Dispersed 3D · every feature
An overlanding game on real public land: the real ground and aerial photo, tonight’s real sky, and campsites read from the record. Each card says what a feature does and how you reach it.
Play Dispersed 3DKeys at a glance
V a key on a computer Clock a button on screen Phone: where it sits on a phone
Real ground, a real photograph, real names.
Four real places to drive: the Beaverhead-Deerlodge, Custer Gallatin and Lolo national forests in Montana, and the desert near Quartzsite, Arizona. The ground is the federal elevation survey (1-meter lidar around the campsites), draped in the federal aerial photo.
The top bar names the forest and the state, and the campsite once you are within about 500 feet. Your first visit to each forest opens a card that says where you are.
One sheet listing everything on screen that comes from a real record (the sky, forecast, smoke, fire rules, space station, ground, photo and campsite) and how old each one is.
Tap a far ridge or peak and the game names it from the federal place-name record, with its height and how far away it is. Where the record has no name, it says so.
The highest spot on the open mapped roads, with the named summits you can see from it. Best near sunset.
Next to the water the record names, the campsite card says what the aerial photo shows there: the water’s color, or that it is mapped as water but dry in the photograph.
Where the Forest Service map says a road is closed to vehicles today, a gate stops the rig. Routes go around it, and you can walk past. So far in the Lolo, the forest whose road map carries dates.
Drive, walk, look around, and always know the way back.
Hold the big button to drive toward wherever you are looking. Get out to walk a campsite on foot; the rig stays parked where you left it.
On a touch screen, put your left thumb on the lower left of the picture and push: up to go, down to back up, sideways to steer (on foot, to turn). Your right thumb drags to look around.
Pick a campsite, tap Drive me there, and the rig drives itself along the real mapped roads while the light goes down. Let it run ×4 or ×12 to wait less; the miles, daylight and fuel stay the same.
A map of this forest’s roads, the stretches you have driven, the campsites and where you are.
A strip under the top bar shows which way you are facing. On foot it adds a Rig button, and a Fire button while a fire burns, each with its distance and an arrow for the way to turn. When the fire burns down, the button reads Coals until sunrise, so you can still find it.
On foot, tap Rig and you walk back to camp: you stand about 10 feet from the rig, facing it and the fire, and the clock moves on by the walk. On an upright phone you stand a little farther back so both fit.
On a computer, no click needed: move the mouse toward the left or right edge of the picture and the view turns that way, faster the farther out you go, and the rig steers with it. The middle holds still. Over a button or a card it stops, and A, D or the arrow keys take over until the mouse moves again. Dragging the picture still looks around.
On a computer, the L key takes the mouse the way a PC game does, so you look around without moving to an edge. The cursor is hidden while it is on; Esc or L gives it back, and a bar says so the whole time.
What the record says about a site, then a night there.
Tap a campsite’s floating name to read what the record says: cost, season, water, elevation, fire rules and distance. Where the record says nothing, the card says that.
At a recorded site a Camp button appears. It opens the night card: what the record says about sleeping there, your chores, and Settle in for the night.
After you camp, a line under the top bar reads, for example, “Camped at Langohr · fire lit · chair out”, even when you come back with Continue where I left off. Try to drive away with the fire lit or the chair out and one small card stops you: Put it out and pack up, or Stay.
Before bed, tick the chores you want, each costing minutes of daylight: level the rig, the tent, Starlink, wood, a fire, a walk for water, cooking, a cold dip.
Pick a rooftop tent (5 minutes to set up, 5 to pack) or a ground tent (15 and 15), the times from Dave’s own two rigs. It sets how long camp and mornings take.
The hood you look over and the truck parked at camp are modeled on Dave’s own green truck, with the rooftop tent up or a ground tent beside it.
Tick Start a fire and a fire burns in a ring beside the rig, lighting the camp. The wood decides how long it lasts: kindling alone is about an hour, and the camp chores spend that hour too. Add a log, or put it out in the morning.
With a fire burning, pull up a chair. The clock runs faster, the sky watch tells you about moonrise, stars and space station passes, and a friend may call.
In the morning, leave a tent and fire ring standing to hold the site while you are away, or pack up and give it up. A held site lasts until you close the page.
Tonight’s real sky over this ground.
The real sky for this place and date: the Moon’s true phase, rise and set, the bright planets, and 518 catalogued stars that come out as the sun goes down.
On the night of a real meteor shower, streaks cross the dark sky. During a real eclipse of the Moon, it dims and turns copper.
Hold your phone up and the view follows where you point, naming the star, planet, Moon or Sun in the middle.
Tells you when the International Space Station will cross your sky tonight, draws it among the stars, and slows the clock while it passes.
After sunset a risen Moon really lights the ground and casts shadows. A full-moon night is drivable without headlights; a new-moon night is nearly black.
For after dark.
Headlights throw a beam about 250 feet ahead, work lights flood the ground around the rig, and the headlamp lights wherever you look on foot. The headlamp comes on by itself when you step out after dark.
