THE VRALLI HANDBOOK
User guide
Virtual rallies. Real roads. Your own car. Turn a drive in your own car into a virtual rally. Discover stages, explore real roads and share the adventure with friends—just for fun, always within the rules of the road.
The stages and rallies are virtual; you drive them on real roads in your own car. GPS times are approximate. It is not an official rally, competition or timing service, and is not intended for serious sporting use. Enjoy the atmosphere and the company; there is no result worth rushing for.
1. Your first cruise
- Sign in and set up while parked. Allow location access, mount your phone securely and keep its screen unlocked.
- Press the separate Cruise button, marked with a small red dot. Choose My favourites, A rally, Local or All.
- For a rally, enter it on the Rallies page first, then choose it in Cruise. Its opening dates and organiser's rules apply.
- Press Start Cruise while connected. Orange means location is being monitored. Blue means a prepared start is within half a mile.
- Cross a stage start in its route direction. A tone and red status confirm recording; the stage name and stopwatch appear automatically.
- A confirmed finish plays another tone and uploads the result. Cruise continues, ready to recognise another stage.
- When parked at the end of your outing, press End Cruise for the summary and upload status.
There is no stage to select manually each time, and no rally-attempt selector before you start.
2. Finding stages and using favourites
On Stages, search by stage or designer name, choose a group, or use the map. The start must be in the visible map area to appear in its list. Zoom or move the map to explore; select a stage to see its route, results and your position.
Press the star to add or remove a favourite. A stage you publish is automatically favourited for you. Removing its star does not delete it or give up ownership.
- My favourites: monitor your starred stages.
- A rally: choose one you have entered. Only its stages are monitored.
- Local: starts within five miles of your location.
- All: find the nearest stages anywhere, including outside your local area. This does not download every stage worldwide.
Use Locate me to show your position and check location permission if no dot appears. A distant stage shown on the map is not turn-by-turn navigation to it.
3. GPS, colours and overlapping stages
Orange: monitoring, or preparing a nearby stage. An unprepared start needs a connection. Blue: approaching a prepared stage start. Red: a stage is recording. Green: the displayed run has been changed to a recce.
The map centres on your location and rotates with travel. Zoom adjusts as you approach a start. If stages overlap, up to eight can record independently; the screen shows the main stage and how many others are recording. Each finish is assessed and uploaded separately.
A start requires a forward crossing with sufficiently accurate GPS. Being already beyond the line, passing in the opposite direction or receiving a weak fix does not start a run. Do not make an unsafe manoeuvre to trigger it; continue safely and try another time.
4. Making a rally run a recce
Rally stages begin automatically as attempts. If the organiser allows recces, a green Make this a recce button appears after the stage starts. For overlapping stages, each button names the run it changes.
Stop safely before pressing it. The change applies only to that run and cannot be reversed. A recce is saved privately and does not count towards rally results. The next stage starts normally as an attempt.
If you do not choose recce before finishing, the run uploads as an attempt as usual. You cannot change a finished attempt afterwards. Where recces are forbidden, the button does not appear.
If offline, your recce choice stays on the phone and is sent before the run uploads. It will not silently upload as an attempt while that choice is waiting to sync.
5. Results, leaving the route and ending Cruise
Going more than 300 metres off the route, with an allowance for reliable GPS accuracy, ends that stage attempt as a route infringement. Cruise continues monitoring. Rejoining halfway does not restart it; a fresh run needs a new forward start crossing.
End Cruise lists finished, infringed and unfinished runs, whether they uploaded, and rally progress where applicable. Ending before a confirmed finish does not award a stage finish. GPS gaps and weak fixes can affect the record.
Stage and rally pages show published results. Rally results count valid stage finishes and show cumulative reference times, with A for missing stage times. Positions reflect completion rather than speed. A recce never contributes a rally finish.
If an upload is pending, keep this browser's data and reconnect. Do not clear site data, switch to private browsing or uninstall the home-screen app to solve an upload problem; unsent recordings may exist only on this device.
6. Planning and publishing a stage
Open Plan a stage. Tap the map for your start, intermediate waypoints and finish. Road plotting joins new points automatically. Drag a numbered waypoint to move it, or undo/remove one to adjust the route. New stage clears the draft without deleting saved stages.
