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Offline mode for Ares Alpha App

#11 · November 27, 2025, 8:15 am

Thank you for the information; it’s very helpful.
Could you also tell us how quickly players locations were updated?

#12 · November 27, 2025, 12:06 pm

Hi!

Location update time set at 60s.

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#13 · November 27, 2025, 5:00 pm

Your points line up with what we’ve seen too. LoRa works fine for smaller groups, around 10–20 players, but it starts to struggle once the games get bigger. Ares Alpha needs to also cover large events with hundreds of players—LoRa just can’t keep up. Also, player locations on Ares are usually updated every 10–30 seconds.

Getting feedback from a game with 100+ players using ATAK over LoRa would be super helpful. Real data from a big event would make it much clearer how well the system actually holds up.

We get why an offline mode sounds useful, but with all the limits LoRa has, it’s hard to say if the effort needed to build it would really pay off. I get the feeling it’s also going to be tough to explain to players why things start breaking on larger events 🙂

We haven’t completely dropped the idea, but my guess is that the real solution won’t come from LoRa. It’ll probably have to come from satellite internet instead.

#14 · January 17, 2026, 9:27 pm

Honestly i would rather use Ares Alpha then ATAK because its more Airsoft friendly and everyone can use it. Great app. But maybe develope some plugin like Hammer plugin from Atak for using radio freq to transfer small amout of data. I know its maybe complicated but this option will be great and i dont mind for pay for it like everyone.

#15 · June 7, 2026, 7:48 pm

Good day. I'm an airsoft player from Kazakhstan. We used to have the Geotactics app, which worked similarly to Ares Alpha. We had a field trip, created a game, and many people couldn't make it, but that didn't stop us. We simply gave admin mode to one of the players who didn't make it, and he managed the game from his home, 60 km away, setting goals for us, etc. What's the point of all this? The point is that with Ares Alpha you can play airsoft without leaving home. We also use Meshtastic and ATAK.

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#16 · June 12, 2026, 7:27 pm

Hi,

Does anyone have experience running large events with ATAK + Meshtastic?

I'm particularly interested in scenarios with 50+ participants, where players can see each other's locations in real time. How well does it scale in terms of update frequency, network congestion, and overall reliability? Any lessons learned or best practices would be appreciated.

#17 · June 26, 2026, 2:08 pm

Quote from Active Duty on June 26, 2026, 2:08 pm

Quote from admin on February 1, 2024, 7:56 am

This post is a little technical, but an interesting topic. There is a recurring question that keeps popping up almost weekly in the Ares Alpha community: How can we use the Ares Alpha app on fields without GSM coverage.

The obviously solution would be a LORA radio mesh, something like Meshtastic We have investigated this option and would like to share our thoughts on the subject. Any ideas or comments are welcome as usual. To jump to conclusions: our opinion is that an offline radio solution is not suitable for large airsoft events.

1. Price factor: None of the smartphones have an embedded radio module. Each player would need an extra device, the gateway between the phone and LORA radio. At least 150 EUR/player. I know you can find Meshtastic devices for 50 EUR, but just the electronics. You would also need a waterproof case, a LIPO battery, and so on. We have serious doubts that you can push 200 players to buy the LORA device for an event.

2. Distance coverage: LORA radio depends hugely on the terrain. If you are in a forest, or a rocky terrain with hills, etc. you will cover maximum 1 km on LORA. And I didn’t start talking about massive concrete buildings in CQB events. There are some solutions like a radio mesh, but we jump to the next point.

3. Bandwidth: LORA it’s regulated all over the world. You have around 125Kbps max speed, and a duty cycle of max 10%. This means you need to listen 10 seconds if you sending a packet for 1 second. It also means you cannot resend messages easy to form a lora mesh, because you are flooding the bandwidth. If you have an event with 200 players, to refresh all players locations will take a lot of time.

4. Features: Let’s say you manage to sync the location of the players. If you want to benefit from all Ares Alpha features (Perks, Points, notifications, etc.) you still need an internet connection to Ares Alpha servers. Or even worse…you want to join the game, or login on Ares Alpha? You’re out of luck, Ares Alpha servers are not reachable thru LORA.

