What's new

8 Nov 2026 · build 9712a18f

In the field

• A steel tape held level, or held clear of a rise, now goes back down when you unclip it, stow it or clip the zero end somewhere new, so the next pull starts at its slope until you hold it again. It used to keep the old raise, and the tape row still said “Held level”. A pin you set from the hold keeps it. In a crew, when your partner lets go of the zero end, both ends go down too.

Field book and collector

• On the field book’s formula pages, the page check row now reads “Page check (sum the means)”, so a three-wire page is checked with the means, not the whole column. The formula is the same.

Classroom

• The note instructors see when every chained distance matches the truth to 0.005 ft no longer appears on exercises at the Zero error level, or on any attempt that drove a chaining pin, so careful honest work that drives its pins no longer draws it. It now states what was found without calling it tighter than any chain could read. Scores do not change.
• Weather is now free on every plan. In the Site Builder’s Weather tab, an instructor on the free plan can change the sky, temperature, wind and gusts and save the day with the assignment. Larger sites, water, terrain paint and terraforming still need a paid plan.

Crews

• In a crew, a tape held clear of a rise at both ends now shows both ends lifted on your crewmates’ screens. They used to see the higher end resting on its pin.
• In a crew, the level rod now stops waving whenever your own seat changes, including when you host or join. Take up a rod after that and it is still, and a new wave starts from where the rod is. Someone else changing seats does not stop your wave.
• When a session ends, the instrument no longer gets back an old backsight from before you joined. If you end it in any seat but the observer’s, the instrument has no backsight and no north: set it up and take a backsight again before you measure. An observer at the end keeps the one they have.

Site and guides

• The three-wire guide’s note on holding the rod plumb now ends “for careful work, the rod level is the better tool”.

6 Nov 2026 · build 3e468e8f

In the field

• On a clear 35 °C day the reflectorless reach is now 400 m at midday, not 335 m, and 450 m in the morning and afternoon, not 417.5 m. Overcast, rain, fog, cool days and the prism do not change.
• The measurement mode that read “Prism >4 km” now reads “Long range, 5 mm + 2 ppm”. It sets the distance precision and gives no extra reach, as it always did.
• On a decimal display, a levelling closure that fails its allowance no longer prints two equal numbers beside the fail. Both figures now take more places until the closure reads larger, such as 0.017 ft against an allowable 0.0167 ft. No grade changes.
• A field drill’s report card no longer prints −0.000 in its Off by column. A difference that rounds to zero now reads +0.000, and a real one keeps its minus.
• A benchmark sign you set now repaints when the distance decimals change between 3 and 4. It used to keep its old figures until something else changed.
• Waving the level rod now starts from where the rod is and sweeps out from there. It used to jump to a lean first.
• On a field drill with the display in metres, the report card’s What was checked list and the drill panel’s standard and objective now read in metres, and they follow if you change units during the drill. A few figures still print in feet, among them the chain’s allowance, with its metres beside it, and the topo grid spacing. A foot display reads as before.
• On a windy day, a steel tape now feels the wind at the mean height of its two ends, so a pull over sloping ground bows the same whichever end holds the zero. New readings on such a pull can change slightly.
• A raised tape end now stops at the 1.5 m hold limit on a level pull. A small unseen tilt could lift it higher before, so new readings near that limit can change slightly.
• Dragging the instrument display at the eyepiece can no longer put its top bar under the toolbar, on any screen. A spot saved up there now opens just below the toolbar.
• The ring on the range pole’s and level rod’s bull’s-eye is larger, and it is now the plumb line: the bubble reads green exactly while the whole bubble is inside the ring. The plumb limits themselves have not changed.
• In a field drill, the open E menu now draws above the drill’s bar, so every row can be pressed. With the menu shut, the bar and its buttons are as they were.

Field book and collector

• On a Round with Close on BS, the prompt now reads “close the round — sight the backsight”, not “sight close on the backsight”. A wide spread on a sets or Round line now reads as an angle, such as 153°26'06", not as a long count of seconds. A height transfer onto a station with no elevation now says “had no elevation”, where it used to print a “was 0.000” the job never held.
• At a free station, D/R set and Traverse shot with more than one set are now refused at the first Distance, because a free station has no backsight to sight again. Sets 1 works as before.
• A Round’s lines and its raw note now show how each target’s Face 1 and Face 2 agreed (dHA and dZA), so a bad pointing shows before you store it. They are shown, not graded. A single round no longer writes a spread of 0.
• The refusal to delete a control point now ends at “it may not be deleted.” It no longer tells you to change the point’s class, which nothing in the collector can do, and the FAQ’s warning about that is gone.
• With Transfer elevation from BS ticked and a backsight with no elevation, Measure now refuses before the gun moves, so it adds no shot to the Shots log and leaves the circle as it was.
• The messages that end a backsight check are shorter and fit the handheld collector’s status row. If the station or the backsight moved while you held the check, the row now tells you to take the check again.
• With a figure selected in the field book’s last column, the strike and tag buttons no longer cover its last digit or the one below. Showing both pages, they sit past the fold. In the one-page view they sit to the left, over that row’s figure beside it while the cell is selected.

Classroom

• In the Site Builder, a weather warning now points you to the Sky control. It no longer tells you to raise a visibility that no control sets.
• On the seed’s own fog or rain day, the Site Builder’s Checks tab now warns about a sight line past what the day allows, which a prism in the field may refuse. The warning does not stop you publishing.
• On a closed traverse run once round, the azimuth check no longer counts an opening setup that also shot the last point. Set up on the start point again after the loop. A book that scored 100 % this way now scores 75 %, on a new submission or a re-grade, and the live checklist reads the same way.
• An older assignment saved with no weather day now has air that cools with the site’s height, about 6.5 °C per km above 100 m, and warms below it. New shots and tape readings there feel the changed air. A day you typed, the Zero level and a new assignment’s day keep their temperature, and no answer key changes.
• The Real-world location picker now scrolls a refused latitude into view without moving you out of the box you are typing in. A panel you dragged low stays inside the window when search results or your used sites arrive.
• When the Real-world location picker scrolls, a gamepad or the Tab key can now reach its elevation notice and credits.
• On the New assignment card and in Edit details, the red “cannot be auto-graded” line now goes away as soon as your choices can be graded, with no need to press the button again.
• When you erase a student from the roster, their rows now leave any Results table you have open, with no reload.
• Where a message tells you to contact support, a “Report a problem” button now sits with it. It opens the report form with the message already quoted and asks for your email so we can reply. A student opening an assignment can still leave the email empty.

Crews

• In a crew, a drill or task panel you open at the eyepiece now stops above the chat box, so you can still type in chat. On a short screen, where chat at the eyepiece is a read-only strip with no box to type in, the panel can still cover that strip.
• In the Crews box, keyboard focus now stays on the list you just used, after you add a student, name a chief or set a role.

Site and guides

• In the instructor guide, the roster picture now shows the whole card, from its heading to its last row.
• The students’ page and the three-wire guide now say to have the rod held plumb, not waved, for three wires. Waving and booking the minimum is for one wire. The worked three-wire table books its stadia in whole feet.
• The guide now gives one reading precision per rod: the hundredth of a foot on the foot rod, the millimetre on the metre rod. The records page also says that in a drill, the rod follows the distance unit on your screen.
• The three-wire guide now works a page check over two setups: sum the means, never the whole column. It also shows the stadia running down the page, and says that in the field you read the foot rod finer than the sim lets you. The FAQ links to it.

4 Nov 2026 · build 66ef4ed4

In the field

• You can no longer walk or run while looking through the auto level’s eyepiece, in its telescope or its rough sight. The total station’s eyepiece already worked this way. The level’s aiming and focus keys still work.
• With empty hands, Place lath now sets the lath 0.5 m in front of you, the same distance as Drive lath here. It used to land 1.4 m away.
• In free play you now choose the level rod as you take it: Take foot rod or Take metre rod. The gun and the job no longer swap the rod in your hands, and your choice does not change your display. To change rods, stow one and take the other. Partners in a party see the rod you took. Assignments and drills keep one Take level rod.
• When a chain tape is bent over a rise, the message now says what you can still do. With both ends already held clear, it offers a re-sight on the hand level or a break. Where the game refuses a hold, it names only the break.
• Where a benchmark sign shows a figure in brackets because your rod and your display use different units, that figure now has its own row, so the sign’s text no longer shrinks to fit it.
• A standard with a figure now says it is the limit, on a field drill and on an assignment: “Loop misclosure: allowed 0.023 ft”, not a bare number you could take for your own result. In an assignment’s task panel, a thin line now separates the text that scrolls from the standard above it.
• On a very short window with the collector open, a folded drill or task panel’s standard can be squeezed to no height. It is no longer a keyboard stop then, and the panel’s fold button (▸) brings it back.
• Premium On a subdivision, where fences meet a little off a corner rod, the fence ends now stand far enough back to leave the rod person a real way off the rod. A few short corners, on plats already published too, move back slightly.

