Competition tracking

This section explains how you can use OGN to track a gliding competition live.

Prerequisites

To successfully track a competition, you should have

  1. good OGN coverage of the competition area and
  2. preferably an OGN-station at the airfield of the competition.

You can check the OGN-coverage of your competition area using the OGN range analysis.

Tracking tools

Following tools can be used for online tracking:

  1. live.glidernet.org
  2. glideandseek.com
  3. glidertracker.org
  4. KTrax
  5. ogn.cloud
  6. Onglide
  7. PureTrack.io

The following sections explain how to use these tools to create a competition tracking.


glideandseek.com

Glide and Seek automatically shows up to two tasks simultaneously from SoaringSpot with no need to create .tsk files or have access to file hosting.

This is just a brief guide, more details including how to create a contest participants filter can be found in the Glide and Seek Integration Guide
If you have any questions or want help getting setup to display competition tracking on Glide and Seek please contact us at support@glideandseek.com

All that's required is to either pass the tasks into the url as query parameters or paste them into the tasks section of the menu.

glideandseek-two-tasks.jpg

Task query parameters

Use a combination of either taskOneUrl or taskTwoUrl to create a link that will automatically show the tasks on the map.

Example: https://glideandseek.com/?taskOneUrl=https://www.soaringspot.com/en_gb/11th-fai-junior-world-gliding-championships-szeged-2019/tasks/club/task-5-on-2019-08-02&taskTwoUrl=https://www.soaringspot.com/en_gb/11th-fai-junior-world-gliding-championships-szeged-2019/tasks/standard/task-5-on-2019-08-02

Task Menu

While in glideandseek.com, open the task menu in the sidebar and paste up to two SoaringSpot task urls into the boxes. They will then automatically appear on the map.

glideandseek-menu.png

Task integration with soarscore.com

soarscore.com automatically lists all tasks on SoaringSpot and provides direct links to show them on glideandseek.com

glideandseek-soarscore.jpg

glidertracker.org

For competition tracking it is essential to integrate the task as an overlay onto the 'normal' tracking page of glidertracker.org. To do so, you need a task file acessible online via http.

Creation of the task tile

To create a task file, you can use various tools. I recommend www.prosoar.de

  1. Go to ProSoar.de
  2. Klick on 'Wegpunkte' and upload the turn point file of the competition you want to track
  3. Click on 'Aufgabe'
  4. Click on 'Neu / Laden' to create a new task and select the type of task
  5. By clicking on the map select the turn points of the task one after another. Double clicking on the last turn point creates a finish turn point.
  6. By clicking on the turn point in the left hand menu, you can modify the type of turn point, size of turn point, etc.
  7. When you are done creating your task, click on 'Speichern/Export' to download your task. You need to download the task in XCsoar format (.tsk)
  8. Save the .tsk file to you hard disk

Make the .tsk file accessible online

Next step is to make the .tsk file accessible online. You can use various ways to achieve this

  1. Make the task file accessible via the web page of the competition
  2. Paste the content of the .tsk file to https://pastebin.com/ (This will be used for this tutorial)
  3. Upload your task to GitHub
  4. Upload the .tsk file to your personal http server
  5. Upload the .tsk file to your DropBox account and share it
  6. etc..

Create the task overlay

Next you need to tell the glider tracker from where to load the task file, which you have previously created and published online

  1. Go to http://www.glidertracker.org/
  2. Add the http-location of your task file to the url
  3. In pastebin, click on raw view and copy the url of the paste (e.g. https://pastebin.com/raw/Znv0zBGL)
  4. Add the task-url to the glider tracker url: http://www.glidertracker.org/#tsk=https://pastebin.com/raw/Znv0zBGL
  5. You should now see the task as an overlay on the map

Create a filter for the contest participants

To only show the participants of the contest on the map overlay, you can create a filter.

