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Walk to your rocket with AR and the Recovery Map

The Recover tab has a mode selector at the bottom with three options: List, Map, and AR. Map mode is the Recovery Map — a walking map that rotates to your heading. AR mode is the AR Recovery HUD — a camera overlay with a world-locked reticle on the rocket's GPS position. Both are currently Experimental, and they are designed to complement each other rather than compete. This guide walks through how they feel, how to use them, and when to pick which.

List mode — the baseline

List mode is the default. You see bearing, direction, and distance from where you are to your rocket's last reported GPS position, along with the rocket's coordinates and the flight's maximum values. It is the compact, text-first view, and it is often the right answer when you just want to glance at the numbers before setting off.

The mode selector switches between List, Map, and AR at any time — you are not locked in. Many fliers start in List, pop into Map to plan the walk, and pull up AR when they are close enough to spot the rocket.

Map mode: the Recovery Map

Status: Experimental Feature. Switch the Recover tab to Map and you get a dedicated walking map. It does one thing: get you from where you are to where your rocket landed.

Your position is a blue dot, the rocket is a red-orange diamond, and a colored route line between the two shortens as you close the distance. The map auto-rotates to your heading so "forward" on screen is "forward" in real life. It auto-zooms to keep both you and the rocket in view, tightening as you approach — you do not need to pinch-zoom manually while walking.

A direction badge in the lower-right reads in walker-friendly language. Instead of a compass bearing in degrees, you see phrases you can act on:

  • “ahead” — keep going the way you are facing.
  • “right 47 degrees” (or left, at the relevant angle) — turn that much to line up.
  • “backwards” — you are walking away from the rocket; turn around.
  • “nearby” — you are inside GPS accuracy; look around.

When cell coverage is gone, the Recovery Map switches automatically to pre-downloaded walking-recovery tiles — detailed enough to see fence lines, tree lines, and terrain features. That depends on having those tiles downloaded before you arrived; the pre-load offline maps guide covers the prep step, and specifically the Walking Tiles option that fills in the close-in detail.

AR mode: the AR Recovery HUD

Status: Experimental Feature. Switch the Recover tab to AR and the camera comes up with telemetry overlaid on the live view. You see your surroundings and your rocket's position at the same time — no switching attention between phone and field.

A compass ribbon runs across the top showing your heading, with a triangle marker where the rocket's bearing lies. A direction strip on the right shows distance and a directional arrow, reading "nearby" when you are within about seven meters. The central piece is a targeting reticle — a diamond shape that appears at the rocket's GPS position when that position falls in the camera's field of view. The reticle is world-locked: pan, tilt, or roll the phone and it stays on the rocket's coordinates.

Tap the HUD to cycle through four color themes — green, amber, cyan, or white. Site lighting varies, and the right theme at a bright dry lake bed is not the right theme under tree cover or in evening light. Cycling is the fastest way to find one that reads clearly where you are.

GPS uncertainty on both views

A dashed ring around the reported position — the GPS Uncertainty Circle — appears in both the Recovery Map and the AR HUD. On the map it is drawn at the real accuracy radius in meters and scales with zoom. In AR it is perspective-compressed by viewing angle, so it grows on screen as you approach, honestly showing how much ground "somewhere in here" actually covers when you arrive.

The radius comes from the flight computer's HDOP. In practice, that is 3-5 meters in clear sky, 5-8 meters in typical conditions, and 10-25 meters with obstructed sky or poor satellite geometry. A very large circle is useful information: the rocket probably landed where the satellites were compromised, so search wider. For the full explanation, see GPS uncertainty circle explained.

What you need

The Recovery Map works whenever the Recover tab does — an active telemetry connection to a GPS-equipped flight computer (TeleMega, TeleMetrum, or TeleGPS) reporting a position that the app can render.

The AR HUD is a little pickier about its inputs:

  • A rear camera (iPhones and iPads have one).
  • GPS location services enabled for AltosUI.
  • An active telemetry connection to a GPS-equipped flight computer.

Without any of those, the HUD will not have enough information to draw the world-locked reticle. The Map will still work on GPS plus telemetry alone.

When to pick which

The Map and the HUD solve slightly different problems on the walk back.

  • Reach for the Recovery Map for the general walk. When the rocket is a hundred meters out across a field, what you want is a map with a route line, a heading indicator, and a sense of the terrain you are crossing. The auto-zoom and auto-rotate handle the moment-to-moment; the direction badge tells you when to correct. You can glance at the map, pocket the phone, and walk.
  • Reach for the AR HUD when you are close and need to spot the rocket. Inside the last few dozen meters, the map is honest but not particularly useful — the blue dot and the diamond are practically on top of each other at any readable zoom. Switch to AR, hold the phone up, and the reticle lands on the patch of ground the rocket is actually in. In tall grass or brush, that is the difference between "I see it" and ten minutes of sweeping the area.

The List mode is still useful too — the compact text summary for when you just want to know the numbers before setting off, or for when you want to see the flight's max values alongside the recovery bearing.

Practical flow from landing to hand-on-rocket

  1. When the rocket is on the ground and the Flight tab shows landed, switch to the Recover tab.
  2. Start in List to read off the bearing and distance, or in Map to see the route.
  3. Start walking. The Recovery Map rotates to your heading and the route line shortens as you close in.
  4. When the direction badge reads nearby or the distance drops to a few tens of meters, switch to AR.
  5. Hold the phone up and scan. The reticle lands on the rocket's GPS position in the camera view.
  6. Walk the last few meters by eye, with the reticle confirming you are looking in the right direction.

Both features are Experimental

Both the Recovery Map and the AR Recovery HUD carry an Experimental label. That is not a hedge — both are fully built, shipped in the App Store, and in use in the field. The label is a promise that the behavior is not done changing until people who fly with it say the behavior feels right.

If you use either of these and have thoughts — the direction-badge phrasing on the map, the color themes in the AR view, the auto-zoom timing, the reticle accuracy — that feedback is what moves a feature out of Experimental. See help us ship these features out of Experimental for how to send it.

On the next recovery, try switching between modes instead of picking one. The modes are designed to be used together — Map for the walk, AR for the find.