Field book and collector

• In the handheld collector, a height transfer from a backsight with no elevation is now refused in a sentence that fits the status row: “This BS has no elevation. Untick Transfer elevation from BS or pick another.”
• Other long messages on the handheld collector’s status row have new, shorter words, so in landscape you can read the end of them, which is often what to do next. The FAQ quotes the new words.

Classroom

• In the Site Builder’s Weather tab, the Sun position dropdown now fits the panel at the same width as the other controls, so the panel no longer scrolls sideways.
• The Real-world location picker now stays inside the window on a laptop: the map gets shorter on a short page, the panel scrolls itself to reach its notes, and the Area box shows each size in full.
• After you press Create assignment on the class page, keyboard focus now moves to the Assignments heading along with the page. The next Tab stays in your assignment list instead of jumping back down to the form.
• A note the grader leaves on an auto-graded result now shows. Students read it in their score box, and instructors read it as “Grader's note” in Review. For example, it says why a traverse’s angular closure was not graded, or that a leveling loop was graded from the digital field book.

Site and guides

• The Instructors page now says that plat retracement needs a paid plan: the free tier’s sentence names it as the exception, and the list of exercises marks it Premium.

3 Nov 2026 · build 8c0b118f

In the field

• The sim now has recorded sounds. Setting a tripod, driving a lath, setting a nail, digging and moving the level rod’s sections each make a sound, and footsteps are back: they land with your feet and sound like the ground underfoot (grass, gravel, pavement, mud, sand, rock, dirt or water). Turn Effects or Footsteps off, or change their volume, in ⚙ Settings ▸ Sounds.
• New ambient sound that follows the site: a breeze or a strong wind, gusts, rain, birds by day, insects at dusk, nearby water and distant traffic on a real-world site, all changing with the weather and the time of day. It is off until you tick Ambient in ⚙ Settings ▸ Sounds, and nothing is downloaded while it is off.
• The collector’s Measure page has a new Round method: one backsight and two or more targets. Name each target as you shoot it on Face 1, press Plunge, and the collector prompts each pointing on Face 2 in reverse order. Tick “Close on BS” to end each face on the backsight again and see the closing error. Sets sets the number of rounds, and Store keeps each target as a point from the mean.
• In the collector, a D/R set stored after a free station whose sights were all read on one face now says it is a half set: “the resection was solved from Face 1 sights only, so this angle still carries the collimation”. The set still stores. A free station with a sight on each face does not warn.
• Setting up the auto level, the whole bubble now has to be inside the circle before Next lights. The level’s limit is a lean of 8.6′, well inside its compensator’s ±15′ range, and until the bubble is in, the panel says the compensator works only once it is. A level leaning more than 15′ along the sight now tips its line of sight, so the rod it leans toward reads low, and balanced sights do not cancel it.
• Held level by eye, the raised end of the chain now droops low, as a tiring arm does, instead of riding high. The help FAQ now says that averaging ten EDM reads shrinks only the fixed part of the distance error (about 0.83 mm at 100 m), because the 2 ppm part repeats on every read.
• Chaining over a rise: when the ground between the two tape ends stands above them, “Hold both ends clear” (on the hand level or by eye) lifts both ends to one level line just over the top, so the tape reads straight across. If the rise is too high to clear, the menu says to set a pin at the top and break the chain.
• When a free station’s adjustment lands exactly on one of the known points, as it can when a sight’s point name or a known’s coordinates is badly wrong, the Results page and the raw file’s note now say so, and that the residuals cannot tell which sight is wrong. The station still stores.
• With the collector open beside a field drill or an assignment on a narrow screen, the folded panel’s standard is a Tab stop only when it has something to scroll, so the keyboard no longer stops on a box that does nothing.
• At the Zero error level, the steel tape now follows a day you set in ⚙ Settings ▸ Weather: a hot or cold day changes the tape’s length, and a crosswind bows a tape that hangs free. With no day set, the Zero tape still reads exactly.
• Past the day’s reach a prism shot now returns nothing: the eyepiece’s Measure key greys out, and the data collector says “No return — fog; shorten the sight” (or rain, low visibility or heat shimmer). Move the prism closer and the shot comes back.
• Wind now shakes a set-up total station: at Beginner and above its angle readings pick up extra scatter that grows with the wind squared, about 1″ at 10 m/s and 4″ at 20 m/s, on top of the error level’s own. Nothing on screen moves; the readings carry it.
• The total station’s EDM now reaches as far as the instrument’s range table says for the day’s visibility. In fog a prism returns to about 140 m and a reflectorless shot to about 77 m; in rain about 345 m and 158 m. A clear or overcast day keeps the full reach, and the fog you see is unchanged.
• A class that reports in metres now levels with a 5 m metre rod: five 1 m sections with the E-pattern face of 1 cm blocks, read to the millimetre by estimate. Field-book pages booked off it are marked in metres, so a copy of the benchmark sign's metres closes. When your own screen shows the other unit, the benchmark sign and the field-book checklist say which unit to book in.
• A reflectorless shot that just clips the top of a kerb now returns from the kerb instead of passing through it, and on a foggy day the reflectorless beam now reaches all the way to the end of its range.
• On a clear, hot day with the sun high, heat shimmer now shortens the EDM’s reach, as the instrument manual says: at 35 °C at midday a prism reaches about 1,785 m and a reflectorless shot about 335 m. The Sun position in ⚙ Settings ▸ Weather now makes that difference.
• The range pole’s bull’s-eye is now a 40′ vial, and wind leans an unbraced pole twice as far, so in a 20 m/s gale the bubble reads off plumb until the rodman braces the pole (hold Space or the 🫁 Brace button). The level rod’s bubble is unchanged.
• Gusts now reach a shot to the range pole: the pole leans further in a surge than in a lull, and the shot takes the pole as it leaned at that moment, so waiting for a lull before you shoot pays off.
• Premium On a subdivision, each lot corner’s rod now sits in a small pocket of fence that opens to one yard only. Short bent panels close the gaps where the fences stop short of a corner, so you can no longer slip from one back yard to the next through it. The panels block sight lines as well as walking.

Classroom

• A closed traverse is now graded on a fourth line, the azimuth closure: set up on the starting control again, measure the last control point, then turn and measure the control you first backsighted. An angle blunder that the loop’s closure hid now fails this line, and a traverse handed in without that closing setup cannot pass. The task panel’s checklist, the steps and the field drill’s report card say so.
• A new chaining assignment is graded to a precision ratio, chosen on the New assignment card (1:1000, 1:3000 or 1:5000, starting at 1:3000): each leg may be off by its own length divided by that number, and the feedback names each leg’s allowance in feet. Chaining assignments made before, and the Starter sites, keep their tolerance in feet.
• Creating an assignment on the class page now tells you when none of the seeds tried will publish, for example a hilly stakeout with many design points, or a plat retracement before a subdivision is chosen. The draft is still made, and the line lists what blocks it and the ways out: fewer design points, a flatter terrain, or the builder.
• The assignment builder’s Checks tab now warns when a sight line is longer than the day’s reflectorless reach (about 77 m in fog), so you know that line needs a prism. It is only a warning: publishing is not refused.
• The chaining note instructors see for work that looks too good to be true now also catches distances worked out from the marks’ coordinates, in either foot, not only a copy of the answer key. Students never see the note, and it never changes a score.
• Premium When you set the weather for an assignment, the builder now refuses to publish a required sight line that is longer than that day’s prism reach, as it already did for one longer than the visibility. The Checks tab shows the same sentence while you edit.
• When an instructor sets Scope assist for an assignment, its greyed-out box in ⚙ Settings now gives the same reason as Parallax and Steady assist beside it, on hover and to a screen reader.

Crews

• In a crew session you now hear your crewmates’ work and footsteps from where they are: quieter the farther away they are, and from their side.
• In a crew, your crewmates now see your chain where you hold it: lifted to level when you hold it level, and lying on the ground when both ends are down, instead of always rising to the reel at your hip.