  1. Create a .csv file, which contains on the contest participants. This file must have a following format:
ID,CALL,CN,TYPE
06DDDDDD,D-2767,1F,LS1f
06DDDDD1,N-2200,33,H301
06DDDDD2,D-4344,44,Discus

DDDDDD is the Flarm-ID/OGN Tracker Id of the contest participant, The prefix (e.g. 06 depends on the type of aircraft and FLARM settings)

  1. Make the file accessible via url. Please refer to the 'Make the .tsk file accessible online' section, e.g. https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dspreitz/tasks/master/SGP_filter
  2. Tell glider tracker the url of the filter file by adding &lst=
  3. http://www.glidertracker.org/#tsk=https://pastebin.com/raw/Znv0zBGL&lst=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dspreitz/tasks/master/SGP_filter

ogn.cloud

ogn.cloud offers live-scoring for Racing Tasks and AAT tasks. It uses the same filter and task input files as glidertracker.org
More info can be found on https://github.com/Turbo87/ogn-web-viewer


live.glidernet.org

to be written ….


Onglide

Onglide feature fetches the pilot list and task from Soaring Spot and provides speeds and distance display for both Speed and Assigned Area Tasks. Start and Finish times are automatically captured for each pilot. A track history along with vital statistics (height, height AGL, climb rates, distances, glide angles, etc) are available for each pilot.

Multiple classes are supported and will be automatically downloaded from Soaring Spot.

If gliders are not registered in the DDB then it is possible to manually associate them with the competition. If gliders are registered with the correct contest number then the Flarm ID will automatically be associated when the glider launches.

Code is in the OGN repository and you can run it on your own server. However, If you would like to have it hosted for you please send soaring spot API keys to me at ku.oc.raceulbelttil|ngo-assilem#ku.oc.raceulbelttil|ngo-assilem and I can set a virtual server up for you.


KTrax

KTrax supports display of the tasks for the different classes in JSON format.

  1. Convert your tasks to JSON (using this tool: cupToOGN-Task) and upload it to a web server.
  2. Use the CGI parameter task_url in KTrax to point to the tasks.
  3. Participants can be filtered with the wlist CGI parameter in KTrax.

Please see Options -> Help on KTrax for more information!


Silent Wings Studio (SWS)

This tracking solution uses commercial software: Silent Wings Studio.
See SWiface and SWiface-PHP git repositories for code base of OGN to Silent Wings Studio interface.

Silent Wings Studio is used in most of the Sailplane Grand Prix competitions.

Look on an example Youtube video showing the capabilities of this tool.


PureTrack.io

No configuration is needed by contest organisers, other than checking contest regos used in SoaringSpot match OGN. To view contest tasks:

  1. Click the menu top left, choose 'contests'.
  2. Choose your contest. They are loaded from SoaringSpot automatically.
  3. A contest bar appears at the bottom of the page. The latest tasks are automatically loaded, and are cached for 20 minutes.
  4. Click the filters button to filter out non-competitors.

PureTrack uses contest regos to filter to competitors only. So the contest rego on SoaringSpot needs to match what's in the OGN database. It can also be corrected in the PureTrack.io aircraft database.


Comparision of Tracking Tools

This sections compares the different tracking tools and their features.

glideandseek.com ogn.cloud glidertracker.org live.glidernet.org KTrax SWS tracking Onglide PureTrack.io
Type of task tracking 2D Map 2D map 2D map 2D map 2D map 3D scenery 2D map 2D map
Task overlay Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes (not all kind of turn points supported) Yes Yes Yes
Contest participants filter Yes - via url Yes - via url Yes - via url Yes, however all participants must be registered in DDB Yes - via wlist URL parameter Yes Yes Yes, by Comp ID from SoaringSpot
Accepts .tsk task files No (direct SoaringSpot integration instead) Yes Yes Yes No Yes Via converter No No
Accepts .cup (SeeYou) task files No No No No No Yes No No
Accepts JSON task files Yes (custom schema: details) No No Yes Yes Yes No No
SoaringSpot Integration via API and key & secret Yes (no need for key & secret) No No No No Yes Yes Yes (no API key needed)
Provides live scoring of task No Yes No No No Yes Yes (Speed & AAT) No
Can display multiple tasks for different classes at same time Yes No No Yes Yes Yes No, different tabs Yes
Open Source No Yes No Yes No No Yes No

Software tools for tracking

CUP to OGN converter

Here you can find a JAVA based CUP to OGN (JSON) task file converter.
cupToOGN-Task

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