So basically, on LORA you can have around max 30 players, with slow location update, limited cover and just a preload map with players’ position. You might be wondering, what is the excitement about Meshtastic and the offline radio network if there are so many limitations? The answer is simple: Meshtastic is not made for real-time updating: it is good for short messages between users in areas without GSM coverage, such as mountains. It is mostly used by mountain hikers to signal their location and send short messages in case of danger. In a large event, you need to update hundreds of players on the map every 20 seconds.

We also hear about distances of tens of km covered by LORA. True, but there is a little trick: you need antennas located on high ground and direct line of sight! It would be quite difficult for players to climb trees to get a good signal.

Also, a little notice on radio power, to get a clearer picture. We all use Walkie-Talkies at airsoft events and we all know that sometimes you just can't hear anything from the team leader, especially in the woods or if you're in a valley. The very common Baofeng UV-5R has a radio power of 8W (which, by the way, is totally illegal ). LORA's maximum power is 0.25 W – 32 times less!

Of course, this is our opinion so if you guys have some experience about large events that used off-grid solution, let us know!

Hey there. I registered on your website to answer this topic.

What you're describing is basically a military-grade simulation system.

1. An offline mode will absolutely have a higher price tag. You're talking about building a GPS / Radio bubble. Business-plan wise, it would be smarter to have a fleet that you can rent and sell the offline feature as a service, with you bringing the equipment for the event in question, handling software/hardware maintenance, etc. And if you're doing it like a service, chances are you'd wanna look for milspecced stuff since it's gonna deal with rough conditions.

2. maximum 1km is extremely optimistic for several reasons (some you already cited) :

a) EM : Indeed, sub-ghz can do wonders, but the maximum distance referenced by meshtastic are done in literal open air with antennas on high-ground. So you're correct on that front. But i'll go even as far as saying that getting a 500m for an isotropic antenna emitting 0.25W (assuming it is well adapted) in forest conditions would be a lucky break.

b) Protocol : since your power output is fixed at 0.25W and you're working at 915 or 868MHz, a ping pong test with your radio gear should give you your theoretical max range with that gear. however, how well you're managing your RF protocol layer will condition a lot of your true range. If your stuff is redundant enough, it can cut through a lot of noise (e.g how does your phone interpret a signal that is around -110dbm). However, more redundancy => more talk, and LoRa constrains that too. In theory, a self healing network like a MANET could help you distance wise assuming your group isn't too spread out. But again, LoRa being LoRa, forget about it.

3) I won't bush around the beat, you hit the head on the nail. LoRa isn't a real-time system. It is made for static elements being notified and communicated back and forth to on a slow pace. Moving targets and real-time event management is not a good idea. However, there is one silver lining is that bandwidth is calculated related to the individual emitter, so you can have 200 individuals broadcasting their locations. The challenge will however be about getting all that in real-time, in LoRa. your best solution would be to do your own homebrew protocols and get the necessary temporary authorizaitons for each event. Or have a permanent set up in place in some area in which you keep a persistent authorization. I'm not even sure if that's doable in a reasonable timeframe event management-wise.

4) It really depends on your business plan and licensing. If it's a service you're selling, you could just pack a PC with a dedicated server in it. I would highly recommend that, since selling all the system without the software would just have the players vibecode the features themselves and implement their own server (i don't know about you but most airsoft communities i know of have their own resident nerd :p)

My opinion business-wise ? The only client who would be able to shell out that much money and would be ok with all the paperwork regarding using your own frequency band, instead of simply just switching locations to somewhere with coverage isn't civilian, lol.

Quote from admin on February 1, 2024, 7:56 am

This post is a little technical, but an interesting topic. There is a recurring question that keeps popping up almost weekly in the Ares Alpha community: How can we use the Ares Alpha app on fields without GSM coverage.

The obviously solution would be a LORA radio mesh, something like Meshtastic We have investigated this option and would like to share our thoughts on the subject. Any ideas or comments are welcome as usual. To jump to conclusions: our opinion is that an offline radio solution is not suitable for large airsoft events.