Site and guides

• The Instructors page’s “What's free, what's premium” section now says that subdivisions need a paid plan: lay out a plat, publish a retracement, and let the crew find the corners.
• Every picture in the student guide and the instructor help has been re-taken from today’s sim and class pages, so the screenshots match what you see.

3 Nov 2026 · build 94f69ef4

In the field

• At the Zero error level, “Use the seed's weather” in ⚙ Settings ▸ Weather now explains that the seed’s weather is calm and clear there (the instrument’s reference air), and that a day you set at Zero is the site’s real air. The help FAQ says the same.
• In ⚙ Settings ▸ Weather, a gust that was raised to match a strong wind now comes back down when you lower the wind again, and the line under the controls says so (“Gust back to 13.5 m/s.”). A gust you typed yourself stays as you typed it.
• With the 🌡 weather kit open, changing only the gust in ⚙ Settings ▸ Weather now updates the kit’s wind line straight away.
• Store staked no longer prints “cut 0.000” or “fill 0.000”: a cut that rounds to zero now shows just 0.000, as the Measure line already did. A real cut or fill keeps its word.
• In a stakeout report, a stake that misses by just over its allowance now shows the digit that makes it a fail: “Largest radial error 0.1004 ft (allowable 0.1 ft)” instead of “0.1 ft (allowable 0.1 ft)”. This is in field drills and in graded stakeout assignments; verdicts and scores are unchanged.
• Tables that have no sentence naming the unit now say which foot their numbers are in: the design-point list, a field drill report card’s columns, the Shot Log’s column heads and a retracement’s published control read “US ft” or “Int ft” instead of “ft”. US survey feet and international feet differ by about 0.03 ft on a 16,000 ft coordinate.
• A field drill’s report card now prints its allowance the way the drill card does: “allowed 0.2 ft”, not “allowed 0.200 ft”. Measured values keep three places, and a topo drill’s limit still reads to three places (“limit 2.000 ft”).
• Process Raw and Compass adjust now keep a point with no elevation that way: a shot from a station with no elevation no longer picks up a made-up height when the raw file is replayed. In the setup, the Coord row now leaves the Z box empty for such a station instead of filling in 0.000.
• In the setup, “Transfer elevation from BS” now refuses a backsight that has no elevation, with a sentence, instead of giving the station a made-up height. A new backsight worked out from a station with no elevation is stored with no elevation.
• The Field drills grid no longer has a daily drill: no cell is tagged “📅 Today” any more. Every drill is still there, and each works as before.
• The collector’s raw file and its PNEZD and LandXML exports no longer print -0.0000 for a coordinate a hair below zero; it prints 0.0000. A coordinate of -0.0001 or lower keeps its minus.
• In the collector’s Points list, a point with no elevation (keyed with the Z box empty, or imported with a blank Z) now shows — in the Z column instead of 0.000, so it no longer reads as a real height of zero. A point keyed with a Z of 0 still shows 0.000.
• On the handheld collector, the status row now reads “Stored as …” straight after a Store, even if another message was showing a moment before. It could show the older message, such as “Job … created.”, for up to five seconds.
• COGO Point in direction from a point with no elevation now stores the new point with no elevation too, whatever dZ you type, and its line says why. It used to store the dZ as a real height. Inverse no longer prints a dZ when either point has no elevation.

Classroom

• Premium The site builder’s Weather tab does the same: a gust the wind pushed up follows the wind back down, so a saved day no longer reads “7.5 m/s gusting 40” when nobody typed 40.
• Premium In the site builder’s Water tab, a tide amplitude so small that it rounds to zero (under 0.0005 m) is now refused with “Tide amplitude is 0–2 m.”. Before, it was kept as a zero tide, which the server refuses when the site is saved.
• In the site builder’s Water tab, “Class starts at” now reads “Mean, rising” when no water body is selected, instead of showing an empty box.
• Premium In the site builder’s Weather tab, changing the Sky, Wind, Wind from or Gust on an older assignment that has no weather set no longer gives a temperature error: the temperature box takes the seed’s day’s temperature. A weather error also no longer stays on screen across every tab once a later weather change has gone through.
• In an attempt review, a station or point coordinate a hair below zero now reads 0.000 instead of -0.000.

3 Nov 2026 · build 88b51d66

In the field

• The simulator’s page downloads less on every visit. Its styling now comes in a separate, compacted file that your browser keeps between visits, so a slow school connection has less to fetch. Nothing about how the sim looks has changed.

Classroom

• Submitting an assignment now asks for your 4-digit PIN, so nobody else at a shared computer can hand in your work. A wrong PIN is told in the box and nothing is handed in, and Cancel or Escape leaves your work as it was. Wrong PINs here count toward the same lock as signing in: after five, wait a few minutes.
• A student sign-in that has not been used for 30 days now ends. Join your class again with your class code, your personal code and your PIN. Instructors: a student’s “Last sign-in” can be blank after a month unused, as it already could after signing out or a PIN reset.
• In the site builder, the dropdowns on the Weather and Simulation tabs, and in the Subdivision form, are now white with dark text like the builder’s other fields. They used to be near-black.
• In the site builder, a level run that goes from a benchmark straight back to itself, with no turning point between, no longer shows “Length levelled: 0”. The run panel asks for a turning point instead. A run that visits a turning point twice, or comes back to its benchmark partway through, is now an error on the Checks tab and will not publish.

Crews

• When you host a session, the session button at the top left now reads “Hosting” instead of “In session”. The Multiplayer window also says “You are hosting this crew — keep this tab open and plugged in.” The session runs through the host’s tab, so if that tab closes or the device sleeps, the session ends for everyone.

30 Oct 2026 · build 1d6c73d7

In the field

• In the collector you can occupy a point that has no elevation (for example one imported from a control file with a blank Z, or keyed with the Z box empty). The setup now says so, the backsight check says the height is not judged instead of failing it, and every shot from that station is stored with no elevation instead of a height worked from 0.
• “Set rod on” now turns the rodman to face the auto level, so the observer reads the rod and not the rodman’s back. The menu and the ✋ chip now say whether the rod is on the mark (“Rod on TP-1”) or off it, and the menu row says by how much. Any step takes the rod off the point, so set it again before the reading.
• On the instrument’s MENU → EDM page, clearing the Atmos temp, Atmos press or Ind. ppm box, or typing a value out of range, is now refused: the box goes back to the value in effect and a line at the bottom of the menu says why. Before, an empty box was stored as 0 (0 °C, or the lowest pressure), which put a scale error on every distance.
• A free station (resection) no longer takes its height from a known point that has no elevation, such as a design point or a point keyed with a blank Z. That point still helps fix where the station is; the height comes from the sights whose points have one.
• The telescope now sees ground that rises a few centimetres into the line to a prism, for example just behind a crest. The eyepiece says “obstructed by ground” and Measure stays off, where before it could offer a shot through the top of the hill.
• A reflectorless shot that grazes the top of a rise now returns from the rise. Before, about one near-level shot in two hundred passed through the top few centimetres and returned from ground far behind it, or gave no return.
• On the calculator, an angle whose seconds end in a point with nothing after it (12°30′.) now counts as 0″ in the seconds. It used to turn into Error, and the next = quietly dropped it from the sum.

Field book and collector

• On a job in metres, the leveling task, the benchmark sign and the task panel’s “Report in the field book” list now say the level book is in decimal feet. The task and the sign also give the benchmark’s elevation in feet, for example “Z 99.661 m (326.972 ft)”. The rod reads feet and the book is graded in feet, so that is the number to book.
• A length too small to show now prints 0.000, never -0.000: in the field book’s VD column, the CSV export, the instrument screen’s distances, COGO Inverse’s dZ and the rest of the collector’s lengths. A real negative such as -0.001 keeps its minus.

Classroom

• In the site builder, a level run must now start on a benchmark as well as end on one. A run that starts on a turning point says so under “The run” and on the Checks tab, and will not publish.
• The assignment builder’s sight-line checks, and the check that runs when you publish, now read the ground exactly along each line. A required line that clips the ground by a few centimetres is now blocked, not marginal.
• Chaining is now graded on each leg’s error to the hundredth of a foot, the same numbers the report prints, so a leg can no longer fail beside “0.10 ft off, 0.10 ft allowed”. The field drill card’s Off by column now reads to the hundredth. A chaining score graded before this keeps its verdict until the instructor regrades it.
• In the site builder, two benchmarks with no turning points yet now show the run as a link between the nearest two, at their real distance. It used to show a loop at twice the length.

