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After updating the radar function 2 weeks ago I had some thoughts about expanding that feature even more. Who really needs the radar map ingame, where your game is fully packed with chats, overview, fleet windows and your modules. The majority of pilots don’t have that space available.
- You want to keep an eye on your movements and positions out-of-game?
- You want to track your movements for a later operation analysis?
- You want to provide your fleet/squad position to the the fleet commander to keep multiple squads in sync or just provide juicy details to your spy master?
- You want to visualize the route of your roaming gang for your after-action-report?
Then the new radar tracking feature is what you want!
After adding DOTLAN EveMaps to your trusted page you can start the tracking functionality. A private/public token will be generated and the page will automatically send your position to DOTLAN EveMaps so you can keep an eye on your position and moves out of game. In addition to your current position your moves will be stored as well. Those moves can shown as list or directly visualized on the maps or the universe map depending on the duration of your roaming.
You only have to keep your browser open/minimized while javascript/ajax will do the rest in the background. You can even continue to surf around. The tracking will continue anywhere on my page.
I know this tracking tool will be useful for both sides: Fleet commanders to keep better track of his fleet and squads and the spy’s for better way to update their masters.
Start tracking today
This will open … a lot of ugly things 🙂
Could these public private keys be shared with say a fleet commander? Allowing him to track everyone in his fleet?
Well … theoretically … but right now the tech behind it doesn’t allow to track multiple person at once. That’s something for the far future, cause I would need to revamp the database and polling/pushing system and so on.
The backend/tech has to grow with the features and the userbase behind it. I suppose someday there’ll be something interesting coming. Someday.
Btw. you only see the public key, private key is only used in the tracking cookie, so no one who knows the public token can update your position in the database and distract your tracking.
Ah ok, was an interesting thought when I herd the idea of the radar. But this is a great improvement too.
I am sure more then just those changes you listed you would have to create a whole fleet structure and that can get very complicated especially if you start listening to people.
THANKS!
As with everything, people always want more 🙂 I take what you give and like it 🙂
The first step into something awesome and spectacular, great job Wollari
why don’t made something for save the url and every time u use the radar u use the same url? or something like a registration where u see every time the last link for that char? without copy and paste every time 😛
Plain and simple: to keep your position, information and movements private.
a) If I would allow that your character is beeing tracking be everyone who knows your Token key it would be bad. This way people could monitor your movements everything you start it.
b) When you would only use one single tracking token, you would have a never ending travel route which would look quite insane and you could not follow your moves on the map, cause on your route you would have visited your system some days ago already.
==> BUT
Maybe one day, I’ll start with user login/registratio functions and I could enable a lot of things that are bind to your ingame character. Like the routes in your past, etc. There would be a lot of things possible. … time will tell … or the debian way: it’s done when it’s done
I like the tracking tool. It will help me keep a current map open out-of-game while scouting, which is cool. I can see this being a real boon to spies in a fleet to report their position.
Suggestion: On the map you are using a thicker border on the system bubbles to highlight the track. Can you make these borders a bit thicker yet so they stand out a bit more from the normal border? I find I have to look closely to be sure. The thicker line between systems is good – easy to spot with a quick glance.
Suggestion 2: Include a Radar/Tracking link in the top link bar for out-of-game browsers so we can get to the page to enter the tracking token easily.
Question: Some times there is an addtional oval around a system – what does that indicate? Right now I’m in Everyshore/Halle, having come from Essence/Mies (via Bereye). There is a white oval around Halle, which seems to show my current system (it moves with me), but there is also a additional green oval around Mies (which is rectangular with a thicker green border). What does that indicate? If I click on Mies, I see the Essence map with my track there, and there is still another green oval around Mies (which is now a oval with a thicker green border). What does the extra oval around Mies tell me?
Question 2: How long is the tracking data kept?
Dotlan Evemaps has to be the most useful Eve tool out there. Kudos for building it.
To suggestion 1:
I just increased the border size for highlighted systems from 2 to 2.5. I’ve to admit that highsec systems (green) are hard to see while lowsec (red) and nullsec (black) have are easier to see.
To suggestion 2:
Right now it’s under Universe > Radar. The problem with the top nav is that the space is a bit limited. Maybe it’s time for overhaul of the design after 2+ years.
Answer 1:
The green ring is the system where you started your tracking: Begin -> Current Position (End)
Answer 2:
Right now I’ve no idea when I’ll delete them, but it looks like i’ve to tweak some database things to keep the speed up and running.
Definitely a great tool.
Do the movements get logged locally? From the “moar data” department…would like to track/parse some of my movements over time.
KB
Yes the tracks are saved in my database, if you keep the tokens you’ll be able to see them still in the future. I don’t plan to delete them right now.
Maybe in the future when i’m done with adding user services, you can link your account with your ingame char and then you can review your old routes. Future stuff … far far far away.
Right now I’ve to take a look on performance again. Cause many parallel connections for tracking, following etc are using all available keepalive slots during high traffic times.
Something is not working right w/ the radar. I have the site trusted, i get the green check on the bottom right corner of the IGB, but the site status remains as “Site not trusted”. I’ve closed the IGB, and even restarted EVE, but it still shows as not trusted. Any thoughts?
I switched to ngingx as frontend and didn’t noticed that the custom eve http header aren’t passing the reverse proxy. I’ll update as soon as I found the solution.
Just switched back to the previous apache setup without the reverse proxy. Radar will work again. I’ve to find out the correct nginx configuration.
Awesome, thanks for the quick response. Your web apps rock btw =)
With some help of the people from ngnix i could fix the setup. Underscores in the HTTP Headers HTTP_EVE_TRUSTED are usually not allowed.
Keep getting the error “IGB Header data invalid (1)” have the site as trusted.
When you start your tracking I’ll do a check with CCP’s API Server about some simple header things: If the API Servers aren’t reachable or your EVE Header is invalid doesn’t match, you’re getting rejected.
Best quess: wait a bit and try again later.