The orbital Context card is gone and the Contact card stays hidden in orbit
again. Live Signals page 1 had nothing in orbit but TRACK ACQUIRED, because
orbit feeds no Contacts snapshot; it now lists what is around the
satellite, built the way the aircraft rows are, five rows with stable keys
rebuilt once a second. Rows already shown keep their places while they
still qualify, so a site passing under a low orbit is not pulled from under
the pointer.
Site rows come from the Mapped Installations layer (getNearby, asked only
as far as the reach extends) and focus their site, or release it on the
focused site's row, which reads as the subject does. A site the layer drops
during its frequent reloads stays listed for 10 s, since sites do not move.
With the layer off nothing is listed and a SITES STANDBY row says why.
Satellite rows come from the satellites layer's bounded nearest query,
measured from the satellite itself, and ride the satellite; RETURN goes
back to the one before, skipping one that has left the catalogue. While
the camera hops to a new satellite only TRACK ACQUIRED and RETURN show, so
nothing is measured from the old position. An arrow pressed while a focus
eases back takes the arrows' own clock. Site and satellite rows name their
own actions.
In the satellite orbital view a single click on a mapped ground point (a
ground point of a layer that is on, such as a Mapped Installations site, a
fire or a local data pack feature) keeps the camera on it. Each frame the
look is aimed from the satellite's position to the point's Earth-fixed
position in the track-up nadir frame the arrows tilt, so the point stays
at the centre as the satellite moves. The swing onto the point, or between
points, uses the arrows' easing on a slower clock and then holds the point
exactly; reduced motion cuts.
A click elsewhere, FOCUS on the focused point, NADIR, Home or 0 ends the
focus and the view eases back to nadir; an arrow ends it and tilts on from
where the view is. The focus also ends, easing back, when the point leaves
the ±45° reach or the satellite's horizon, when its layer is turned off or
its record is dropped, and with the view. While focused the readout gives
the single off-nadir angle to the point (OFF-NADIR 23.4°), names it in a
polite live region, and the swath reads approximate as for a tilt. Clicks
still reach Cesium's own handler and never untrack the satellite; a click
a tool owns is ignored.
Under the readout, IN REACH lists the mapped points facing the satellite
that are within the reach or in the frame, nearest to nadir first and at
most 12, rebuilt once a second. A row opens the point's position, source
and OpenStreetMap tags (or its layer's properties); FOCUS focuses it,
switches to it, or ends the focus held on it, and is unavailable for a
point in frame but beyond the reach.
An imaging satellite with a known sensor can now zoom past 8x, up to 128x,
as far as the view stays at least as wide as the sensor's narrowest
standard swath at its live altitude; only swaths confirmed on a cited page
open those steps. The top step follows the altitude and window shape and
steps back when it falls below the zoom shown.
The view draws the sensor's swath to scale along the ground track with a
SENSOR SWATH readout (approximate off nadir), and a SENSOR button zooms to
exactly that width when it lies in range at nadir. From 16x the imagery
tiles the view will need 5 to 20 s ahead along the ground track are
pre-loaded at the matching level. The mouse wheel steps the zoom one notch
at a time, and the identity line shows how old the TLE is. The sensor
figures come from a new bundled pack of 46 Earth-observation platforms,
each value cited to its operator or agency, with its own data credit.
With a satellite tracked and no aircraft tracked, Cockpit can ride the
satellite. Entry needs only the Satellites layer; debris can be tracked but
not entered, and voice stays aircraft-only. Double-clicking the tracked
satellite or the entry buttons (reading ORBIT) enter it.
The camera sits on the satellite's per-frame SGP4 position and looks
straight down, turned to the ground track (north-up for a satellite with
none). The optical zoom steps 1x to 8x with a focus pull, the arrows tilt
the view up to 45 degrees off nadir, and Home or 0 returns to nadir. Off
nadir the tilt reads its total angle first and the swath readout becomes an
approximation marked with ≈. While in orbit the map leases flat Esri
imagery, the cloud pass stays off and the view opens in the optical style.