29 Oct 2026 · build 366f6d6b

In the field

• The collector’s Stake page now ends each Measure line with IN TOL or OUT OF TOL. It judges the miss against the job’s stake tolerance H, and the cut or fill against V when the design point has an elevation. Set both on the Job page (Stake tol H and V, then Set). A new job starts at 0.1 ft, or at the exercise’s own tolerance in a stakeout assignment or field drill.
• In the collector, Compass adjust now moves each sideshot with the station it was shot from, so topo shots and ties agree with the adjusted traverse. The raw file gets one more note naming the sideshots that moved, and a second Compass adjust of the same loop moves nothing again.
• Premium In the 🌊 Tide panel, the line under the tidal datums now names DHQ and DLQ (the mean diurnal high- and low-water inequalities). It used to call DHQ the “diurnal inequality”, which is NOAA’s name for a different figure.
• The collector’s Stake Guide line now gives the turn the way the instrument shows it: in the gun’s angle unit and minimum reading (for example 128°29'02" instead of 128.4838°), and on a gun set to Hz Left as the counter-clockwise reading, labelled Hz. A design point at the station you occupy now says the points coincide instead of giving an angle.
• On the Stake page’s Measure line, a part that rounds to 0.000 no longer has IN/OUT, LEFT/RIGHT or CUT/FILL in front of it.
• In COGO’s Curve solver, a chord longer than twice the radius is now refused as too long for any circle. It used to blame Δ, which you had not keyed.

Field book and collector

• A traverse that closes at exactly 1:N by hand now reads 1:N on the collector, the grade sheet and the traverse drill’s card, and passes a 1:N target. Before, a rounding hair in the arithmetic could make it read 1:(N−1).

Classroom

• Leveling grades now treat a turning point more than three times the loop’s allowance off its true elevation as a blunder (it was five times). A misread carried through the turning points can no longer pass by writing the benchmark’s elevation as the closing elevation. This can change a leveling grade, in a class and on the leveling drill’s card.
• In a traverse grade, the control-point position line now measures each point on the loop after the compass rule, as long as the loop closes within its target, and says so. A loop that misses its closure is still graded on its raw coordinates. This can change a traverse grade, in a class and on the traverse drill’s card.
• Premium In the site builder’s Water tab, “Class starts at” is now worked out from the tide itself. “Low water” starts the class at the day’s lowest water (the lower low), and “High water” at the highest, however unequal the tides. The second tide knob is renamed “Diurnal constituent (m)”, the size of the once-daily wave. A site saved earlier keeps its start until you next change one of its tide settings.
• A stakeout’s “Largest radial error” now prints up to three decimals, on graded results and on a field drill’s report card, so a 0.099 ft pass no longer reads as 0.1 ft. Pass, fail and scores are unchanged.

28 Oct 2026 · build 85068ebd

In the field

• In the 🌡 Weather kit, the wind dial now keeps its full size on a windy day. A long wind line wraps onto several lines beside the dial instead of squeezing it.
• When a chain tape is bent over a rise, the message at full stretch now says the tape is bent, instead of saying it reads 100.00 ft. The hints beside “Set pin at the tape…” and “Hold this distance” in the E menu say so too. On a straight tape all three read as before.
• The collector’s RW5 export now writes two notes in plain characters: the note for a setup height changed with Edit LS (for example “HI none->5.2493”) and the note for an elevation transferred from the backsight (with “deg” for the degree sign). Office software that reads the file as plain text no longer shows garbled symbols there. Notes already in an older job keep their old characters.
• A figure that rounds to zero now reads with a + instead of a −, in five more places: the backsight check’s circle drift, the elevation change on a height transfer, the BS Face 2 line, a stored set’s spreads, and the tripod leg lengths in the guided setup (and what a screen reader says for them). A real negative, such as −1″ or −0.1 cm, keeps its minus.
• After you use a game controller, the first mouse click on the instrument display now works: ✕ closes the menu and Page turns it the first time. Before, the display shifted as the controller hints went away and the click could miss.

Field book and collector

• The field book’s formula pages (⋯, ƒx Reference formulas) now give the three-wire check a tolerance: for a rod read to 0.01 ft, the two half-intervals may differ by at most 0.02 ft.

Site and guides

• The guided-setup picture in the student guide now shows the panel as it is today, with the Hint button between Next and Close.
• The student guide’s walkthroughs now teach three-wire leveling: read the upper, middle and lower wires, check that the two halves agree, book the readings, their sum and the mean with the stadia beside each sight, and balance every setup. A worked setup shows it in the field book’s own columns.
• The tagging picture in the student guide now shows the field book’s current leveling page, STA, BS (+), STADIA, FS (−), STADIA, ELEV, instead of an old layout with an HI column.

27 Oct 2026 · build 6f096ac6

In the field

• Playing solo, the “📢 Brace the rod” call at the eyepiece now holds the rodman steady for about 16 seconds before he is winded, instead of 4, so there is time to read the rod. Bracing the rod yourself as the rodman still lasts about 4 seconds, and in a crew the button still just calls out to your rodman.
• The weather in Settings is now one control per item: Sky, Temperature, Wind (speed, direction and gust) and Sun position. Changing one no longer changes the others, and a new “Use the seed’s weather” button puts the seed’s own day back.
• The named weather presets and the pressure setting are gone. In free play every day now uses standard air for the site’s height, so the barometer reads the same on every day at one site. Each seed draws its sky, temperature and wind separately, so a seed you have used before may have different weather now.
• When an exercise does not say what the rodman starts holding, he now starts with the tool it needs: the level rod on a leveling loop, the chain and pins on chaining, and empty hands on monument recovery. Every other exercise, and free play, still starts with the range pole. The field drills follow the same rule.
• The Trees setting on Settings, World & Sim is now a slider with five stops: Sparse, Normal, Dense, Thick and Forest, about 100 trees per hectare. No tree moves: each stop keeps the trees of the one below and adds more. The trees change when you let go of the slider, and in a crew the host's choice reaches everyone.
• Trees on a generated site now take far less work for the browser, so even a large 900 m site at Forest builds in a moment and runs much faster. Every tree stands where it did and looks the same, and with Shadows on, trees cast shadows wherever you stand on the site.

Classroom

• In the lab builder, the Weather tab has the same Sky, Temperature, Wind and Sun position controls and the same “Use the seed’s weather” button. The seed’s own weather is free on every plan; choosing different weather is premium.
• The lab builder has a new Simulation tab, right after Weather, for the instrument error level, Parallax and Scope assist. The Weather tab now holds only the weather.
• In the site builder’s Avatar tab, “Rodman starts holding” now shows the default for the assignment’s exercise and marks it “(default)”, for example “Level rod (default)” on a leveling assignment. Your own choice there still wins.
• The assignment builder's Trees setting is now the same five-stop slider, up to Forest. Students see your stop on their own slider, greyed out, with the reason under it. Sites you have already built keep their trees.

26 Oct 2026 · build 5eb089cf

In the field

• The barometer’s “hPa” and “inHg” labels now sit in the empty gap at the right of the dial, so the inner inch numbers no longer print over them on high or low sites.
• In the chaining field drills, the drill’s bar at the top now moves below the tape row while it shows, so 📌 Set pin and ⟲ Hold are never hidden under ✓ Finish and check or ↻ Restart.
• In the instrument’s MENU, turning with a controller onto a page that has nothing to change on it (such as the tablet’s last EDM page) now puts focus on the ◂ back button, instead of leaving it on a row that is no longer shown.
• A tripod set over a mark is now planted with its plummet already within about 2 cm of the mark, and its head tipped for the legs to level. Levelling with the legs does not move the plummet, so the slide now reaches the mark, and your first tripod no longer has to be picked up and planted again. A session saved before this keeps its tripods as they were until you plant them again.
• On Realistic ground the grass now follows the shape of the land, a shade darker in hollows and lighter on rises, and has a fine grain with light flecks up close. From a distance the grain blends away, so the grass is no darker than its own colour. Elevation colors is unchanged.
• A new Trees setting on Settings, World & Sim, makes the trees on a generated site Sparse, Normal or Dense. No tree moves: Sparse keeps some of the usual trees and Dense adds more between them. In a crew the host's choice reaches everyone, and free play remembers it. Real-world sites have no generated trees, so the setting is greyed out there.
• Premium Real-world sites saved before the map data was updated load with their detailed buildings and roads again, instead of simple blocks. A saved site's buildings and roads are now built from the same saved copy it is graded on, so a later map update cannot take them away.

Field book and collector

• The collector now also refuses three rare, invisible line-break characters in a point number, and writes them as a space in the RW5 file, so a pasted one cannot split a line of the file.

