Aug 11, 2016 @12:03 PM
How 'Sightings' Works In 'Pokémon GO'
Dave Thier
Contributor
Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.
Anyone who boots up Pokémon GO this week will notice something slightly different. A new patch over the weekend overhauled the controversial “nearby” tracker, eliminating the old footprints and replacing them with a little graphic of some grass. This new system is labelled “sightings,” apparently to avoid any confusion. Sightings appears to be a temporary measure: it adds little functionality, but it is less obviously broken than the footprint system we were using last week. On a basic level, it’s showing you the Pokémon in an approximately 200 meter radius from where you’re standing, but there are some more things to know about what’s actually going on.
Sightings is similar to the old “nearby” tracker, but with some important differences. The biggest one is that it works on a much higher refresh rate, which dramatically increases the odds that the Pokemon listed on your screen will actually be in the vicinity: Pokévision taught us that most Pokémon spawn for about ten minutes, and it appears that the new sightings system does a much better job of hustling them off the list at that point. Sightings also removes any duplicate Pokémon, so that you’re no longer looking at that disheartening list of endless Pidgeys: if there is in fact a rare Pokémon near your location, you’re more likely to see it.
And finally, the Pokémon no longer appear in any sort of order. It used to be that the nearest Pokémon was in the top left corner of the chart, with each successive Pokemon going right and then down getting further and further away. That’s no longer the case: any Pokémon on the list could be any relative distance from your location.
Sightings is not the game’s new nearby tracker, nor is it really a tracker in any way. Again, it’s a temporary measure. Niantic is testing the real nearby tracker in limited markets — given the scale of the test, I’d guess the developer will be ready to roll it out wide soon. You can use sightings in a limited capacity, however: basically, you’ve got to keep an eye on the chart and walk in any given direction. If the Pokémon you’re looking for drops off the chart, you walked the wrong way. That’s really the only way to use it in any practical capacity.
So if you’ve been puzzling over what’s actually going on here, that’s the long and short of it. People who have been playing around with the new tracker also report seeing “sightings” below “nearby,” so some variant of this system might be in the game to stay.
