This chapter is about how the tracker measures a flight: phases, touchdown, time, repositioning, vacating the runway. Check limits and their cost in points live in “Why your score drops”.
What the tracker records
The tracker connects to the simulator and records the aircraft’s state: position, altitude, speeds, attitude, gear, flaps and spoilers, lights and transponder. That builds the flight’s “black box” you see in the debrief. A free flight is measured the same way but only brings personal hours and token XP.
Arrival time, fuel flow and the descent forecast on the altitude profile in the tracker window are estimates only. Descend by your own calculation.
Connection, restarts and filing
The flight is not lost if the connection drops or the tracker or sim closes: points queue up and are re-sent, and after a restart the recording picks up where it left off. Server not answering and a “Server unavailable” banner showing? Recording and the landing work on your computer, and you can press “File flight” early; just keep the tracker and sim running until the flight has gone.
Want to start the flight from zero, say after a sim crash? “Start over” next to “End flight” deletes the track, time, fuel and violations, and the booking stays yours. A new recording starts by itself once the aircraft moves at the departure airport; if it does not, press “Start recording” on the booking card in the Flights tab.
If Discord is running on your computer, the tracker shows the flight in your profile: "Playing Air Virtua", route, aircraft and time en route, and instead of a dry phase name, a short joke about what is happening right now; in cruise it also shows the flight level and a countdown to arrival. One joke is picked per flight and phase and does not change mid-phase. The status updates at most once every 15 seconds; after landing it shows the arrival airfield. To turn it off or hide the airport codes, open the tracker's Settings, Discord card.
Flight phases
The tracker works out the phase from the aircraft’s state; it needs no flight plan for that. The phase decides which checks apply right now.
Go-around
The tracker spots a go-around by itself. After it, all approach remarks are cleared: the last approach is the one scored.
How the tracker judges
Some checks watch a state with a hold time, some ask once at the right moment, and some trigger at once. Hold times and limits for every check are collected in “Why your score drops”. Hold times run in seconds, so they are the same in MSFS and X-Plane.
A moment check credits the best the tracker saw in its window: once it saw the right position, later readings cannot undo that. Cleaning up after landing is a moment check too, and its window opens at touchdown.
On some models the sim warns of an overspeed long before the aircraft’s real limit. For those the tracker ignores the warning and compares indicated speed with the model’s limit, and the limit then appears in the check’s name.
Absolute altitudes come from the barometric altimeter, the very figure on your instrument; the debrief shows the altimeter setting next to it. Heights above ground and above the aerodrome are geometric. The approach gate counts from the arrival aerodrome’s elevation, or from the terrain if that is unknown.
An airline can replace some of the platform checks with its own flight rules, and the tracker then shows them as the last section of Checks.
Touchdown and landing
The vertical speed in the frame where the sim first says “on the ground” is useless: the gear has already absorbed the descent. So the tracker takes the first available source in the table’s order, and the decision trace lists every candidate and marks the one chosen.
An external landing-rate counter often shows a softer landing than the debrief. Usually it reads vertical speed a fraction of a second after contact, when the gear has already absorbed the descent, or works it out from terrain before the threshold. You can check it yourself against the last row of the table: if its G is lower, the vertical speed on the same log line cannot be trusted either.
Time, pausing and repositioning
Flight time runs on the simulator’s clock, so time acceleration gives no discount on crew, maintenance and wear. The server checks the acceleration against the track, so the rule works in both sims even when the sim does not report the multiplier. On a free flight, personal hours are the hours you actually sat.
Vacating the runway
Taxi-in checks and the offer to file the flight depend on when you vacate the runway. The tracker builds the runway axis from your direction of travel on the rollout and watches for leaving it; a U-turn or backtracking along the runway is not vacating.
Landing at an alternate
The arrival is the stop after landing, wherever you put the aircraft down. The tracker shows at once where you landed, and the server records it. What a diversion means for the money is in “How a flight works”.
Could not be measured
If the aircraft lacks a variable and it stayed silent all flight, the check becomes “not applicable” and does not affect the score. Lights are read two ways, by the switch and by what the sim actually lights, and either is enough. The landing light on takeoff is taken at the actual liftoff, even if automation switched it off with the gear.
Aircraft type
If the aircraft family in the sim is not the booked one, the debrief and the log get a note, but it changes nothing: score, XP, money and wear follow the booked type. Only families are compared, and the tracker stays silent at any doubt, so A320 versus A320neo is not a note.
Check log and the Checks screen
During the flight the tracker logs on the main screen what passed, where a deviation began and how many seconds are left to fix it; the first line is a summary of what it sees in the cockpit. If it says “landing light off” while yours is on, the tracker cannot see it, and the stand is the best place to find out. The Checks screen shows where you stand on every check right now, while points are counted by the site after filing.
Common questions
The tracker closed mid-flight. Is everything lost?
No. Start it again: the tracker asks the server and continues the same recording, no need to set the flight up again. To start from zero, press “Start over”. If the aircraft sits on the ground elsewhere or more than three hours have passed, the recording continues on takeoff, and a flight from the gate starts as a new attempt.
I started the tracker when I was already airborne
Recording does not start right away: first the tracker makes sure you are not on approach. If a booking matches your SimBrief plan, it asks whether this is that flight. Stages the recording never saw do not enter the score, neither as a remark nor as a pass.
I forgot to confirm the record and flew the next leg
While the record awaits confirmation, that flight’s booking is still alive, so the site will not book the next leg. If you took off anyway, the tracker files the pending record itself as soon as it sees a new takeoff roll. A landing replay or a pause never counts as a takeoff roll.
I paused the sim. Does that count against me?
No. Pausing costs nothing and does not count towards the flight duration, so a break adds neither airframe hours nor crew costs. A landing replay counts the same as a pause: it becomes neither a second touchdown nor a reposition.
I booked a flight but the tracker does not see it
Look at the booking row in the tracker window. “Waiting for the aircraft” means the aircraft is still on its ferry to the departure airport, and the row turns normal by itself once it lands. No row at all: check you are signed in with the same account and press Refresh. Still not picked up? Press “Start recording” on the Flights tab: some extra stand time in the recording costs far less than a lost flight.
The flight was not recorded. What should I send?
Nothing to hunt for. In the tracker open Settings → Diagnostics, describe in a couple of lines what happened and press “Send diagnostics”. The tracker shows a reference number; quote it in your forum topic. The logs contain no personal data or passwords.
I disagree with a remark
Open the flight debrief: every check shows when it armed and in what conditions it fired. If that differs from what happened in the sim, write to Feedback with the flight number. A bug once found is fixed, and the affected flights are rescored retroactively, score and XP included.