Classroom

• Premium In the builder’s Subdivision lots, ↩ Undo and ↪ Redo now update the line under the lot buttons, so it no longer describes a lot you have just undone.
• A Monument recovery objective now names the site’s own control marks (T1 and T2 on a subdivision) instead of always saying CTL-1 and CTL-2. The builder’s Site elevation note and its help no longer name a BM-1 the site does not have.
• When a student who is not seated in a crew joins a classmate working on a different site, the pressure in that attempt’s review now matches what their weather kit showed on the site they were actually on.
• The assignment builder's Site tab has a Trees setting (Sparse, Normal or Dense) under Natural ground cover. Students walk the site with your trees and see the setting greyed out, with the reason. Sites you have already built stay Normal, and once a student has started, the trees are locked with the rest of the site.

Crews

• In a field drill with a crew, the Parallax box is now off and locked for anyone who joins, as it already was for the host, and says why. Your own setting comes back when the drill ends.
• When you join a crew whose BM-2 stands somewhere other than yours, your instrument now forgets a backsight you took on BM-2, as it already did when a new seed moved BM-2. If BM-2 is in the same place, the backsight is kept.
• Leaving a crew that worked on your own seed and terrain now keeps your BM-2 where it was, and the world, its monument and the cleared line of trees are redrawn round it. A backsight on BM-2 taken inside the crew is dropped when that moves it.

25 Oct 2026 · build 6f1bbd6b

Nothing you can see changed in this build.

24 Oct 2026 · build 648d9631

In the field

• In free play, when a hill hides BM-2 from BM-1, BM-2 now moves to the nearest spot BM-1 can see, 40 to 120 m away, and its sign, the tripod over it and the cleared line of trees move with it. The world free play opens on is unchanged, and a saved session keeps its own BM-2. On a very few Hilly seeds the line stays blocked by a little ground.
• “Measure to” a chaining mark behind a rise now says the tape is bent over the rise and what to do, instead of telling you to read a graduation that is not there.
• The air pressure now follows the site's height above sea level, so a site 1,600 m up reads about 830 hPa instead of about 1,000, and the weather correction is the right size there. The named weather days read a little lower on the usual 100 m site too (Hot is 996 hPa, not 1008). At the Zero error level the air also follows the site, so the instrument's default setting is exact only on a 100 m site. Pressures from 290 to 1140 hPa can now be entered.
• The weather kit's barometer now shows the range that fits the site's height, so it reads on any site. A value past the end of either dial shows OFF SCALE with the needle on a stop, instead of sitting on the last mark. The thermometer now reads −50 to 60 °C. The custom day and the assignment builder say when a pressure will show off scale.
• The weather kit's wind card now gives mph first whenever distances are in feet, and m/s first in metres.
• In a field drill, scope assist is now off and locked for every player, the host and anyone who joins. Your own setting comes back when you leave the drill.
• With scope assist on, the eyepiece still guides you to the target, but once the prism is on the glass it says only “on target — bisect by eye”: centring the crosshair on the prism is your own skill.
• The instrument's MENU → EDM now has a “C&R corr.” row saying it applies no curvature and refraction correction. As before, that correction is yours to apply by hand.
• With a game controller, the MENU button at either eyepiece opens and closes the folded “ⓘ Controls” line, so you can read which button does what on a small screen.
• With the instrument set to ft-in-1/16 on a US-survey-foot job, lengths and coordinates are now cut in US survey feet and say US ft-in, so a figure read off the BM-1 sign matches the job.

Field book and collector

• Deleting a point on the collector now takes its Traverse shot out of the closure: after a re-shoot, Compass adjust uses the new distance, and a deleted Close point is refused. The raw file still keeps both shots.
• The traverse closure's 1:N on the collector and in the exported raw file is now rounded down, as on the grade sheet, so a closure just short of the target no longer shows as the target.
• A free-station residual or a backsight check difference that rounds to zero no longer shows a minus sign: it reads +0.000 or 0.000, and a real −0.001 keeps its minus.
• An RW5 exported from a setup whose circle was set on Face 2 now writes the back circle the way office software reads it, so that setup's shots no longer land half a turn off. The Raw page shows the same line.
• A point number can no longer hold a comma, a tab or a line break: the collector and Import control refuse it and say why. In the RW5, a comma or line break in a job name or description can no longer split a line or add a point that was never shot.
• The Compass adjust note in the RW5 now gives the closure in your job's unit, and the Compass adjust and backsight check notes use plain characters, so office software reads them cleanly.

Classroom

• Premium On a new subdivision the lot fences now block sight lines and walking, as real fences do, and each fenced lot has a gate. So the builder may say a control cannot see every corner of a lot. Subdivision sites made before this update keep the world they were published on. A subdivision has no BM-1 or BM-2: its four tract corners are the control.
• On a topo map square only two cells on a side, the coverage line now names the empty quarter (south-west, north-east and so on) instead of saying “middle”, and says “all over the square” when every cell is empty.
• An instructor can set scope assist on or off for every student in an assignment, on the builder's Weather tab, or leave it to each student's own choice.
• A traverse that closes exactly now reads “exact” on the grade sheet and on the traverse drill's card, as it does on the collector, instead of 1:9999999.

Site and guides

• The student guide and the FAQ now explain the guided setup's Hint button, and why it may be missing in an assignment.

22 Oct 2026 · build cabb5176

In the field

• The guided setup has a Hint button: it says the next move, marks the control to use, and shows the technique card behind it with its source. An assignment's Hint setting can turn it off, or make it glow when a student is stuck.
• Every technique card the Hint shows has been read and approved, and each names the textbook section or source it comes from.
• In setup, changing a tripod leg's length no longer moves the plummet's point on the ground, as on a real tripod, and a freshly planted tripod starts nearer level.
• Free play now starts on rolling ground. Flat is still in Settings, and a saved session still resumes on the ground it was saved on.
• Changing the seed or the terrain now updates the weather kit and the sky at once, for you and your crew, instead of waiting for an unrelated change such as the EDM mode.
• On a phone held upright, the eyepiece's instruction line folds to its ⓘ Controls button when the instrument display or a dial covers it; tap the button to read the whole line above the controls.
• On a phone held sideways, the instrument display at the eyepiece now opens with its top on the screen, just below the toolbar, so you can read Hz and V and fold or move it.
• A steel tape dragged over a rise now shows no reading and will not set a pin, because a real tape cannot read straight through the ground: hold it clear, or set a pin at the top and break the chain. This can change a chaining grade.
• A chaining pin set partway down a hanging tape now goes where that graduation really hangs, and on a windy day a plumbed pin leans less far downwind, because the wind is taken at the bob's own height.
• With the range pole, level rod or chain in hand, a mark now goes in under you on ground of any steepness, so every design point on a hilly stakeout can be staked.
• Premium On a site with a mixed tide, the tide table no longer lists a pause of a few millimetres near mid-tide as a high and a low, so Mean High Water and Mean Low Water come out right.
• The weather kit names the wind by the Beaufort scale, and in fog or rain the distance meter reaches only as far as the day's visibility allows: about 63 m without a prism in the 120 m fog. A prism still measures at any range.

Field book and collector

• Moving the tripod, or picking it up and setting it down again on the same mark, now ends a station setup in progress: the collector starts again on its first page with empty boxes and says why. A station already stored reads as moved after a re-plant too.
• A leveling page is now read in the foot it was written in, so a book copied exactly off a US-survey-foot benchmark sign closes at 0. This can change a leveling grade.
• A free station now adjusts every sight's distance and direction together: a setup on the line between two control points lands within millimetres instead of decimetres off or refused, and the results show each sight's residual and the station's standard error.
• Compass adjust now refuses a closure worse than 1:100 and writes nothing, so a mistyped Close can no longer move your traverse stations.
• Store staked now names the as-staked shot after its design point plus S (DP-1S, then DP-1S2), so it no longer takes a name a design point needs.
• A point with no elevation now exports with its elevation left out instead of written as 0, and importing that CSV keeps it without one, so staking it prints no made-up cut.
• An angle typed with a mark on the wrong figure, such as 0 45″ for 45 seconds, is no longer read as 0°45′: the field book keeps what you typed and a COGO box asks again. A sight that rounds to level no longer shows a minus sign.

Classroom

• The instructor's note on chaining distances that are too close to the truth now says what it checks, every leg within 0.005 ft, and the student help page says the same.
• A topo map square now has at least four coverage cells, so one shot can no longer cover a 100 ft square on a 100 ft grid, and the grid setting's help says 90% of the cells must hold a shot.
• A traverse, in a class or on the traverse drill's card, is now graded on the coordinates its own loop carried, so extra check shots from control can no longer hide a bust. Some traverse grades can change.

