SurveyorSimstudent guide · controls
Every control, written out
The sim has its own ? Help panel, and it is better than this page in one way: it follows the device in your hands, so a controller player sees controller buttons. It is worse in the way that matters right now — you cannot read it while you are stuck, on a phone, with the sim on another screen. So this is the same information, written out.
The button and the panel are both labelled ? Help.
It lives under the ⚙ menu at the top-left.
№ 1
Moving
five speeds, on purpose| Key | What it does |
|---|---|
| W A S D | Walk. You move relative to the camera, and you turn to face where you are going. |
| Shift + W A S D | Run. |
| Alt + W A S D | Precision creep — a few centimetres a second, for easing onto a mark. |
| Arrow keys | Fine walk. They override WASD: hold an arrow and WASD is ignored. |
| Shift + arrows | Extra-fine. Slower again. |
The mouse orbits the camera by dragging, and the wheel zooms it.
Some panels hold you still; the small ones do not. These stop
you moving while they are open: Settings, Help, the guided
setup, the Shot Log, the expanded map, the recorded plat
sheet, and the field book once you take it full screen. So do the telescope and the set-pin minigame.
You keep walking with the field book at its normal two-page size, and with the
floating tools — the calculator, the weather kit, the tide panel — which is what
they are for: read them while you work.
If a key seems to be doing nothing, check whether your cursor is sitting in a text
box: while you are typing, every one of these is switched off.
№ 2
In the field
the working keys| Key | What it does |
|---|---|
| E | Open and close the interact menu — everything you can do with whatever is in reach: place a tripod, mount an instrument, look through an eyepiece, change the rod, open the instrument-view porthole. |
| 1 … 9 | Pick that numbered action out of the open interact menu. |
| C | Swap between the observer and the rodman. Works at an eyepiece too — it steps you back from the glass first. Refused if a multiplayer session has locked you to a role. |
| F | The verb for what is in your hands: with the locator it puts the shovel in your hands, with the shovel it digs one pass, with the chain it stops the pull and opens the set-pin panel. With anything else, nothing. |
| Space | Hold to brace the rod, as the rodman. Watch the stamina arc and let go before it runs out. |
| Q | Lock and unlock strafe — side-step onto a mark without turning. |
| P | Start and stop pacing. Starting resets the count to zero; stopping leaves the number on screen so you can book it. |
| M | Open and close the site map — the large plan view, north up. The small corner map stays as it is. |
| T | Open and close the total station's telescope. |
| V | Cycle the instrument-view porthole — what the instrument can see, in a corner of your screen. |
There is no key to swap back to the locator. F
takes you from the locator to the shovel and then keeps digging. Getting the
locator back is the 🔎 Locator button on screen — there is no keyboard
route, and looking for one is a waste of your time.
Setting up on the tripod uses h l j
k. While the guided setup is open: h and l walk the
bubble left and right (the bottom pair of screws, or the bottom legs);
j and k walk it down and up (the top one). On the plummet step the
same four slide the instrument over the mark, and Shift makes those four
finer — on that step only. The arrow keys do the same thing, and on a focused footscrew or leg clamp
↑ ↓ move that one on its own. The panel says which way to go as
you work. On the legs and the rough level it names where the bubble sits as
well as which way to walk it; on fine level it gives you the direction only,
because the vial you are reading there and the bubble it takes the direction from
are two different instruments, and it will not guess across them.
The auto level's eyepiece has no hotkey. T is the
total station's telescope only. To look through the level, walk to it and use the
interact menu.
