Malcolm Beard writes:

Why is the Airtribune tracking system so terrible? On every comp
that has used it that I have tried to follow, it has been absolutely useless. No
way of telling what is actually happening from the information visible.

The New Zealand Nationals that is on at the moment is an illustration of that. I
understand that in remote locations, the signals can be patchy, but on top of
that there is no altitude info on most pilots, no ability to see the recent
tracks, a map that jumps all over the place when you try and pan around (and a
course that relocates itself every time you do that too). Leaderboard info is so
inaccurate it makes a joke of having it etc.

It also seems that once the organisers have gone with Airtribune, they stop
posting any comp updates using any of the other websites / blogs that they have
set up in advance of the comp, so we get even less info than we would have,
prior to using trackers! Please, please do not use this for our British comps!

Petr Polách writes:

It's strange. Airtribune is one of the best application when we
talk about viewer comfort.

The problem with the tracking itself is that if organizer let pilots use their
devices (cellphones) half of then doen't even turn them on and the rest put them
somewhere under carbon plates so they don't receive and send any data at all.

Malcolm Beard writes:

I disagree about Airtribune being one of the best for 'viewer
comfort' too. In my opinion it is the worst I have used! Flymaster livetrack,
Livetrack24 and others are all significantly better.

Petr Polách writes:

Well, then, we have quite the opposite experience. And I am not
talking only about competition tracking, but also Flymaster live, and tracklogs
for varios:

Examples (from Flymaster Live):

- no time axis

- unable to replay historical tasks, historical comps

- following pilot certain pilot resets every 2 minutes

- there is a Flymaster commercial banner jumping up every 5 minutes, that you
have to close

- replay is implemented in stupid way that you have to speedup the time etc.

And more and more issues.

On the other hand with Airtribune you have a perfect pilots list, you can set
how much of the track you can see. You can replay any comp and any task, jump
through it using the time axis.

You can even download all trackogs and watch them in SeeYou or Google Earth

Brett Janaway, owner of Airtribune, writes:

There are multiple issues at play as to why Airtribune tracking
isn't great.

For starters, we put our hands up, we have a JavaScript error that is causing
the task/pilots to not be 'glued' to the terrain when the map is moved. We had
to do a fast change to the mapping system recently because Google decided to
start charging for their maps with little notice. The bill was going to be over
1,000 euro a month. We dropped them overnight. We will fix the bug shortly, but
it isn't hard to get around it, just move the map where you want it, then make a
tiny movement of the map to drop it all correct.

For the other issues though, they are out of our control. Relying on pilots/organisers
that elect to use the Android/ iOS app means most don't turn it on, or are poor
hardware.

But even in the Brits this week, where we are using Flymaster trackers, most
pilots are using negative tolerances on turnpoints, so Airtribune doesn't record
them as having reached a cylinder. Again, a tough one for Airtribune to handle
as we don't know what tolerances an organiser is using and briefing pilots
about.

There are no good solutions in the market yet, but the hardware being Flymaster
product is the closest. In short, There is no such thing as Live Tracking. Only
Tracking.