The orbital HUD names the satellite with its owner's flag (from the
flag-icons package, loaded per country) or an organisation badge, its
operator, class, NORAD and COSPAR ids and TLE epoch with the element lines
on request, altitude, orbital speed and the sub-satellite point. CURRENTLY
OVER names the country and its first-level division, or the sea, and from
8x the most prominent populated place nearby, looked up offline from the
bundled Natural Earth packs (populated places are a new pack). The
satellites layer hides the ridden satellite's own marks, dims the other
orbit rings and ignores scene clicks and Escape while held. Exit restores
the camera's field of view and the satellite's follow camera.
C no longer enters or leaves Cockpit, bridge or orbit: it is left to the
app-wide CCTV shortcut, and Escape or the exit button leave first person.
Only catalog and the tracked satellite were saved for the layer, so a class
chip lasted until the next reload and no share link carried it. The choice
is now the satellites option `classes`: one letter per class shown
(`sitpd` by default, `0` for none), with Starlink left to `catalog`, and
the layer takes the letters back through setParams. A partial request
(`{debris: false}`) hides only what it names.
The satellites layer now sorts every object into Stations, Imaging,
Telecom, Starlink, Probes or Debris, each with a chip and a live count on
the layer row. Stations and Imaging show by default; the Starlink chip is
the former DENSE catalog switch. Hidden classes keep their points, so a
toggle needs no reload, and they leave the detection overlay and the voice
position lists.
A class comes, strongest evidence first, from CelesTrak SATCAT (object type
and status, served by a new /api/celestrak-satcat/<group> proxy route and
cached for a day), the bundled UCS Satellite Database pack (operator, owner
country and purpose), name patterns for later launches, and the CelesTrak
group. The core catalog also reads the resource, weather, planet, sar and
science groups. Payloads with no evidence of life launched 20 or more years
ago are filed as debris. The UCS pack, its build script and its data credit
are added.
The ship bridge rules were appended to cockpit.css, taking it to 2705
lines; they move unchanged to cockpitBridge.css, imported right after it so
the cascade is the same. cockpitBridge.css and cockpitRadar.css join the
format scope and the styles package.
With no aircraft tracked, Cockpit can ride the selected AIS vessel. Entry
needs only Live AIS Vessels and a selected vessel; C, double-click and the
entry buttons (reading BRIDGE with a ship icon) enter it, while voice stays
aircraft-only.
The eye sits on the AIS position at a representative bridge height for the
vessel's type family, looks along true heading and moves along course over
ground. The last fix is dead-reckoned for up to 180 s between the layer's
refreshes, and on rivers and lakes the waterline is read from the rendered
surface around the ship rather than the geoid.
The bridge HUD shows speed and course over ground, a straight heading
tape, window mullions, the AIS destination as a reported voyage and a
heading-up radar of nearby ships (3 to 24 NM). The arrow keys look around,
Home or 0 looks ahead again. The vessel layer hides the ridden ship's
sprite and card, ignores scene clicks while held, and returns the camera
to the vessel's map view on exit.
Wildlife Sightings (#1591) published share token 9, so News takes the
next free token, 00. The token tests read the ledger before both where
they were written against it, and the README counts both layers.
With GEV_NEWS_ORIGIN unset, Core answers the News layer's routes itself.
Conflicts need no key: the last 24 h of GDELT 2.0 event exports, physical
violence only (CAMEO 18-20), one report per story (copies of one agency
story merged), placed where GDELT put it, a town the article's own words
name winning over a bare country, and titled by the article's page title
from the GKG export of the same quarter hour (the newest 3 h), else by its
address words. GDELT's actor coding is never shown. Exports are read up to
the newest GDELT lists; one that cannot be read is given up on without
holding the rest back, and an outage of two hours answers 502 rather than
an empty feed. With LIVEUAMAP_API_KEY, Liveuamap's mapped items join them.
