Post by Quantum on Aug 10, 2016 16:51:19 GMT 10
How to track Pokemon with Sightings
1. You, a trainer out on a walk, check your Pokemon Go app at point A. "Hot damn, a Pidgey!" you think to yourself as you look at your Sightings list. You now know that you are some point within 200m of a Pidgey, but not exactly where that Pidgey is. Time to start tracking.
2. Keep walking straight ahead. Eventually, you will get more than 200m away from the Pidgey, and it will disappear from your Sightings list. This is Point B. Stop here, and take note of where you are as accurately as you can, you'll need to use this point later.
3. Turn around and go back the way you came. The Pidgey comes back into your Sightings list. Keep walking in as straight a line as you can, past point A, until the Pidgey disappears again. This is Point C, on the other side of the Pidgey's "detection circle" to point B.
4. Find the halfway point on the line you walked between points B and C (this is why you had to pay attention at B), and go there. This is point D. When at point D, make a turn and start walking at right angles to the line you just walked between B and C.
5. One of two things will happen. If you chose correctly, you'll walk right into the Pidgey. If you chose poorly, you'll end up moving away from the Pidgey and wind up at point E, where the Pidgey will disappear again. No problem there, just turn around and walk back the way you came, and eventually you'll hit Pidgey.
How to track with a friend:
1. Both check your Pokemon Go app at point A. "Hot damn, a Pidgey!" you think to yourselves as you look at your Sightings list. You now know that you are some point within 200m of a Pidgey, but not exactly where that Pidgey is. Time to start tracking.
2. You keep walking straight ahead, while your buddy turns around and backtracks. Eventually, one of you will get more than 200m away from the Pidgey, and it will disappear from your Sightings list. Stop here, and wait for the other trainer to lose their sighting as well (you don't need to worry about where you are in this method).
3. Once you both lose the Pidgey, one of you is at point B and other at point C. Now both of you turn around and head towards each other, going back the way you came, doing your best to walk at the same speed. Keep walking until you meet. This is point D. Now, both of you make a right-angle turn and walk in opposite directions again.
4. One of you will eventually hit the Pidgey, while the other will eventually lose it (although one should find it before the other loses it, based on the detection range).
Why is this different to what we had previously? Well before, the Pokemon didn't disappear from your nearby list until they were either replaced or you force closed and restarted the app. Now we can accurately tell whether we are within ~200m of a Pokemon or not, which lets you reliably map out the edges of it's detection circle. Once you've found three points on the edges of a circle (B, C and E in this example), you can find the middle. Easy.
Of course, doing this before it despawns can sometimes be a challenge, especially in places where there might be buildings in the way to mess with your straight lines. But in a lot of ways, we're back to where we were on launch week with regards to tracking Pokemon. This triangulation process is exactly the same as I was using when the steps worked, but instead of marking the difference between 2 steps and 3 steps, I'm marking the difference between "there" and "not there"
Source: reddit