How the tracker works

The previous chapter tells you what each check is worth. This one tells you where the tracker gets its numbers: the altitude at which a check starts applying, how many seconds you get to act, and exactly how landing firmness is measured. Everything here happens in the app on your computer — nothing is guessed at on the server.

What the tracker records and sends

The tracker attaches to your simulator and reads the aircraft once a second: position, altitude, speeds, attitude, gear, flaps, spoilers, lights, transponder. That is the flight's black box — the thing you later read in the debrief.

Track

one point per second for the whole flight; parked or paused, one per 10 s

Events

phase changes, liftoff, touchdown, gear, flaps, lights, go-around, crash

Touchdowns

time, vertical speed, G, pitch, bank, speed, position, bounce flag

Touchdown frames

a ±10 s window around every touchdown at full sim rate (up to 60 per second)

Decision trace

when a phase changed, when a check armed and locked in, how the touchdown was resolved

Flight phases: how the tracker knows where you are

Checks switch on by phase, not by the clock. The phase is worked out from the aircraft's own state — the tracker needs no flight plan for this.

Taxi out

on the ground, ground speed above 1 kt, indicated below 40

Takeoff

on the ground, indicated 40 kt or more

Initial climb

wheels off the ground

Climb

3,000 ft above ground

Cruise

vertical speed settled: under 300 fpm either way

Initial approach

descending faster than 400 fpm

Approach

below 3,000 ft above ground, still airborne

Rollout

on the ground after touchdown; nothing is checked here

Taxi in

on the ground, ground speed down below 40 kt

Arrived

stopped with engines shut down

The tracker spots a go-around by itself: a steady climb of 500 fpm or more held for 3 seconds that actually gains at least 400 ft. Vertical speed alone is not enough — levelling off out of a descent always overshoots upwards, and without the height requirement that counted as a go-around. A single pitch-up twitch during the flare will not switch the phase either. Returning to the approach needs you back below 3,000 ft and descending steadily again. A touch-and-go is recognised the same way, straight off the rollout.

Three kinds of check

Checks work differently from one another, and that decides whether a couple of seconds' delay costs you anything.

Gate (a moment)

Asked once, at the moment it applies. The tracker watches a 20-second window from that moment and takes the best it saw. Flaps before the takeoff roll and landing lights at liftoff and by 1,500 ft work this way.

State (with a grace period)

Watched continuously, but only recorded once the problem has persisted for a set number of seconds. A single frame while you flip a switch costs nothing.

Limit (immediate)

Triggers on any single frame: overspeed, stall, crash, pitch on takeoff. No grace period here — the event is a one-off by nature.

How long you get before a problem becomes a remark:

The altitudes and speeds at which checks start applying

Almost every check has a threshold outside which it simply does not exist. That is deliberate: the approach phase begins at 3,000 ft, and asking for landing configuration there would fail nearly everyone.

How landing firmness is measured

The instant vertical speed in the frame where the sim first says "on ground" is no good: the gear has already compressed and absorbed the descent, so every landing reads as a greaser. Vertical speed is therefore taken from the first available of four sources:

1. 1The simulator's own figureMSFS reports touchdown vertical speed directly, and that is the most accurate source there is. X-Plane has no equivalent.
2. 2The frames just before contactAn average over the frames where the aircraft is still AIRBORNE, covering the quarter-second before touchdown. At least three frames are needed. At 60 Hz the last of them sits 16 milliseconds from contact — the gear has not touched yet.
3. 3Sink rate from radio altitudeHow fast height was falling over the previous half-second. An honest method, but close to the ground radio altitude bottoms out and the figure comes out too high — which is why it is third rather than first.
4. 4Vertical speed of the last frameThe last resort, when there was no history to work with at all.

The G figure is the PEAK across half a second around the touchdown, not the value at the moment of contact — the gear's impact lands a fraction of a second after the wheels do. The window is deliberately narrow: any wider and it would swallow the nose gear coming down or a bump on the rollout, spoiling the score for nothing.

A touchdown is an "air to ground" transition, but only if the aircraft spent at least 0.4 seconds airborne beforehand. Anything shorter is sensor chatter at liftoff, not a landing. A second contact within 5 seconds is flagged as a bounce. Where there are several touchdowns, the WORST one is scored.

The flare is worked out like this: the tracker takes the frame whose radio altitude is closest to 50 ft before touchdown and compares its vertical speed with the vertical speed at touchdown. The difference, as a percentage, is how much of the descent you arrested. Alongside it you get the pitch change between those same two points.

Time acceleration and repositioning

Accelerating time is fine — it is how long legs get flown. Your logged time, though, is SIMULATOR time: an hour of real time at 4× is four hours of flight. Otherwise the multiplier would be a discount, because crew, maintenance reserve and airframe wear are charged by the hour while revenue comes from distance — the same flight would earn the same and cost four times less.

Moving the aircraft across the map, on the other hand, is not allowed — that is the "No repositioning the aircraft" check, weight 3. This means instant relocation: slew mode in MSFS, or dragging the aircraft on the map in X-Plane. In MSFS the tracker reads the mode directly and allows a second for a hotkey brushed by accident. X-Plane has no such mode at all, so repositioning is caught geometrically — by a jump in position that ground speed cannot account for.

When the tracker considers the runway vacated

This drives the taxi-in checks and the prompt to file your flight. It used to run off ground speed dropping below 40 kt — but that happens while you are still ON the runway, where dousing lights and cleaning up would be wrong. The tracker now builds the runway axis from your actual direction of travel on the rollout and watches you leave it. Turning around and back-tracking along the runway does not count as vacating. The five-minute backstop is there in case the aircraft was shut down on the runway, which would otherwise leave the flight hanging forever.

Diverting to an alternate

Being near the planned airport used to be a condition for arrival: land anywhere else and the tracker never offered to file the flight, so the recording was lost. Now the arrival is the stop after landing itself — wherever you put the aircraft down. Where you actually landed is worked out by the server from the last track point: it takes the nearest airport within 30 km. If that is not the planned one, the flight counts as a diversion.

Where you landed

nearest airport to the stop, within 30 km; determined by the server from the track, not by the tracker

Costs

stay actual: fuel as burned, navigation charges over the leg you really flew

Decision accepted

you landed at the alternate from your SimBrief plan, went around, or the planned airport was below minima

The aircraft

stays where it landed; when you book the next flight the system offers a ferry and shows its price

The other numbers on the flight card

The tracker does not score these, but they are what reaches your report and the airline's books.

Flight time

SIMULATOR time, not wall clock: time acceleration counts in full, pausing does not count at all

Distance

from the scheduled airport pair, not from the actual track

Fuel

first frame with a non-zero quantity minus the last one

Night takeoff and landing

from the position and time of liftoff and of the last touchdown

Weather

departure at the start of recording, arrival at the moment of filing

Go-arounds

counted for the flight

"Could not be measured"

Some checks depend on variables a given aircraft may not have: a glider has no spoilers, and complex add-ons often leave the standard transponder untouched and report their own value instead. If a variable stayed silent all flight, the check becomes "not applicable" — it drops out of both the failures and the denominator, so your score does not suffer for it.

Aircraft type: a note, not a penalty

On MSFS the tracker reports the aircraft name from the simulator once per session. If that name clearly belongs to a different family than the booking (booked an A320, flew a 737), your debrief gets a note. It changes nothing: score, XP, money, passengers and wear are still based on the booked type. We only tell families apart and stay silent whenever there is any doubt — A320 versus A320neo is not a note, and neither is a livery name we cannot read. X-Plane does not report the aircraft name at all, so the note never appears there.

Common questions