Crews

• In a crew session, an open field drill or assignment panel now stops above the chat box, so you can click the chat box and type.

Site and guides

• A new What's new page lists the changes you can see in each release, newest first, with Premium features marked.

21 Oct 2026 · build 74a25cf5

In the field

• The controller chip now sits below the toolbar and names your controller without the browser's code for it.
• On a big phone held sideways, the corner map no longer covers the LOOK stick.
• On a short phone held sideways, the toolbar shows only icons and stays clear of the MOVE stick.
• On the Rough level and Fine level steps of setup, k now walks the bubble up (north), as it does on every other step.

Field book and collector

• The collector now measures angle sets. Direct and reverse can be repeated in sets: the collector leads you through each set and shows each angle, the mean and the spread.
• The backsight can now be read on both faces, so the mean of a direct-and-reverse set cancels the instrument's collimation error.
• With the backsight on both faces, the instrument's own shot record now agrees with the collector. A traverse booked this way can get a different grade.
• A direct-and-reverse set after a one-face backsight is now called a half set, and it still stores.
• Traverse shot takes the same number of sets, and a traverse shot in sets counts as one leg at the set mean.
• Resection sights belong to where the instrument stood. Move it, or take it off its tripod, and the old sights are cleared, with a message that says so.
• Store staked no longer prints a made-up cut for a design point that has no elevation.
• The calculator adds a chain of angles correctly, and an exact closure shows 0.

Classroom

• Premium Raising or lowering the ground on a real-world site now bends the roads and houses with it, between their corners too.
• The leveling flag “Closure is exactly 0” now fires only when the closing elevation really is the benchmark sign's value, and the sign shows the published elevation.
• The New assignment form and Edit details have a Hint setting, Off unless you change it. There is no Hint button for students yet.

Crews

• When the host turns down a crewmate's strike, the crewmate is told why, and their row goes back to the host's copy.

Site and guides

• The help pages now say that the face mean cancels collimation only when the backsight is on both faces.

20 Oct 2026 · build 5d73397c

Nothing you can see changed in this build.

20 Oct 2026 · build 0320f8b9

In the field

• Premium On a real-world site, a fenced yard is now a closed loop behind its house, with one gate facing the street.

Field book and collector

• Design points you load into the collector now show as design crosses on the stake map, and control still shows as control.

Classroom

• Premium Reshaping the ground on a real-world site now keeps its detailed buildings and roads, and the roads follow the new ground.

19 Oct 2026 · build 3dd10fe8

In the field

• The setup's HI step says “measure again and mean”, counts your readings and keeps their mean.
• A site that holds all the marks it can now says why it refused, and you can still dig an open hole deeper.
• Standing on a mark with empty hands, you can set a tripod straight over it, even on steep ground.
• At a deck's edge beside a picnic table, walking sideways now slides along the edge instead of stopping dead.
• Premium On a subdivision, the task panel prints each picked lot's record area.

Field book and collector

• In topo work a student can strike a bad shot in the Shot Log, with a reason, and the topo check skips it.
• The collector's COGO Area answers in the job's own unit and in acres.

Classroom

• Topo's 90% rule now counts each grid cell once, by its worst shot, so repeating a good shot can no longer buy a pass.
• One blocked sight line now reads “Checks (✕1)” on the builder's Checks tab, not “✕2”.
• Premium When a real-world site will show plain blocks instead of its detailed buildings, the builder's Site tab says so.
• Premium Real-world neighbourhoods can have yard fences that block sight lines and walking. Turn them on with the “Yard fences” box on the builder's Site tab.

18 Oct 2026 · build 1194fa19

In the field

• The drill panel and the task panel now start below the toolbar's second row, so ⇄ Control takes its click.
• With the shovel held, ⛏ Dig is no longer hidden under the drill panel or the task panel on a 1366 × 768 screen.
• On a phone, ⚙ Settings and other dialogs now sit above the assignment task panel and take their taps.
• At an eyepiece the drill panel folds away, so F1⇄F2, ✕ Exit and the level's mode button take their clicks.
• At either eyepiece the corner map and the phone's 🗺 button are hidden and no longer take a click.
• In a tall, narrow window both eyepieces show the same slice of the world, and the auto level's stadia wires stay inside the glass.
• Q at an eyepiece only turns the telescope left. It no longer switches Strafe or flashes a message over the view.
• The M key opens and closes the large site map, and every help text says so.
• The instrument menu and the site builder now show a focus ring you can see when you use the keyboard.
• Under the One-stick layout, holding the locator or the shovel shows a line saying D-pad left and right swap the tools and do not turn the view.

Field book and collector

• On a phone held sideways the collector's soft keys, Home, collapse and close stay on screen. Only the page area scrolls.
• A stakeout drill or assignment can put its design points into the collector's job with one press, and the steps say how.
• On a free station's Sights page the collector's top line says “Sights” and the soft keys are Sight, Clear and Solve. The key labelled Measure no longer solves the station.
• The collector's job map draws each point as what it is, names the kinds in a legend, and stops piling labels on top of each other.
• Small collector fixes: From instrument names your point, the Results page says when a setup is not stored yet, Home names itself, Delete takes two presses, and the duplicate-number message fits.
• Exports and the monument signs say which unit they are in, and a CSV import asks whether the points come in as control or as normal points.

Classroom

• The builder shows a selected mark's northing and easting in the class's units, and you can type a pair to move the mark there.
• The builder sets which way the crew faces at the staging point, and students start facing that way.
• Premium Picking a plat lot now starts the student at the control mark that can see every corner of the lot.
• Premium Your review of a student's attempt opens the recorded plat, with the evidence and the student's digs and set marks drawn on it.
• The assignment panel has a quiet save line: “Saved” with a time, “Trying to save…” on a bad connection, and amber after two minutes.
• Re-saving a site you did not change is no longer refused as “changing the authored site” on an assignment students have started.

16 Oct 2026 · build b1ab2846

In the field

• The leveling intro drill is on rolling ground now, so writing the benchmark's elevation in every row no longer passes.
• The “Steady assist” tooltip now says a field drill locks it too.
• A field drill's field book is kept in memory only, so it never adds pages to your free-play book.
• A gamepad can now reach the task panel, the drill panel and Exit sim, through rows in ☰ Settings.
• Place over on a mark that is already occupied now shows greyed out, with the reason. Setting a tripod down near a mark warns you, and tripods can no longer be stacked.
• Stepping off a deck beside a keg or a picnic table no longer throws you.

Field book and collector

• A backsight that passes on the horizontal check and fails only on the vertical now says why, and what to do next.
• After the total station moves, the collector says so, and Measure and Stake refuse until you do a new setup.
• A stored resection now writes the sights that made the station into the raw file.

Site and guides

• The privacy and terms pages now match what the product does: no sign-in notice, page counts kept with no end date, and the international foot.

15 Oct 2026 · build 15d2a842

In the field

• The auto level's rod finder picks the rod nearest the crosshair.
• Flag tape beside a rock or a stump stays on the dirt.
• A braced rod in wind now keeps about half its lean, as the guide says, not 4 %.
• Steady assist: in free play you can turn the rod's sway down to 50 % or 25 %. It stays at 100 % in a class assignment and in a field drill.
• Things you can stand on (a deck, a garden box, the grass mound) now block a sight line that passes through them.
• Premium A changed real-world site now reaches you within ten minutes.
• Premium A slow real-world site is asked for again for up to two minutes, with a line that says so and counts down.
• On a narrow phone the Field drills grid stacks each kind over its three tiers, so no column is cut off.
• On a phone held upright, “Read the pointing” at the total station no longer sits under the Brace and Wave buttons.
• Small field-drill fixes, and an empty monument recovery hand-in in a drill now scores 0 %.
• A new mark or tripod can no longer be stacked on top of another of the same kind.
• A “Look speed” slider in Settings for mouse and touch look.

Field book and collector

• COGO: an empty box counts as “not entered”, so an empty azimuth no longer stores a point due north.
• COGO azimuth boxes take degrees-minutes-seconds and bearings. Inverse prints the gun's unit plus a bearing, and points that touch or boundaries that cross are called out.

Classroom

• An empty monument recovery hand-in on a class assignment now scores 0 %, not 50 %.
• Previewing a chaining or leveling site in the builder names the right kit.
• A traverse tells the student at the start that a tripod set down by hand does not count, and the grade says why.
• Premium A retracement's instructor flags now work mark by mark.
• A closed traverse's site checks now require the closing sight, from the last control point back to the occupied control. The old last-to-first line is advice only.
• The builder's site checks now judge a sight line the way the instrument does.