1. Price factor: None of the smartphones have an embedded radio module. Each player would need an extra device, the gateway between the phone and LORA radio. At least 150 EUR/player. I know you can find Meshtastic devices for 50 EUR, but just the electronics. You would also need a waterproof case, a LIPO battery, and so on. We have serious doubts that you can push 200 players to buy the LORA device for an event.

2. Distance coverage: LORA radio depends hugely on the terrain. If you are in a forest, or a rocky terrain with hills, etc. you will cover maximum 1 km on LORA. And I didn’t start talking about massive concrete buildings in CQB events. There are some solutions like a radio mesh, but we jump to the next point.

3. Bandwidth: LORA it’s regulated all over the world. You have around 125Kbps max speed, and a duty cycle of max 10%. This means you need to listen 10 seconds if you sending a packet for 1 second. It also means you cannot resend messages easy to form a lora mesh, because you are flooding the bandwidth. If you have an event with 200 players, to refresh all players locations will take a lot of time.

4. Features: Let’s say you manage to sync the location of the players. If you want to benefit from all Ares Alpha features (Perks, Points, notifications, etc.) you still need an internet connection to Ares Alpha servers. Or even worse…you want to join the game, or login on Ares Alpha? You’re out of luck, Ares Alpha servers are not reachable thru LORA.

So basically, on LORA you can have around max 30 players, with slow location update, limited cover and just a preload map with players’ position. You might be wondering, what is the excitement about Meshtastic and the offline radio network if there are so many limitations? The answer is simple: Meshtastic is not made for real-time updating: it is good for short messages between users in areas without GSM coverage, such as mountains. It is mostly used by mountain hikers to signal their location and send short messages in case of danger. In a large event, you need to update hundreds of players on the map every 20 seconds.

We also hear about distances of tens of km covered by LORA. True, but there is a little trick: you need antennas located on high ground and direct line of sight! It would be quite difficult for players to climb trees to get a good signal.

Also, a little notice on radio power, to get a clearer picture. We all use Walkie-Talkies at airsoft events and we all know that sometimes you just can't hear anything from the team leader, especially in the woods or if you're in a valley. The very common Baofeng UV-5R has a radio power of 8W (which, by the way, is totally illegal ). LORA's maximum power is 0.25 W – 32 times less!

Of course, this is our opinion so if you guys have some experience about large events that used off-grid solution, let us know!

Hey there. I registered on your website to answer this topic.

What you're describing is basically a military-grade simulation system.

1. An offline mode will absolutely have a higher price tag. You're talking about building a GPS / Radio bubble. Business-plan wise, it would be smarter to have a fleet that you can rent and sell the offline feature as a service, with you bringing the equipment for the event in question, handling software/hardware maintenance, etc. And if you're doing it like a service, chances are you'd wanna look for milspecced stuff since it's gonna deal with rough conditions.

2. maximum 1km is extremely optimistic for several reasons (some you already cited) :

a) EM : Indeed, sub-ghz can do wonders, but the maximum distance referenced by meshtastic are done in literal open air with antennas on high-ground. So you're correct on that front. But i'll go even as far as saying that getting a 500m for an isotropic antenna emitting 0.25W (assuming it is well adapted) in forest conditions would be a lucky break.

b) Protocol : since your power output is fixed at 0.25W and you're working at 915 or 868MHz, a ping pong test with your radio gear should give you your theoretical max range with that gear. however, how well you're managing your RF protocol layer will condition a lot of your true range. If your stuff is redundant enough, it can cut through a lot of noise (e.g how does your phone interpret a signal that is around -110dbm). However, more redundancy => more talk, and LoRa constrains that too. In theory, a self healing network like a MANET could help you distance wise assuming your group isn't too spread out. But again, LoRa being LoRa, forget about it.

3) I won't bush around the beat, you hit the head on the nail. LoRa isn't a real-time system. It is made for static elements being notified and communicated back and forth to on a slow pace. Moving targets and real-time event management is not a good idea. However, there is one silver lining is that bandwidth is calculated related to the individual emitter, so you can have 200 individuals broadcasting their locations. The challenge will however be about getting all that in real-time, in LoRa. your best solution would be to do your own homebrew protocols and get the necessary temporary authorizaitons for each event. Or have a permanent set up in place in some area in which you keep a persistent authorization. I'm not even sure if that's doable in a reasonable timeframe event management-wise.

