Coverage: where the radios work¶
Signal simulation is on by default: distance, terrain and transmitter sites decide who hears whom, the same way a real system works. Turn it off and every radio hears every other one perfectly, wherever they are.
Everything on this page lives under Coverage in the admin hub.
Does distance matter?¶
Signal simulation is the switch at the top of the page, and it is on for new communities. On, coverage is worked out from the map below it, and a unit at the far end of the county comes through degraded, or not at all. Off, the radio works everywhere and there is nothing to draw.
A community created before this became the default keeps whatever it had. Nothing was switched on underneath anybody: if your coverage page says signal simulation is off, that switch is where you turn it on.
Car-to-car channels are the exception, and always have been. They are radio-to-radio and ignore transmitter sites entirely, so they keep working in a dead spot two cars can see each other across, and fail between two cars either side of a hill with a mast above both.
Which map are you running?¶
One picker, four answers.
| What it is | |
|---|---|
| PulseRadio Default | Forty-one transmitter sites covering Los Santos, the county, Paleto and the northern back roads, plus the map's tunnels. Radios work out of the box, and any towers you place add to these. |
| PulseRadio Tunnels Only | The map's tunnels and underpasses, and no transmitter sites. Coverage comes from the towers you place. |
| PulseRadio Blank | Nothing assumed about the world. Only the towers and areas you set up yourself apply. |
| Custom | Not something you pick. It is where you arrive. Place a tower, draw an area, or switch to a saved map, and this is what you are on. |
Tunnels are a fact about the map rather than a decision anybody made, which is why they come with two of the three and are not something you have to place.
Your own towers always add
A tower you place widens coverage; it never narrows it. That matters most on an empty map. With no sites at all, coverage falls back to the game's road network, so radios work in the towns and along the highways and give up over open country. Place one site on Blank and that fallback stops applying, which is why Tunnels Only exists for anyone modeling a real county's network and wanting their sites to be the only ones.
Saved maps¶
A coverage map is the towers, the areas and the terrain pack together. Save this as a map keeps what you have now under a name, so you can come back to it: a storm layout, a build you are trying, the one that worked last season.
Saved maps sit beside the PulseRadio ones in the same list. Each card says how many towers and areas it holds and which terrain it sits on, and offers:
- Use this map switches to it.
- Preview draws it without changing anything.
- Rename, Share and Delete do what they say.
Switching replaces your coverage
Using a saved map deletes your current towers and areas and replaces them with that map's. There is no merge, because two coverage maps merged are neither of them, and there is no undo. PulseRadio asks first, and the question names how many towers and areas you are about to lose and whether your current set is saved anywhere. If it is not, save it before you switch.
Custom, and why a name goes away¶
The moment you move a tower, draw an area or change the terrain, the map you were running stops being an accurate description of what you have, so PulseRadio drops the name and shows Custom instead. The saved map is untouched and still in your list. You are simply no longer on it, and the card offers Restore this map to go back.
A name is a claim about content. Keeping it after the content moved would mean a board announcing "Blaine County RF" while carrying three towers that map never had.
Sharing a map with other communities¶
Tick Share on any saved map and it is published to a list every PulseRadio community can browse, beside the maps PulseRadio ships. Sharing is opt-in and per map: nothing is shared until you say so.
- Only the map is shared: the towers, the areas, the terrain, and your community's name so people know whose it is. Nothing else about your community goes with it.
- Anyone who takes it gets a copy, not a link. They own it from then on. Editing yours afterwards never moves anybody else's coverage, and nothing of theirs comes back to you.
- Untick it at any time. The map leaves the list immediately; copies people already took are theirs to keep, as a copy always is.
- The same happens on its own if your community leaves PulseRadio. Your shared maps come off the list, because there is no longer anybody to answer for them, and again, copies people already took are theirs. Once someone has taken a map it is their own, and nothing you do afterwards reaches it.
Copy to my maps puts someone else's map in your list. It does not switch you onto it. That is a second, deliberate step with its own confirmation.
Preview before you take¶
Every map, yours and everyone else's, has a Preview that draws it exactly as the live picture is drawn. Nothing changes by looking. It is the cheap way to answer the only question that matters about a coverage map, which is what it looks like. A tower count cannot tell you whether the north of the map is covered.
A preview includes the terrain pack the map sits on, so what you see is what you would actually be running if you took it.
The picture¶
The map underneath shows where radios reach, computed with the same model the radios themselves run, not an approximation of it. Shaded areas are covered; unshaded are not.
It updates as you change things. Switch terrain, place a tower, apply a saved map, and the drawing follows. Radios already in game get the new map too, without anybody reconnecting and without any interruption to audio.
Underneath it, Who is on the map lists radios that have reported a position in the last two minutes. Positions are held in memory for those two minutes and never written down. It is a tool for checking your own coverage, not a way to follow people. Live unit tracking belongs in PulseCAD.
Placing your own towers¶
Towers can be placed from the admin hub, and in game from the tower menu on a FiveM server running the PulseRadio resource. A site placed in game already has its mast standing, so PulseRadio does not build a second one on the same spot.
Deployable sites, such as a cell on wheels towed to an incident, appear as coverage the moment the mast goes up and disappear when it comes down, and every radio on the net is told within seconds. That is the whole point of driving one out there.