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.
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.
A slow re-read of a refused key read as unavailable until it landed; it
now stays refused. The first-read wait is 10 s, for a margin under the
browser's 15 s. A failed Conflicts read no longer stops Local's refresh,
which the server reads on its own. Tests cover GDELT's wait, the refused
key and a caller abort past the timeout, and fail rather than hang; the
docs say what a section serves meanwhile.
A country's first World News API read, or Liveuamap's, could take up to
20 s while the browser waits 15, so the panel showed the browser's own
"signal timed out". A read with nothing to serve yet is now waited for
at most 12 s, as GDELT's already was: past that the section answers
unavailable while the read goes on, and the next refresh is served from
it. A client timeout reads "News feed unavailable".
Local ranked its reports by severity first. A country's own news now
carries no severity, so in a conflict area GDELT's reports (severity 1
and up) could crowd every one of its stories out of the 40 listed.
Local is now newest first; severity still shows by colour.
Also: readTitle reads Conflicts headlines only, the economy category's
comment and the attribution popover name World News API's category,
and KNOWN-ISSUES names Core's ids for World News API's categories.
The bundled rules read fighting and crises; in everyday headlines their
words mislead ("Kazakhstan Advances in Global Digital Rankings" read as
ground fighting). A country's own stories in Local now keep World News
API's category (politics, business, else other) and carry no severity.
Fighting in the area still shows through the Conflicts reports placed
there.
An export is given up on (never published, unreadable, or failing three
times) only while GDELT itself answers: its list of exports read, or
another export of the same round read. An outage that answers 404, or junk,
for everything now gives up on nothing, and a failing file earns one strike
a round rather than three within the first seconds' rounds.
Docs: News's share token is 9; territories without a country code are named
as themselves too; the changelog fragment credits one pull request. Unused
exports dropped from the rules and stale scaffolding from the ledger tests.
A host that serves news only from its own news server mounts the proxy with
`builtIn: false`: without GEV_NEWS_ORIGIN the routes then answer "not
configured", as before Core read any news itself.
DATA_SOURCES, the README's layer and key tables, CURRENT-STATE and the
changelog describe the News layer as it now is: a configured news server,
or Core's own reading of GDELT (no key), Liveuamap (optional) and World
News API (Local, free plan backlink credited). .env.example gives the
download sizes and the daily read budget; KNOWN-ISSUES lists what machine
coding gets wrong and which disputed areas are named as themselves.
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.
Local reads the area at the view centre (`/outline?at=`) and asks the feed
for its reports (`at`): the area is outlined faintly on the globe and named
at the top of the section ("News from Kazakhstan"; within 500 km at sea).
A disputed area is named as itself. A read that a newer look replaced, or
one left behind by a switch to Conflicts, is dropped, and a server without
the area route is asked once.
A section read from a key the server lacks says which key it needs
(503 `no_key`), that the key was refused (`key_rejected`) or that its
daily allowance is spent (`key_quota`); the other section keeps reading.
Liveuamap and World News API join the key registry.
Cards name the service a report came through ("via GDELT Project"), and
Liveuamap and Natural Earth are credited once their data shows. Economy is
a category of its own. Disputed-area labels are smaller and show the name
only; outlines keep up to 300 parts.
A feed card shows its event's picture whatever the number of sources, so a
lone Telegram post opening with a video gets its preview; the globe's
picture cards still need two. An event picture may carry its post's clip (an
HTTPS MP4 or WebM file): the card marks it with a play sign, and opened, it
plays with controls and sound, loading nothing before. An expired link drops
the clip.
Conflicts is the hotspots' significant news, on the map whenever the layer is
on. Local lists every report within 500 km of the view centre below 3,000 km,
and the map shows those instead while it is chosen. The section replaces the
"Include minor news" and "Show event cards" toggles: picture cards are always
on, and Local is what reads minor news. The Conflicts feed reads the same
whichever section is shown.
The panel's window label becomes a choice of the server's window and each
shorter one. The feed and map filter to it locally; the hotspot counts are
read again for it (/api/news/hotspots?hours=N, now on the allowlist). A
server names the longest window it serves as maxWindowHours.
Outlines move to geometry version 4: the news server now follows Natural
Earth's own border vertices instead of a coarse grid, and the new version is a
new cache entry. A severity a reviewer set (severityBy 'label') is kept as such
instead of reading as the rules'.
A host may serve fewer hours than the day. The hotspots answer may name its window
(`windowHours`, a whole number from 1 to 24); the layer keeps reports, the
feed, In view and the chosen event inside it, and the panel says
"Last 12 h" or "Last 24 h" accordingly. Without a window named, or with one
out of range, the layer keeps the full day as before.
The news layer brought its own ColorBrewer yellow, orange and red, solid
coloured marker discs, a coloured edge on every card, an amber developing
ring and pink disputed areas, which read as foreign next to GEV's cyan glass.
Severity now uses colours GEV already has (dim and primary text, the military
layers' amber, the Cockpit's emergency red), drawn as GEV's dark disc with a
severity rim and icon; attestation is still the rim's form. Cards lose the
coloured edge and name significant and major events in a mono badge;
attestation chips follow the status badge; outlines stay in the accent family
with disputed areas dotted in the primary text colour.
From review of the news layer:
- An event's other sides older than 24 hours (or undated) are no longer
listed, and a report dated more than 15 minutes ahead is outside the
window, as in the regional brief.
- Picture cards are one canvas per event in a bounded cache (24), repainted
in place when the age changes, with each card's picture dropped with it;
the age in the key had made a new canvas every minute.
- The feed list drops reports that leave the window and is capped at 600.
- "In view" is filtered from the reports the layer already holds; it reads
the feed only with minor news on, once per refresh, never per pan.
- Infinite scroll restarts after a filter change or a failed read.
- The two filter selects stack, so "Significant and above" is not cut off.
- The timeout tests hold the event loop until aborted, so they pass on
Node 22 as well.
`./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.
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