries the name on the first line and the altitude on the second, with the height above ground in square brackets when the terrain elevation is known, for example 1842 m [612 m].
A pilot with an open alert gets a marker suffix, SOS or HELP, and their label is drawn on top of the others so it is never hidden by a crowd.
Note
Zoomed out below the whole task, the ordinary labels are hidden to keep the map readable. The circles stay. Zoom in and the names come back.
Retrieve drivers who are sharing their position appear on the same map as their own kind of marker, counted separately in the header. That is how the ops room sees the cars and the pilots in one picture.
Tapping a pilot#
Tapping a marker opens a small card anchored to it, with the pilot's photo, their name and their state, and four values:
Two buttons finish the card. Show trail draws where that pilot has come from, and turns into Hide trail; several trails can be shown at once, and the selected pilot's is highlighted. Details opens the full sheet below.
Tapping the map anywhere else clears the selection and closes the card.
The pilot details sheet#
Details opens a sheet with everything the app knows about that pilot right now.
Note
Values marked with ≈ are estimated by this app from the live track and the task route, and the sheet says so: ≈ estimated from the live track and the task route. They are good enough to answer "who is close to goal", and they are not scoring.
If a pilot drops off the live feed while the sheet is open, it keeps showing their last known state rather than closing on you.
The pilot list#
The button in the bottom left corner carries the pilot count, and a red dot whenever anyone on the map has an unresolved SOS or need help status. Tapping it opens a searchable list of everybody live.
The order is the order you care about: SOS first, then need help, then everybody still airborne, then those on the ground, alphabetically within each group. Each row gives altitude, ground speed and task progress, with a colored state pill on the right.
Tapping a name selects that pilot and centers the map on them, which is the fastest way to find one glider among sixty.
Tip
The search matches the display name. On a big field, type the first three letters rather than scrolling.
The task info sheet#
The information button in the header opens the task sheet, which is the briefing in one screen.
When the task is stopped#
If the organizer stops the task, a red Task stopped banner pins itself to the top of the map and to the top of the Live Ops feed, together with whatever message they sent with it.
Important
A stopped task usually means weather or an incident, and it is normally followed by a burst of landing and retrieve messages. Move to Live Ops and work the feed.