4) It really depends on your business plan and licensing. If it's a service you're selling, you could just pack a PC with a dedicated server in it. I would highly recommend that, since selling all the system without the software would just have the players vibecode the features themselves and implement their own server (i don't know about you but most airsoft communities i know of have their own resident nerd :p)

My opinion business-wise ? The only client who would be able to shell out that much money and would be ok with all the paperwork regarding using your own frequency band, instead of simply just switching locations to somewhere with coverage isn't civilian, lol.

#18 · June 26, 2026, 3:50 pm

Quote from admin on June 26, 2026, 3:50 pm
Hi,
First of all, thanks for the excellent and detailed reply. All your points are valid and match what we've found ourselves while testing LoRa.
The funny thing is that offline real-time player tracking is probably the feature we're asked about the most, almost every week, from people all over the world.
We'd absolutely love to be the first to make it work properly. Everyone wants to use our app in the middle of a forest with no GSM coverage, and we totally get that. Ideally, they'd also like to keep the hardware cost somewhere around $99 per player.

As you said, though, no civilian game is going to spend the kind of money needed for a custom solution, and it probably wouldn't make much sense anyway.

The idea of having our own caravan and renting it out to provide offline coverage for airsoft events is, again, a bit wishful thinking. Even if it's technically possible, we're talking about an investment of thousands, or probably tens of thousands, of dollars if we wanted to offer this as a worldwide service. Let's be realistic: I don't think any event organizer, or players, would be willing to pay double the ticket price just to see other players on a live map. I know I wouldn't. 🙂

Personally, I'd put my money for future on solutions like Starlink Mobile, where the phone itself has satellite connectivity. I think LoRa is a bit of a dead end for real-time tracking. Maybe we could get it working for 10–20 players, but after spending a huge amount of time and effort, we'd probably end up with a lot of frustrated users because the offline experience wouldn't match what they're expecting.

We know ATAK can use Meshtastic, but in the last five years we've never seen real feedback from a game where, let's say, 100 players were actually being tracked in real time on the map using it. I have a feeling that's because it simply isn't happening. That's exactly why we've been looking for real-world feedback over the last five years. We'd love to be proven wrong, but so far we haven't found a single large-scale success story.

Hi,
First of all, thanks for the excellent and detailed reply. All your points are valid and match what we've found ourselves while testing LoRa.
The funny thing is that offline real-time player tracking is probably the feature we're asked about the most, almost every week, from people all over the world.
We'd absolutely love to be the first to make it work properly. Everyone wants to use our app in the middle of a forest with no GSM coverage, and we totally get that. Ideally, they'd also like to keep the hardware cost somewhere around $99 per player.

As you said, though, no civilian game is going to spend the kind of money needed for a custom solution, and it probably wouldn't make much sense anyway.

The idea of having our own caravan and renting it out to provide offline coverage for airsoft events is, again, a bit wishful thinking. Even if it's technically possible, we're talking about an investment of thousands, or probably tens of thousands, of dollars if we wanted to offer this as a worldwide service. Let's be realistic: I don't think any event organizer, or players, would be willing to pay double the ticket price just to see other players on a live map. I know I wouldn't. 🙂

Personally, I'd put my money for future on solutions like Starlink Mobile, where the phone itself has satellite connectivity. I think LoRa is a bit of a dead end for real-time tracking. Maybe we could get it working for 10–20 players, but after spending a huge amount of time and effort, we'd probably end up with a lot of frustrated users because the offline experience wouldn't match what they're expecting.

We know ATAK can use Meshtastic, but in the last five years we've never seen real feedback from a game where, let's say, 100 players were actually being tracked in real time on the map using it. I have a feeling that's because it simply isn't happening. That's exactly why we've been looking for real-world feedback over the last five years. We'd love to be proven wrong, but so far we haven't found a single large-scale success story.

#19 · July 7, 2026, 1:55 pm

Quote from DrLipschitz on July 7, 2026, 1:55 pm
Hi, Ive been curious about some sort of tracker device for Ares for a while and came across this thread.

