student guide · start here

Start here

You are probably here because something is not working the way you expected. Three questions cover most of it, so start with those. If none of them is yours, the page list at the bottom says what each part of the guide covers.

I can't sign in. Your code is not recognised, the class code has stopped working, you have lost your slip, or you have forgotten your PIN. All of it is fixable and most of it your instructor can do in seconds. I did the work and it wasn't graded. On a leveling assignment the marker reads only the entries you have tagged. An untagged answer scores nothing, however right it is. This is the single commonest way to lose marks here. What am I supposed to be doing? The task panel holds your objective and a numbered list. The walkthroughs page explains the shape of each kind of exercise and the thing students most often get wrong in it.

Which of the three places you are in

the app does not tell you

The same sim runs in three situations, and they behave differently. Nothing on screen announces which one you are in, so it is worth being able to tell.

The simulator's opening screen: the title Land Surveying Simulator over a painted landscape, with Enter the field, Multiplayer session, Learn more and Music off buttons. — the simulator's opening screen — you enter this, you do not read it

The public site

Anyone can open the sim without a class. The full kit, nothing graded, nothing handed in.

Free play, from your class

Signed in, but with no assignment open. The full kit again, and your work is not marked. There is a way back to your class from here.

An assignment

A task panel appears. This is the one that counts. Your instructor may have taken tools out of your kit, and what you leave behind is what gets marked.

Tools can be missing on purpose. Inside an assignment your instructor can remove the calculator, the shot log, the field book or the data collector. Unticking the shot log or the calculator says so on your task panel — but a data collector set to Not available is simply gone, with no message at all. Nothing is broken. Ask your instructor if you expected it.

One thing you only get in free play: the Shot Log's Truth tick box, which shows the real coordinates and how far off yours were. It is not there in a graded attempt, and that is not a setting anyone can turn on.

The rest of the guide

five more pages

Getting started — your two codes, the first sign-in, every one after it, your first instrument setup and your first shot.
Controls — every key, button and gesture, in the field, at an eyepiece and in a panel. Written out, so you can read it on a phone while the sim is on another screen.
Your records — the three places your work is kept, which one is graded, and how to tag an answer so it counts. Read this before your first graded leveling run.
The walkthroughs — what each of the seven exercises asks of you, and the trap in each one.
Why is it doing that? — the things students actually hit: refusals, numbers that look wrong, work that did not count, and the defects we already know about.

Two pages that are not part of this guide. What the sim is explains the kit and why the work here transfers, for someone deciding whether to use it. And your instructor has their own guide — worth a look if you want to know what they can see and change.

While you are in the field there is also a ? Help button under the ⚙ menu. That one follows the device in your hands: pick up a controller and it switches to controller buttons, touch the keyboard and it switches back. This guide cannot do that, which is why the controls page writes the keyboard out in full.