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Dotlan tadar tracking tool

Table Of Contents

- Overview
- Usage
- Set up instructions

Description

The dotlan radar tracking tool will track your movement through the Eve universe and display it on a map in either your in-game browser (IGB) or out-of-game browser (OOGB). Dotlan radar is an excellent tool whenever you are moving through systems, whether solo PVP'ing, as a member of a roaming gang, or just doing logistics.

For gangs, each gang member typically tracks his or her own movement to promote individual situational awareness. It is also possible to allow someone else to track your position. For example, the FC could track the position of scouts and skirmishers. Or vice-versa: scouts and skirmishers can monitor the location of the main fleet body.

Here is a sample radar track:

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Systems you have visited are highlighted with bold outlines. The larger green oval shows your starting system, and the larger black oval shows you current position. You can therefore determine at a glance where you are and where you've been.

Usage

The radar tool requires the IGB to track your location. Once enabled, you can use either the IGB or an OOGB to display the tracking map. Simplistically, you can think of the dotlan radar tracking feature as a client-server system, where the IGB is the server (it knows your location) and the client (which displays your location) can be either the IGB or an OOGB. In the latter case, the tool is most useful when you have a second screen or second computer on which to display your location track.

More information than you require: To support OOGBs, a token is provided by the IGB for use by an OOGB to display your track. Tokens are 16-character alphanumeric strings that can be copy-and-pasted (as part of a URL) into your OOG browser or sent to another player. This means you can give your token to an FC or scout so they, too, can track your location. Since tokens can be re-issued at will with a quick click of a button, there is no danger of unwanted players tracking you by using old tokens. We will revisit tokens later in this article, but understanding them is not essential for basic use of the radar tool.

Set up instructions

Go to the radar site with your IGB and set your IGB to trust the site, per the following screenshot:

The radar tracking page should now be accessible (see the screenshot below). It will show "tracking inactive" in red text the middle of the page. To start a tracking session, click the "start tracking" button below the red text.

Tracking should now be active (see the screenshot below). There are two indicators that tracking is active. First, a wide red tab is displayed at the top of the page that says "Tracking Active." Second, the status shown in the middle of the page will change to green text saying "Tracking Active." Note also that the aforementioned token and URLs have been generated; we will discuss these shortly.

To display your radar track using the IGB, click on the "Start radar map" text located towards the top of the page (but below the banners).

To display your radar track using an OOGB, copy-and-paste the upper of the two URLs into your OOGB. Specifically, use the URL with the word "map" embedded in it, rather than the URL with the word "radar" embedded in it.

For the tech-minded, we revisit tokens here. Note that the token is embedded in each URL. Without the tokens, all radar tracking URLs are identical. This comes in handy when you want to display your radar track on a different computer and you have to type it in manually. In this situation, you can navigate to the radar web page and then just type in your token. This also means that giving another player the URL of your radar track is equivalent of giving out your token. Anyone with your token can see your position in-game. While you may want to give your token (or URL) to fleet mates, you may not want them to persist for very long in case they fall into the wrong hands. Which brings us to the final point in this article.

You can stop tracking at any time by hitting the "stop tracking" button. This will invalidate your token, so you cannot be tracked by anyone (including yourself). If you subsequently start tracking again, a new token is generated, re-instating your privacy.