Local reads World News API by the source country at the view centre
(WORLDNEWSAPI_KEY, at most WORLDNEWSAPI_DAILY_READS a day), with the
Conflicts reports placed inside the area. Disputed areas (11 from Natural
Earth, bundled) and territories without a country code are named as
themselves and read from no country's outlets; a country's outline leaves
them out.
Categories, relevance and severity come from shared rules; keyed answers
are cached and served while they refresh, and no key or address is logged.
`./server/providers/news` (node) with its own package boundary, so a host composing its own local providers can serve /api/news from GEV_NEWS_ORIGIN as Core's standalone server does.
Events ▸ News draws the last 24 hours of reports from curated hotspots
(Ukraine–Russia, Israel–Gaza–Lebanon, Iran–Hormuz, Yemen–Red Sea, Sudan,
Sahel) and developing situations elsewhere, from any server that answers the
`/api/news` read routes.
- Globe: one marker per merged event, clamped to the ground and culled at the
horizon; one beacon per hotspot when zoomed out and a pulsing beacon for a
developing situation; hotspot outlines with disputed areas dotted and
labelled by who administers and who claims them; picture cards for at most
ten major or fast-growing events with two or more sources, never
overlapping, switchable off.
- Panel: hotspot chips, a severity filter (significant and above by default),
categories, minor news off by default, and a scrolling list of event cards
with picture, headline, place, sources, age and the sides that reported it.
"In view" lists what is near the map below 3,000 km once the camera
settles. A card flies the globe to its event and opens it with a link to
the publisher. Reduced motion stops the pulse and the flights.
- Core serves no news itself: the local server proxies GEV_NEWS_ORIGIN when it
is set, and answers 503 unavailable otherwise, so the layer reads "not
configured" once instead of retrying.
- Share token 9 (enabled-only); voice stays off for this layer.
The pure half of a news layer: validated records for a news server's
`/api/news/hotspots|feed|outline` contract, a presentation model and canvas
markers and picture cards, and a fetch client.
- Colour carries severity only (0 no physical event, 1 minor, 2 significant,
3 major), never a side; the category is the icon, the rim is attestation
(confirmed, a claim, one side's own press), size grows with sources and
markers fade with age.
- Cards say "Reported by {side} sources" and mark official channels; a
machine-read English headline is labelled as such.
- `createNewsSource` reads same-origin routes with a 15 s timeout, a 4 MiB cap
and record-by-record validation; `NEWS_API_PATHS` and `newsQueryAllowed`
let a host proxy exactly what the client sends. A 503 marked unavailable
means "not configured": no retries.
- Exported as `./layers/news/source`, with its own package boundary.
Regional News showed "REGIONAL NEWS UNAVAILABLE" above populated rows and a
static "RECENT" footer over months-old articles. The status banner kept
`display: grid` when hidden, every non-empty answer carried the unavailable
text, and nothing limited or sorted articles by age.
- One window (regionalNewsWindow.js, 24 h): the local proxy asks Google News
with `when:1d` and GDELT for 24 h, drops undated, older or future-dated
articles, sorts newest first, and reports newsWindowHours/newsFetchedAt.
- The Cockpit labels four states: fresh (banner hidden, "LAST 24 H"),
kept after a failed refresh ("CACHED · REFRESH FAILED"), no news in the
window, and unavailable. The footer lives in the news state, so it
survives page and tab changes, and the client drops out-of-window rows.
- `.cockpit-brief-status[hidden]` now hides the banner.
Recent community wildlife observations, as a new Wildlife group in the
layer panel.
- Server: keyless iNaturalist proxy (v2 observations with only the
projected fields; undocumented v1 UTFGrid density tiles, decoded on the
server) sharing one paced queue (burst 4, ~1/s, 60/min, 8,000/day budget,
up to four in flight), in-memory caches and upstream-only cooldowns;
Acartia Salish Sea marine-mammal feed rounded to 0.01 degrees with
comments dropped.