The bright band along your route, the beams over the campsites and their names, on or off together.
Turns the screen deep red on black, so it does not spoil your night vision at a real camp.
Daylight is what you spend.
The real sun for this ground and date. The top bar shows the time, the sunset and the light left; the Clock card lets you move the hour and watch the evening come in.
Gallons of fuel and water on board. Fuel burns as you drive, an empty tank stops the rig, and you can fill the jug at a camp with water nearby.
The morning card offers a run to the nearest town and back, returning with the tank and jug full, a spare tire, and the tires aired up.
On rough roads you can get stuck in mud or get a flat. A card offers ways out, each costing daylight. Airing down first cuts the odds in half.
At a fork on the road map, a brown Forest Service post stands beside each road that has a Forest Service number, with that number on its face, turned toward the traffic coming up. A road the map gives no number gets no post.
Once you start the chores at a camp, a folding table with a lantern on it, a cooler, a water jug and a jerry can stand beside the truck, and a camp axe and shovel lie by the fire once it is lit, all placed by the game and none of it from any record.
Once a season, at dusk, after your first night, Dave stands beside his own parked pickup on the shoulder of the road nearest your camp, looking at your fire, and lifts an arm in a slow wave when you look his way. He says nothing more than one line, and he is gone by morning.
On gravel the hood shakes above 12 mph. On dirt and four-wheel-drive roads a dust cloud follows you, and a wet forecast keeps it down.
On the way to a creek-crossing campsite, the rig stops at the ford and offers three ways across, with the game’s own odds of stalling.
Fetched from the agencies on a schedule. With no record, the game says nothing rather than guess.
Tonight’s National Weather Service forecast shows on the title screen and the night card, and sets the clouds, the wind, the dust and the odds of mud. On a cloudy hour, clouds drift across the sky and their shadows across the ground, the same pattern, toward where the wind blows; by night they hide the stars. The amount of cloud and the wind are the Weather Service’s; the shapes are the game’s.
On a day NOAA’s satellites map smoke over this ground, the sky turns brown-orange, the sun reddens and the stars dim. With no smoke record, the game does not call the air clear.
The Start a fire chore and the campsite card quote the fire rule the agency posts, with its source and date. The game never stops you lighting a fire; it tells you the rule.
Where a USGS stream gauge sits on the same creek as a campsite, the card shows its newest water height and flow, how far away it is, and how old the reading is.
Off until you turn it on.
An engine that climbs with speed and hills, gravel under the tires, washboard rattle and wind, all made in your browser.
A real campfire crackling beside you (a public-domain recording), a little louder with a fresh log, then softer and duller as it burns down to coals.
One key turns the sound on and off. By the fire it turns the crackle on and off with it.
By the fire, a friend at home asks where you ended up and answers with what the record says. You reply with a button. It is a call when your Starlink is up, a text when it is not.
Short lines in Dave’s own words at the moments that matter: an hour of light left, a fire lit, moonrise, a closed gate. Being written now.
Kept in this browser, night by night.
Every night you sleep in a forest: the cost, the light, the miles, and a picture made of squares you can copy. Copy my season moves it to another device.
Lays your logbook out as a book, one night to a page with your field notes, ready to print or save as a PDF, and it never leaves this browser.
The map fills in with the roads you drove and the camps you slept at. Its Picture button makes a season card to share.
When a campsite’s or a road’s own dates say the season is over, or you choose to head home, a card sums up your season.
Small awards for things you did, like ten nights out or a stop at the high point near sunset, kept in the Logbook.
One tap makes a picture of tonight’s camp with the campsite, forest, date and Moon written on it, to share or save.
Sends a friend a link that puts them at your camp, at your hour, by your fire. They can sit with you or start their own day there.
A clear picture first; everything else one pull or one key away.
On a phone the picture stays clear: the bottom bar holds Walk, Map and More, and pulling it up shows every reading and button.
Tap the picture to put away a card or the pulled-up drawer. A drag still looks around.
Help says what this is and why you are managing time, then shows a drawn keyboard: every key the game uses is lit and named, and a dim key does nothing.
Hides or shows the names floating over the campsites.
Tucks away the top bar and the bottom buttons for more forest. One tap brings them back.
Fills the whole screen; the button says how to leave. On an iPhone, add the game to the Home Screen instead.
Back to the start screen, where Start becomes Back to the world.
Save a forest on your device (it shows the size first) and play at camp with no signal.
From the game to the real place and its record.
Opens Google Maps’ satellite view at the exact latitude and longitude under the rig, with a pin.
On a campsite card, opens Google Maps’ satellite view at the record’s pin for that site.
Opens the campsite’s own page on davelalande.com, the record the card was read from.
Opens this forest’s page on American Adventurer, at davelalande.com.
A link to the game can name a campsite. It opens in that forest, aimed at that site, with a way back to the record.
On a computer. Press ? in the game for the drawn key map. Shortcuts with Ctrl, Cmd or Alt are left to your browser, so Ctrl+C still copies.