№ 3
At an eyepiece
aiming and leaving| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Drag | Aim. The finer the field of view, the finer the drag. |
| Arrow keys | Fine aim, one step at a time. |
| Mouse wheel | Zoom — at the total station's telescope only. There is no wheel zoom at the auto level and none in the rough sight. ⚠ This zoom is a simulator concession, not an instrument control. A real telescope is fixed magnification; you get a zoom here because a small screen makes the target hard to see. What you reach for on the real thing is the focus — and the reason you touch it is parallax: if the crosshair swims against the target as you shift your eye, refocus until it stops, or your pointing is off. |
| The focusing ring | Focus — at both telescopes, the total station's and the auto level's, and not in the rough sight. The thin knurled ring just inside the edge of the glass is the focusing ring: drag round it and it turns with your finger, clockwise for farther. The wheel on the ring turns it too, and Shift + wheel anywhere on the picture turns it in fine steps. A tap on the ring's left half steps nearer, on its right half farther. Only what is at the focused distance is sharp. It runs from the instrument's closest focus — 1.7 m (5.6 ft) on the total station, 0.7 m (2.3 ft) on the auto level — to infinity, and it has no scale: you judge it by the picture. Focus never moves the instrument. But your eye rests a little off centre, as a real eye does, so with the focus wrong the target sits slightly off the crosshair — and if you centre it there, your pointing (or your rod reading) is off by that much. Focus until the picture is sharp: on a prism, a reflectorless return or the level's rod, within about two clicks of the ring of perfect focus at the total station, or one at the auto level, there is no slide at all, and the parallax check below shows whether you are there. Anything else holds still only in perfect focus. Not at the Zero error level, and only while Parallax is on in ⚙ Settings (an assignment sets it for you). |
| , . | Turn the focus: , nearer, . farther, and with Shift in fine steps — at either telescope, and not in the rough sight. While the calculator has the keyboard, . types its decimal point instead. |
| P, or the Check parallax button in the row of Brace the rod, to the right of the instructions (top right on a phone held upright) | The parallax check, at either telescope and not in the rough sight: one press sweeps your eye once round inside the eyepiece for about two seconds, then back. If the target swims against the crosshair, the focus is off — turn the ring and check again until it holds still. Any aim stops the check and puts your eye back where it rests, so you can never book a pointing taken mid-sweep. Away from an eyepiece, P still paces. |
| V | Swap between the telescope and the rough sight. Use the rough sight to find the prism first: the telescope's field of view is usually too narrow to search with. |
| T or Esc | Leave the eyepiece. |
| [ ] | Turn the pages of the instrument display — total station only. |
| Tab → Read the pointing | Says the aim out loud, once, for a screen reader: which target you are on and, until the prism is on the glass, how far off the crosshair sits and in which direction. On the glass it says “on target — bisect by eye”, as the line on the glass does: centring the crosshair on the prism is your own skill. The button is invisible until you tab to it, then it slides up at the bottom of the eyepiece — it is there for people who cannot read the line printed on the glass, and it stays out of the way of everyone else. Press Enter to hear it again. ⚠ Mouse and gamepad cannot reach it: it has no tap target, and the pad aims the telescope rather than walking the controls. Use a keyboard, or a touch screen reader. |
| Tab → Check parallax | The same button from a keyboard or a screen reader: the stop after Focus farther. Enter or Space runs one sweep. |
| Tab → Focus nearer / Focus farther | The focusing ring for a keyboard or a screen reader: at the total station the next two stops after Read the pointing, at the auto level the two after ✕ Exit, invisible until you tab to them in the same way. Enter or Space steps the focus once. They say no distance, because the glass shows none. |
Measure, Set HA 0 and F1⇄F2 have no keyboard shortcut. They
are the on-screen keys under the instrument display. Click them, or press
Tab until one is highlighted and then Enter. Read the
pointing is reached the same way, and is the only one of them you cannot see
until you get there. If you have read
somewhere that Enter measures, or that 0 zeroes the circle —
it does not.
№ 4
What has no key at all
so you stop huntingThese are on-screen buttons and nothing else. Some of them have a controller button; none of them has a key.
- Measure, Set HA 0 and F1⇄F2 — the instrument's own keys.
- 📋 Shot Log — button only.
- 📖 Field book — button, or RB on a controller.
- 📟 Collector — button only.
- ⛏ Dig and 🔎 Locator — the shovel pair, in one HUD row. The dig button reads Dig here while the locator is in hand and Dig once the shovel is. Dig has the key F as well; the Locator is button only, and is how you get it back from the shovel.
- ☰ Layers on the expanded map.
- ⚙ Settings and ? Help — the cog menu, or MENU on a controller.
Everything here is reachable with Tab and
Enter. If you have no mouse, that is the route.
№ 5
Touch
phone, tablet, ChromebookThe on-screen controls appear by themselves when the sim decides you are on a touch device. You do not turn them on — Settings has an override only for when it guesses wrong.
- MOVE is the stick at the bottom left. Push gently to walk slower.
- LOOK is the stick at the bottom right. It orbits the camera.
- Fast toggles running. It sits with the MOVE stick, and only exists on touch — on a keyboard that is Shift.
- Everything you interact with goes through the Interact chip. Tapping the ground does not walk you there, and tapping an object does not select it.
- Panels drag by their title bars, and remember where you put them.
Nine things §2 In the field teaches as keys have a button instead. That section is written for a keyboard, so it names the key and stops. Here is the same list with the control you actually tap. The words below are the words on the button — if the sim prints something different, the sim is right and this page is stale.
| To do this | Tap this | The key it lists |
|---|---|---|
| Swap between observer and rodman | the Control pill, top left | C |
| Dig, or the tool verb generally | ⛏ Dig — captioned ⛏ Dig here while the locator is in your hands | F |
| Steady the rod | hold 🫁 Brace | Space |
| Lock strafe — side-step without turning | Strafe | Q |
| Pace off a distance | Pace | P |
| Open the site map | the ⛶ Expand button on the corner map, or a tap on the corner map itself. On a narrow screen (most phones, and most tablets held upright) the corner map starts hidden: the 🗺 Map button only brings it back | M |
| Cycle the instrument-view porthole | ◎ View | V |
| Pick an action from the interact menu | tap the row | 1–9 |
| Turn the instrument's LCD pages | Page ▷ on the LCD | [ ] |
Two names for one thing, again. The swap control's button
says Control, and this guide calls it the Control pill because it
also shows who you are driving — Control: Observer. Same button. The
◎ View button is likewise not the controller's VIEW button: that one
opens the site map, and §6 Controller says so where it names it.