Site and guides

• The site now counts page opens on its own server: only the page and the day are kept, with no cookie and no third-party analytics.

14 Oct 2026 · build 30dcddd9

In the field

• Field drills: start one from the splash, pick a Starter site, work it in a locked world, and get one check in the browser.
• A drill chip at top centre, and a Field drill row in Settings, let you restart or leave a drill.
• A leveling field drill ends with one check and a report card.
• You can drill the three sites of each kind: monument recovery, closed traverse, stakeout, topo and chaining. Chaining reports each leg in the drill panel.
• A drill link opens the splash on that drill's card. A bad link opens the grid with a note.
• One cell of the Field drills grid is tagged “📅 Today”: the daily drill.
• Parallax at both telescopes: your eye rests a little off centre, and a “Check parallax” button shows the swim.
• Premium On a real-world site, a mark set just off the road no longer floats above the grass.
• Premium A big real-world site no longer freezes the page for seconds while the ground by the road is drawn.
• A garbled sentence in the topo task panel now reads properly.
• The sim's tones now play through one sound system. The Sounds tab gains switches for Effects, Footsteps and Ambient, ready for recorded sounds that are not in the sim yet.
• The task panel's design points switch units when you do.
• Premium A plat's published control switches units when you do.
• The rodman's hand now grips the level rod without hiding it, on every rodman, a crewmate's too.

Classroom

• Your Starter-site list warns that a Starter site's answers are open to anyone.
• On a phone, the Site library's Starter-site rows stay inside their card.

Crews

• Friends can join your field drill as a party, and when the host checks the drill, everyone sees the result at once.
• The crew-chief warning on a student's task panel is now dark enough to read.

12 Oct 2026 · build 6d5a2a3d

Field book and collector

• For voice control and screen readers, the Shots button and the calculator's x², ft→m and m→ft keys are named by the words on them, and INV renames the trig keys too.
• Compass adjust refuses a closing point the traverse never reaches, and says why.
• Process Raw works out each shot from the station as it stood at that moment.

Classroom

• The “no staging point” check sends you to the Avatar tab, where the button is.
• Premium Removing a subdivision after picking a lot no longer locks every ground choice.
• Premium Click a picked lot again to un-pick it.

Crews

• The seat chart's Kick and Take seat buttons are named by their words for voice control and screen readers.
• The Kick button's text is a lighter pink that is easier to read.

Site and guides

• The privacy page no longer promises, in bold, that no student data reaches us by email.
• The privacy page now says the problem-report reply box is the one place a student may type an address.

11 Oct 2026 · build 7d896199

In the field

• The auto level now focuses like the total station: the same ring, keys, buttons and blur.

11 Oct 2026 · build 53082547

In the field

• On a phone, the instruction line at the bottom of the telescope view no longer covers the picture.

Site and guides

• Three sentences on the privacy page about students and email addresses now match what the Report a problem form allows.

7 Oct 2026 · build c6fbc954

In the field

• Premium On a real-world site, the corner map now shows the detailed roads, sidewalks and buildings once they arrive.

Crews

• On a site with a raised elevation, a crew member who follows the host's new seed or real-world site now gets the ground at the site's own height, not at 100 m.

6 Oct 2026 · build 48fff664

In the field

• The total station's telescope has a focusing ring: only what is at the focused distance is sharp.
• Through the telescope, an ID tag blurs along with the object it names.
• A screen reader now says a name for every row of the controller table in the in-app Help.
• Premium In free play, “🌍 Change site…” beside Terrain in ⚙ Settings reopens the 🌍 picker and keeps the site.
• The total station's round bubble now sits out on a tribrach lobe, where you can see it.
• In VR at the total station, click the right stick for the rough sight. The LCD page moves to the left stick.
• In VR, put your eye behind the total station's or the auto level's eyepiece to look through it.
• In VR, while you look into a tripod's plummet, a grip anywhere slides the instrument.
• In VR the field book turns with your left hand, like a clipboard.

Site and guides

• Report a problem: one form, from the sim's ⚙ menu, the classroom header and the site's footer.

3 Oct 2026 · build 9648f4c6

In the field

• In VR, bend down and put your eye to the tribrach's eyepiece to open the optical plummet.
• In VR you set up an instrument with your hands, from a kit case on your wrist.
• In VR a watch on your left wrist opens the field book and the kit case.
• In VR you turn the instrument's drives with your hands at the eyepiece.
• In VR a real step in your room moves you, and the view goes dark where it cannot follow.

Crews

• In a party, a VR player shows as in VR, turns their head for others to see, and answers role swaps from the wrist.

2 Oct 2026 · build 34fea3b1

In the field

• After you set up a prism, the total station still uses its own tripod.
• In VR you look into a carried tripod's plummet, and a bare tripod has a plumb bob.
• In VR a snap turn turns what you carry with you.
• In VR you look through the auto level.
• Four fixes from the first VR try-out, among them your eye height when you stand on a log.
• VR now starts on the live site: open the sim on a Meta Quest 3 with ?xr=1 at the end of the address.

1 Oct 2026 · build 717489c1

In the field

• The opening screen names the build the page came from, after “Version”. The headings on this page use the same names.
• Premium A real-world site too dense for its detailed buildings is turned down at once, not after a minute of building.
• A first VR pilot for the Meta Quest 3 is in this build, but the live site does not let it start yet.

29 Sep 2026 · build fead4c14

In the field

• Kit walls block to their full height, lamp and sign posts block where they stand, decks never block a shot, boulders are single rocks, and the builder's size label is the real size.
• Every object other than a tree now blocks your sight line only where it is drawn, for the instrument, the Checks tab and the reflectorless beam alike.
• Houses, walls, hedges and other placed objects now stop you, and refuse a mark, only where they are drawn.
• You and the rod now stand on the drawn surface of a mound, a garden box or a sidewalk.
• The gas-station canopy's two posts now stop you, and you can still walk under its roof.
• The in-ground pool's corner piece now stops you.
• A deck or garden box too high to step onto stops you at its drawn edge, and a deck on a slope no longer throws you off.
• Premium A big, busy real-world site no longer looks stuck loading: its detailed buildings load when they fit, and it tells you why when they do not.

Crews

• The seating chart's “open” and “you” are easier to read over a bright scene, and opening Multiplayer no longer turns other writing italic.

28 Sep 2026 · build 282cb4bc

In the field

• A tree blocks your sight line only where the tree is drawn: at its trunk and in its leaves.
• The grey hint and label text on the see-through panels is lighter, so it stays readable over a bright scene.
• The amber, red and small grey-green words on the see-through panels stay readable when something bright is behind them.
• Premium Every way of placing the 🌍 picker's pin keeps it inside the area the site service can build.

28 Sep 2026 · build eec0d085

In the field

• Premium The 🌍 picker's Lat and Lon boxes refuse what they cannot use, and say so.
• The four custom-day weather boxes in free play no longer zoom a phone.
• Free play's custom day refuses a number out of range, and says so, like the builder.

Classroom

• Premium On a retracement, the builder no longer says missing corners were “left out”.
• Open world no longer promises a field book you switched off.

Site and guides

• The instructor guide no longer says Collector is always a seat.
• The FAQ explains a missing Collector, Shots or Calc button.

27 Sep 2026 · build 0aedf6b4

In the field

• The splash screen links to the instructor and student sign-in.
• Free play's custom day refuses an emptied box.

Classroom

• An emptied number box in the builder is refused, not read as 0.
• A builder number outside its range is refused, and the message says the range.

26 Sep 2026 · build 208e16c2

Classroom

• An empty Site elevation box is refused, in the builder and on the create form.
• An empty number box on the create form is refused, not sent as 0.

26 Sep 2026 · build 6b4e8a4c

Classroom

• The builder shows how long each leg of a level run is: in the run list, on the map and in the 3D view.

25 Sep 2026 · build 3745a2fc

In the field

• Flagging on a mark now lies on the ground instead of standing up.

Classroom

• Premium You can name a real-world spot when you load it, and rename it later in “Used before”.
• Premium Plat retracement is the eighth exercise: students recover the corners of their lots from the record plat.

24 Sep 2026 · build 6c8064ab

In the field

• The rodman can tie flagging on a mark, and the tape still shows after the hole is filled.