Just wanted to add my experience as someone whos help manage an events use of Ares for the last couple years and why I think some sort of Mesh/Tracker support would be great. Fortunately we have cell phone service at this whole field too.

With our events its about 2 days and 300-400 people in the woods. Think its like 50ish acres. A teams usually broken down into 2-3 platoons of 4-5 squads each.

For our team at least all we ask is one player per squad have Ares running so we can at least track that squad. The more the better but thats what we really need. We use Ares on the leadership side to make a lot of decisions. Its a pretty important tool for us. Well we have gotten usage numbers up its still a struggle, mostly with people just not bringing their phone on the field, which I completely understand.

We've found, at least at a squad level, most players dont use any of the features regularly. Chat, tracking, pinging, whatever it is. We've tried to get people to use it more but they just want to play. And we use radios for 99% of missions and more critical info sharing. And those that do use the features have a phone or device for it.

Usually theres 2-3 squads that just cant set it up or have issues. If there was some support, either for a device like meshtastic trackers, https://www.seeedstudio.com/SenseCAP-Card-Tracker-T1000-E-for-Meshtastic-p-5913.html, or one you sold with SIM support, that would be awesome. We dont need 100's of devices or a huge investment like you've talked about in previous posts. Just enough to fill in some gaps easily. Some device the user never has to interact with, simply a tool for leadership to know where they are.

Also well Im here, please please please add support for setting up platoons/squad asignments and adding players before a game. Getting everyone to scan in and organized at the start of a day adds time that would be great to get back. Think it would really help increase usership if we had this.

Hi, Ive been curious about some sort of tracker device for Ares for a while and came across this thread.

Just wanted to add my experience as someone whos help manage an events use of Ares for the last couple years and why I think some sort of Mesh/Tracker support would be great. Fortunately we have cell phone service at this whole field too.

With our events its about 2 days and 300-400 people in the woods. Think its like 50ish acres. A teams usually broken down into 2-3 platoons of 4-5 squads each.

For our team at least all we ask is one player per squad have Ares running so we can at least track that squad. The more the better but thats what we really need. We use Ares on the leadership side to make a lot of decisions. Its a pretty important tool for us. Well we have gotten usage numbers up its still a struggle, mostly with people just not bringing their phone on the field, which I completely understand.

We've found, at least at a squad level, most players dont use any of the features regularly. Chat, tracking, pinging, whatever it is. We've tried to get people to use it more but they just want to play. And we use radios for 99% of missions and more critical info sharing. And those that do use the features have a phone or device for it.

Usually theres 2-3 squads that just cant set it up or have issues. If there was some support, either for a device like meshtastic trackers, https://www.seeedstudio.com/SenseCAP-Card-Tracker-T1000-E-for-Meshtastic-p-5913.html, or one you sold with SIM support, that would be awesome. We dont need 100's of devices or a huge investment like you've talked about in previous posts. Just enough to fill in some gaps easily. Some device the user never has to interact with, simply a tool for leadership to know where they are.

Also well Im here, please please please add support for setting up platoons/squad asignments and adding players before a game. Getting everyone to scan in and organized at the start of a day adds time that would be great to get back. Think it would really help increase usership if we had this.

#20 · July 7, 2026, 5:40 pm

Hello,

We’ve been considering developing a small tracker with a SIM card. However, even with a dedicated tracker, players would still need to register it to the game before starting the game.

The second challenge is cost. A tracker with GPS, a SIM card, waterproof housing, and a battery would likely cost around $100–130. At that price, you can already buy a brand-new entry-level Android phone for about the same amount. So the question becomes: why buy a tracker when a phone can not only provide location tracking but also run the game itself?

Regarding player enrollment before the game:

You can already send the join link to players in advance and build the team hierarchy before the event starts. The main challenge with having only the Game Master create the hierarchy is that they would need to know every player's email address beforehand. For larger events, collecting and managing all those email addresses can become quite inconvenient.

I understand why the idea of the Game Master preparing the entire hierarchy in advance is appealing, but I'm not sure it would work as smoothly in practice as it might seem.

Thank you for your ideas, and please don't hesitate to share any other thoughts or suggestions!