- Layer: grid counts drawn as a soft view-ranked density glow; real sampled
sightings as taxon badges at their true positions with ambient photo
thumbnails and labels; obscured records stay privacy cells; a clicked
sighting stays pinned through camera moves and refreshes.
- Anchored photo card per selection with the single iNaturalist link;
attribution in the layer row and the Data attribution popover.
- Filters (CONFIRMED, taxa presets) round-trip in share links with token 9.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <[email protected]>
Cockpit entry no longer needs Contacts or both flight feeds: a civilian
aircraft needs Live Flights, a military one Military Flights. Contacts and
every other layer can be turned on or off before or during a session, and
turning off the ridden layer ends it. A Context mode change in flight still
blocks entry.
When the other air feed is off, Live Signals and the Contact card say
FLIGHTS FEED OFF or MILITARY FEED OFF · PARTIAL PICTURE instead of
presenting a partial picture as complete. Voice refuses entry with
subject-layer-off rather than contacts-inactive, and its tool description
says Contacts is not required.
Double-clicking the followed aircraft enters Cockpit through the same gate.
The Cockpit takes the scene's double-click before Cesium's stock handler,
which would otherwise untrack a followed aircraft whose model is a
primitive. The entry also shows under the Intel HUD readout, sharing the
Contacts button's face. A test keeps the classes the Cockpit adds to the
body from matching another element's rule.
From the whole-globe view the camera could end up facing empty space with
only stars on screen. Cesium's free look (Shift+drag) turns the camera in
place, and from 18,000 km the planet's edge is only about 15 degrees from
nadir, so a few drags turned it out of frame. The rolled pose was then
saved into the share hash, so a reload or shared link opened on stars too.
- Allow free look only below 1,000 km. Orbit, tilt and zoom are unchanged.
- Measure how much of the frame shows the planet's surface by casting a
32x18 grid of view rays at the WGS84 ellipsoid. While the scope mask is
on (the default) only the rays inside its keyhole count, since the mask
hides or dims the rest of the frame.
- When a camera move ends above 1,000 km with no ray on the surface, turn
straight down at the same position and heading. Limb glow and a sliver
up to about one grid cell thick can count as out of view. The end of a
move comes from Cesium's moveEnd and from a check of its own that
samples the pose every 250 ms after moveStart and acts once it has held
for half a second: at some of these poses the camera drifts by a
rounding error every frame, so Cesium never sees it stop and never
raises moveEnd. The zoom-out guard from #1522 keeps wheel and pinch
zoom-outs in view; this catches the other ways a move can end looking
away, such as a saved or shared view that did, or a
drag that Cesium turns into an in-place look below its 7,500 km
trackball height (one that starts on the stars, or a tilt drag with the
screen centre off the planet). Views with more surface, tracked or
locked cameras and the 2D and Columbus modes are left alone.
- Voice tilt and in-place turns of a free 3D globe camera above 1,000 km
stop when about a tenth of the frame still shows the planet (or about as
much as it showed when it started, two grid cells of sampling noise
allowed), never below about 1% of the visible frame; a view that already
shows less only keeps or gains what it has. A turn that cannot go half a
degree further without crossing that limit is refused with a reason
instead of reported as done, and a turn it accepts turns at least that
half degree. A turn that keeps or gains surface is not refused, even
after the window has been resized, except that near the limit, where the
planet's edge crosses the sample grid, sampling wobble can occasionally
refuse one (most often above about 15,000 km and on phone or ultrawide
frames); nothing then turns away from the planet. A turn that starts
where the last voice turn left the camera keeps that turn's limit, or a
higher one if the planet now fills more, so repeating the request does
not take any more; once anything else has moved or turned the camera, a
turn is measured from what is on screen. A request made while the camera
is tracked is judged by the pose voice's release of the follow camera
will leave, before that release, so a refused turn keeps the tracking.
The frame measure and the look-step limit live in src/globeInView.js,
shared by the viewer and the voice camera verbs.
Denis Groshev