The three round knobs at the eyepiece, top to bottom:
ZOOM at the top, then the up/down tangent, then the left/right
tangent at the bottom. The outer ring is coarse and the inner disc is fine. The
auto level has one knob, and it only pans left and right.
The creep IS on the stick — just at the very bottom of its
travel. Pushed about 8 px from centre, the MOVE stick walks you at roughly
0.05 m/s, which is the same crawl Alt + WASD gives a keyboard. This
page used to say there was no touch equivalent. That was measured and it is
wrong. What touch genuinely does not have is the arrow-key fine walk
and Shift + arrows extra-fine: there is no control for those on a
phone or a controller, and that is a gap in the sim rather than a missing
label.
№ 6
Controller
one button, one meaningPress any button and every hint in the sim switches to controller labels, and back the moment you touch the keyboard. Layout, deadzone, look speed and hold-versus-toggle all live under Settings once a pad has been seen.
| Button | In the field | At the telescope | In a panel or menu |
|---|---|---|---|
| A button | Tool verb — brace, dig, set a pin | Measure | Press the highlight |
| B button | Close the weather kit or tide panel | Leave focusing mode, then the eyepiece | Back out |
| X button | Interact menu | Set HA 0 | Close the interact menu · Layers, on the map |
| Y button | Swap observer ⇄ rodman | F1 ⇄ F2 (plunge) | — |
| Left and right bumpers | Site map / field book | MENU / Page | LB closes the map · ±0.10 ft in the pin minigame |
| Left trigger | Precision — a slower walk, a finer aim, and finer on the centring slide. Never the only way to reach anything. | ||
| Right trigger | Strafe lock | Measure (the trigger) | — |
| Left stick | Walk (L3 = run) | Aim | ▴▾ move through the interact menu · at the guided setup it works the legs, footscrews and centring slide · LT is finer on the centring slide. |
| Right stick | Camera | Aim | — |
| Left stick click | Run — held, or toggled on and off in Settings | Focusing mode: ▴▾ turn the focus (LT = finer), ◂▸ run the parallax check, until L3 or B again | — |
| Right stick click | Pace off a distance | Telescope ⇄ rough sight | — |
| D-pad | ▴▾ zoom · ◂▸ swap locator/shovel | Step the aim (LT = finer) · in focusing mode ▴▾ turn the focus and ◂▸ run the parallax check | ▴▾ move · ◂▸ adjust a dropdown or slider |
| Menu and View buttons | MENU opens and closes Settings, everywhere except an eyepiece. At an eyepiece it does one thing: where the line of controls has folded to ⓘ Controls, it opens and closes that line. VIEW opens the site map, everywhere. It is not the ◎ View button on screen, which is the rodman’s instrument-view porthole — one word, two controls. The pad’s is Microsoft’s name for that button, not ours. | ||
Stick layout changes three of these rows. Under
Settings → Controls, Stick layout is one of three:
- Default — the table above, exactly as it reads. Left stick walks, right stick looks, and the D-pad zooms with ▴▾ and swaps the locator and the shovel with ◂▸.
- Southpaw — the two sticks trade jobs. Left stick becomes the camera and Right stick walks, so rows one and two of the table are the other way round. Nothing else moves.
- One-stick — the camera comes off the sticks entirely and onto the D-pad, so the whole sim is playable with one thumb and one finger. The right stick goes quiet, ▴▾ tilts the view instead of zooming (there is no pad zoom under this layout), and ◂▸ turns the view.
One-stick has one exception. While the rodman is holding
the locator or the shovel, ◂▸ goes back to being the swap between
those two and does not turn the view. Put the tool away and ◂▸ is the
camera again — it is never both at once. The reason is that ◂▸ is the only
one-press way to swap those two on a pad: with the shovel in hand
A digs, and the 🔎 Locator button on the screen is not something a
controller can reach. You would not be stuck without it — the interact menu
under X will stow the shovel and hand the locator back — but that is four
presses in the middle of a dig instead of one.
The auto level is not the telescope. At the level's eyepiece
A, RT, X, Y, LB and RB all do nothing, and the D-pad
steps only left and right — except in L3 focusing mode, where ▴▾ turn the focus and ◂▸
run the parallax check, as they do at the telescope. The column above is the total station's.
If your controller does nothing at all, it is probably not
reporting the standard layout the browser expects. A pad that does not is ignored
completely — no buttons and no movement — rather than half working.