24 Sep 2026 · build fb884bed

Classroom

• Premium A student on a subdivision is handed the recorded plat, and the instructor sees what time did to the corners.

24 Sep 2026 · build 8d4afdfa

In the field

• Premium Every rod on a plat now stands on the ground: buried by its cover, gone when missing, off its record when disturbed.

Classroom

• Premium The builder can make a subdivision the site, and turn a lot's corners into the exercise.

24 Sep 2026 · build 29af0cdf

Nothing you can see changed in this build.

24 Sep 2026 · build 7e47a45a

In the field

• Premium On a real-world site, the ground no longer shows through the road.
• Premium A thin line of bare ground across the road at each station is gone.

23 Sep 2026 · build 5721b6bb

Classroom

• The traverse exercise is now graded on occupying every point, the loop's own closure, and position.
• When the builder refuses a placement, your tool and selection stay as they were.
• The builder shows how many marks, objects and notes a site can hold, and refuses in plain words at the limit.
• The site-elevation box never names or shows a number it would then refuse.

Crews

• The class seating chart no longer offers Collector on a lab with no handheld, and names a student already stuck in that seat.

Site and guides

• A wrong address now shows a “page not found” page instead of starting the whole simulator.
• The small orange label above each big heading is now dark enough to read where a ruled line runs through it.

22 Sep 2026 · build 344bacac

In the field

• The total station now works from your own coordinates for the point it stands on and for the backsight, not the true ones, so a traverse carries its error forward as a real one does.
• The text-prompt box can no longer grow off both ends of a short screen.
• The text prompt's buttons and typing box are now big enough to hit with a finger.

Classroom

• You can download a student's field book as a spreadsheet from the drill-down.
• An integrity flag now says whose shots it counted, instead of blaming whoever's report it lands on.

Crews

• A student can no longer take the Collector seat on a lab where you switched the handheld off.
• Host, Join and Leave on the Multiplayer panel are big enough to hit with a finger.

21 Sep 2026 · build 971f0d3b

In the field

• Leaving a telescope eyepiece now puts the keyboard focus back where you left it.
• The time of day you pick now survives a reload and reaches your crew.
• The traverse panel no longer shows two different counts of the same marks with nothing to explain them.

Classroom

• The drill-down field book no longer prints coordinates in metres beside readings in feet.
• You are now emailed when a student asks for a new PIN.

Crews

• The Multiplayer panel now fits a phone held sideways, and scrolls inside itself instead of running off the screen.
• The locked crew code box now tells a student what to do when their chief hosts again and the code changes.
• The crew room code is now locked, so a student cannot leave the site their attempt is graded against.

Site and guides

• Two help pages no longer promise a fine mode on three setup controls when only one has it.

20 Sep 2026 · build dd3dce14

Classroom

• Your copy of a student's field book now opens on what the instrument read (face, HA, ZA, SD, HI) before any arithmetic.
• Coming back from a student's site returns you to that student's review, not the top of the class.

20 Sep 2026 · build b3c695fc

Crews

• A crew brief now says whose job each step is, and the task panel says which seat you hold. It no longer offers the handheld to a class that has it switched off.

20 Sep 2026 · build ff852fb5

In the field

• Settings has a Controls tab and a Sounds tab.
• The custom-day weather number boxes are dark like everything else in the panel.
• The folded task panel no longer sits on top of the handheld.
• The task panel no longer says your instructor withheld some kit, a sentence that only ever covered two of the three tools.

Classroom

• Open World now greys out the grading modes it cannot do, instead of refusing after you press Create.

19 Sep 2026 · build 04bae33c

In the field

• Reloading an assignment puts you back where you were standing, not back at the start, even if all you did was walk.
• On the One-stick pad layout, left and right on the D-pad now do exactly one thing at a time.
• Premium A saved real-world site with damaged road data no longer draws roads over the wrong ground.

Classroom

• Premium On a real-world site with reshaped ground, the roads are left out again rather than drawn over ground that moved.

19 Sep 2026 · build 78542cc

In the field

• Standing under a tree no longer makes the reflectorless beam invent a distance to open sky, or block the instrument's sight line.
• The Terrain box in free play now says “Hilly”, the same word the builder uses for that ground.

Classroom

• A refused site elevation now says so, and the message no longer vanishes when you click away.
• The site elevation box on the New assignment form asks in the same units as the builder.
• Placing something outside the site is refused at once, in a sentence you can act on.
• Premium A refused terrain paint stroke comes back instead of disappearing.

18 Sep 2026 · build 8ec78f1

In the field

• Town is no longer one of the grounds you can pick.

18 Sep 2026 · build 93be53c

Classroom

• One instructor can hand another a code and get a copy of their assignment.
• A share code stops working when the work it points at is gone.

17 Sep 2026 · build b36e1bd

Nothing you can see changed in this build.

17 Sep 2026 · build 8b08c72

In the field

• A leveling link now closes on one benchmark, and the checklist names which one.

17 Sep 2026 · build 82407d0

In the field

• The leveling step list no longer calls a link a loop.
• The chat panel can be dragged and remembers where you left it. A gamepad player is no longer told LB cycles the instrument view, and the help panel has one name.

Field book and collector

• The paper field book's tooltips and refusals no longer name a deleted button or tell you to strike a tag, and the records guide now matches what the book does.

Site and guides

• The controller table in the sim's ? Help panel and the one in the Controls guide now match, including what works at each eyepiece.
• The guides now say what the setup panel really does: five steps, the height read with a laser and not a tape, and a shorter setup for the auto level.
• The guides now say the paper book is graded only for leveling, call the collector's screen RESIDUALS as it does, and describe a six-key handheld.
• The walkthroughs guide no longer tells students to watch for flags they cannot see.

16 Sep 2026 · build da0bbc8

In the field

• After a reload, the ground-colour control shows the setting the world really has.

Classroom

• Premium Water can sit at the elevation of the ground you clicked on.
• Premium Flatten makes a building pad on a mountain site, instead of a deep crater.
• Visiting a chaining attempt no longer tells you to mount your instrument.

16 Sep 2026 · build 4dc12d5

Nothing you can see changed in this build.

15 Sep 2026 · build a73b799

Classroom

• A graded assignment now states the standard before the student starts, not only once they are in the field.

15 Sep 2026 · build bb20e82

Classroom

• Premium Saving an assignment onto a real-world spot now counts that spot, so the limit on spots cannot be walked around.

15 Sep 2026 · build 7d4126e

In the field

• Premium The 🌍 Real World picker draws a real map again.
• A refused shot now tells you why, instead of always saying “sight the rod”.

Classroom

• You can publish a site at its own elevation: BM-1 no longer always sits at exactly 100.000.

Crews

• Join a crew that is already full and you now read both why you were bumped and what a spectator can do.

14 Sep 2026 · build 668b9ca

In the field

• Premium The 🌍 picker remembers where you have worked before.
• A traverse student can see which parts of the specification they have met.

Classroom

• Premium Each instructor can hold a set number of real-world spots at once.
• Premium Un-archiving a class takes back the real-world spots its work stands on.
• You can see what a student shot, not only what they booked.

14 Sep 2026 · build f91c993

In the field

• At the eyepiece the instrument now tells you on screen why it refused.
• The ⇄ role pill tells a screen reader which role you hold.

Field book and collector

• In the paper field book, two or three numbers separated by spaces now book as degrees, minutes and seconds in any column, and decimal minutes keep all their figures.

Classroom

• Classroom error messages now reach a screen reader.

Site and guides

• The questions in the student guides are real headings now, so a screen reader can jump between them.

13 Sep 2026 · build a26fc10

In the field

• The toolbar fits on a phone again.
• On a touchscreen the sim names the button to press, not a key the device does not have.
• A message on screen follows the device you pick up, instead of the one you started with.
• The interact menu's rod hint names the right button for your device.
• The rodman signpost no longer tells you to brace the rod with the shovel key.
• The “now switch to the rodman” cue appears where you are looking.

Site and guides

• The Controls guide's Touch section names all the buttons.

13 Sep 2026 · build 8fffe2c

In the field

• The first-run tour card no longer sits on top of the buttons it names.

Crews

• The leveling brief no longer tells a crew's rodman to leave their seat.

12 Sep 2026 · build d750cc1

In the field

• The range-pole row says Prism HR, not rod.
• The guided setup says which way to correct.
• On a small screen, the opening screen says a laptop works better.

Site and guides

• The free and Premium limits on the Instructors page (seats, classes, library sites) now come straight from the classroom's own settings, so they cannot go out of date.
• Four sentences on the site that had stopped being true are corrected.