Sitrec (Situation recreation) is a web application that allows for the real-time interactive 3D recreation of various situations. It was created initially to analyze the US Navy UAP/UFO video (Gimbal, GoFast, and FLIR1/Nimitz), but has expanded to include several other situations (referred to as "sitches"). It's written mostly by Mick West, with a lot of input from the members of Metabunk.
Here's a link to Sitrec on Metabunk.
My goal here is to create a tool to effectively analyze UAP/UFO cases, and to share that analysis in a way that people can understand it. Hence, I focused on making Sitrec run in real-time (30 fps or faster), and be interactive both in viewing, and in exploring the various parameters of a sitch.
The same list is in the app under Help → Documentation, grouped the same way. It is
defined once, in src/docsRegistry.js, which also feeds the in-app AI
assistant — so if you add a doc, add it there.
Start here
- Getting Started - What Sitrec is, and building your first sitch
- Doing Defensible Analysis - How to reach a conclusion that holds up, and how to write it up
- The Sitrec User Interface - How the menus work
- Keyboard Shortcuts
- Glossary - sitch, traverse, LOS, HAE, MISB, and the rest
- What's New
Data and tracks
- Loading and Filtering Tracks - Formats, importing, filtering, and display
- Where to Get Flight Data - ADS-B Exchange, FlightRadar24, FlightAware and friends
- Saving and Loading Sitches - Server saves and local folder workflow
- Custom Models and 3D Objects - Add your own planes
- Reference Objects
The world
- GIS, Geodesy, and Altitude - Datums, coordinate systems, and how to spot a datum error
- Terrain and Elevation - Map vs elevation sources, and which surface a ground query hits
- Atmospheric Refraction - Horizons, and why distant things look higher than they are
- Wind in Sitrec - Wind menu, atmospheric data sources, streamlines
- Historic Skies - Reconstructing the sky for dates back to 1700, and what stays accurate there
- Haze and Aerial Perspective
Video tools
- Rendering and Exporting Video
- Masking Out Part of the Video
- Star Tracker - Identify the stars, and measure the field of view
- Point Track and Stabilization
- Long Exposure Simulation
- Lens Ghosts and Reflections
Analysis
- Traverse Methods - How LOS + physical assumptions resolve target positions per frame
- Traverse Analysis and the Verdict - The Analyze button, the gallery, and what it licenses
- Camera Modes - Normal (Az/El) and Satellite (quaternion) view modes
- Recreating Starlink Situations - Horizon Flares
Bespoke examples (not typical)
- Recreating Gimbal - Walkthrough: build a Gimbal sitch from scratch via drag-and-drop
- Nimitz / Tic Tac - Handling sources that disagree
- Football and Cable Cam
Advanced
- Control Sitrec with ChatGPT site tools (WebMCP)
- Local Custom Sitches - JSON-based sitch definitions for advanced setups
- Scripted Camera Moves
- What's New (Details)
- Installing and Configuring a Sitrec Server
- File Rehosting and Related Server Configuration
- Custom Terrain and Elevation Sources, WMS, etc.
- Adding New Settings - Developer checklist for new user settings
- Settings Manager Architecture - Server/cookie fallback and sanitization
- Dynamic GUI Mirroring - API for mirrored GUI controls
- MISB Timing & Sync - Per-frame KLV/video alignment in TS-sourced files
- Wind Internals - Data flow, file formats, and atmospheric data sources
The most common use case is to display three views:
- A video of a UAP situation
- A 3D recreation of that video
- A view of the 3D world from another perspective (with movable camera)
- Plus various graphs and stats.
Here's the famous Aguadilla video
Sitrec uses or ingests a variety of data sources
- ADS-B files in KML format from ADSB Exchange, FlightAware, Planefinder, and others
- Satellite orbital data (mostly Starlink) as CCSDS OMM in CSV, or as legacy Two/Three Line Element (TLE) files
- Star catalogs (BSC, etc.)
- Video (mp4, mov, H.264, H.265 )
- DJI Drone tracks from Airdata as .csv
- GLB (Binary GLTF 3D models)
- Generic custom data in .csv
- PBA (Pico Balloon Archive) .txt files
- MISB style 3d Track data in KLV or CSV format
- Image files (jpg, png, etc) as single frame videos or ground overlays
- Image Overlays in KMZ format
Some types of situations covered:
- UAP Videos
- Taken from a plane where a target object's azimuth and elevation are known ("angles only")
- Taken from a plane of another plane
- Taken from a plane looking in a particular direction
- From a fixed position
- Viewing the sky (with accurate planets and satellites)
City Location and population data from: https://simplemaps.com/data/us-cities