Check the entire plotted route for unwanted turn-backs, private roads, restrictions and unsuitable access. Move the offending waypoint and replot where necessary. A plotted route is not proof that a road is lawful or suitable to drive.
Enter a name, choose a group and publish. The publishing action disappears after saving, and a View stage button confirms success. Published stage coordinates are public; avoid using a private driveway or home location as a start or finish.
Only the designer can edit a stage. Changing its geometry creates a new route version and resets the current route's results after confirmation; previous journeys remain in their owners' histories. Routes belonging to locked rallies cannot be changed in place.
7. Creating a stage from a cruise or GPX
Your last three completed cruises are saved privately in your account. Open Load a cruise in the planner, or Use route to plan a stage on a cruise card. New cruises replace older cruise tracks; they do not remove published stages or stage results.
Alternatively, choose Import GPX and select a .gpx file containing a track or route. GPX is an XML-based route format. Choose a continuous section if the file contains several, then tap the recorded trace once for the start and again for the finish, in travel order.
At a road visited more than once, choose the correct recorded pass. Review the highlighted section and press Use this section. The recorded geometry is preserved instead of being rerouted between its ends. Name, review and publish it as usual.
Only the selected coordinates become public. Source timestamps and the rest of your private cruise are excluded. Separate GPX sections and long GPS gaps are not automatically joined. Files are limited to 8 MB and 50,000 points; a published section can contain up to 20,000 points.
8. Entering and organising rallies
Browse Rallies, open an event, read its dates and rules, then enter it. Cruise this rally opens Cruise with that event selected; it does not start GPS until you press Start Cruise. Entered future or closed rallies remain visible in the chooser with their status, but cannot start outside their opening window.
Organisers can name and describe a rally, add stages, repeat a stage as separate scheduled runs, rename those runs, reorder or remove them, set dates, and choose whether recces and multiple attempts are allowed. A repeated stage needs separate passes through its start; one crossing does not complete several scheduled copies.
After the first valid stage finish is recorded, the rally's stage structure and rules lock. The organiser can still update its description or notice. This keeps existing results comparable.
9. Profile, friends, clubs and CB Radio
Use Profile to choose your public driver name, enter your car and add a profile photo. Crop the photo in the app; only resized copies are stored, without embedded photo-location metadata.
Find drivers and send friend requests. Clubs bring members together for club rallies and messages. CB Radio contains messages, invitations and announcements; you can arrange a service-area meetup with a place and time.
Sharing a town or county is optional. Local announcements use the area you choose to share, not your recent GPS trail. You can block a member or report an inappropriate message.
10. Home-screen setup and troubleshooting
iPhone: open VRALLI in Safari, tap Share, then Add to Home Screen. Choose Open as Web App if offered. Android: open in Chrome and choose Add to Home screen or Install app from its menu.
This remains a web app. Keep it visible and the screen unlocked during Cruise; phone browsers can suspend GPS when locked or in the background. Start Cruise while connected so stages can be prepared. Already prepared stages can continue during an outage, while other starts need a connection.
No location dot? Check location permission for this site and browser, enable the phone's location services, and try Locate me outside with a clear view of the sky. Weak GPS may delay the start.
Rally missing? Confirm you entered it with this account, return to Cruise and choose A rally. The chooser refreshes your entries. Future, finished and closed events show their status.
Sign-in security message? Refresh while no recording is active and try again. Never refresh during a stage just to update the screen.
Browser closed during Cruise? Open the same browser and sign in to recover the saved outing. Interrupted active runs are treated as unfinished, not silently continued.
11. Privacy and Gold testing
Your email address is private to you and the VRALLI administrator. Your public driver name, published stages and result summaries are visible publicly. Raw journey and cruise tracks stay private to your account. Profile photos are visible to signed-in members.
The first 1,000 accounts receive Gold for the lifetime of the VRALLI service in return for helping test it. Registration closes at that limit; there is no payment or email-verification step during this test. Send feedback through CB Radio. Keep backups of anything important while the service is being proved.
Always obey speed limits, signs, road restrictions and conditions. VRALLI does not certify legal speed, road access or driving safety. Plan and operate the controls only while safely stationary. Follow the road, not the screen.