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.
getNearestPositions makes one bounded pass over the shown points, keeps the
nearest few in a short sorted list and reads latitude and longitude for
those alone, leaving out dense extras, asked-for ids and classes such as
debris. A caller that wants the nearest handful no longer builds and sorts
an entry for every satellite.
getById returns a loaded installation with its drawn position, as getNearby
does, without selecting it; findByPick resolves a scene pick (a named
marker's installationId or a site entity) the way the layer's own click
selection reads it. Both return null while the layer is off.
In the orbital view a double-click on a mapped ground point went on to
Cesium's own double-click, which tracks the picked entity and so ended the
view. The Cockpit's double-click routing now takes it in orbit: it keeps or
starts the focus on that point (a point beyond the reach is left unfocused
but still not tracked). A double-click anywhere else, one a tool owns, and
every one outside orbit go on to Cesium's as before, and stopping the
Cockpit still hands Cesium's handler back.
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.
The Orbital view section said the zoom stops at 8x. It now covers the
16x to 128x steps for satellites with a confirmed sensor swath, capped
from live altitude, the mouse wheel, the SENSOR button, the to-scale
swath strip and readout (approximate off nadir), the imagery pre-load
ahead of the ground track, the TLE age on the identifier line, and that
the sensor values cite operator and agency pages per platform.
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.
The orbital view reads a satellite's owner country, operator, COSPAR id,
TLE epoch and whether its class can be ridden. #1558 now carries only
what the class toggles read, so this brings the rest back here, where it
is first used: the classes.js helpers and the UCS pack's operator and
owner fields.
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.
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.
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.
Split the Cockpit camera update into the aircraft's own front half and a
shared placeCamera that reads the eye's forward and up offsets, pitch and
ground clearance from a profile. The aircraft profile carries the existing
constants, so the aircraft view is unchanged; other subjects can now supply
their own eye.
At 900px and narrower the Location and Visual Presets wings shrink to
--dock-side-compact (4.25rem), open or closed, but their text labels kept
their full width. Between 721px and 900px, where the desktop dock is still
shown, LOCATION and VISUAL PRESETS spilled over the idle voice control, and
the LOCATION label took taps on the left half of the mic button. The label
clip that existed was scoped to 620px, which the phone shell (720px) always
covers, so it never applied to a visible dock.
In that band the labels are now font-size 0 and lose their chevrons, so
each wing shows only its icon. The label text is unchanged, so the toggles'
"Expand/Collapse ..." aria-label and title, which panelChrome builds from
it, keep the full name. The Cyber HUD layout sets a wider
--dock-side-compact that fits its labels, so it keeps them. The
unreachable 620px clip is removed.
Found in GEV launch-readiness QA (HAL-728).
Denis Groshev