The DayZ Live Map: Real Map Imagery, Grid, Layers and Point Tools

Where the Map Is, and What Feeds It

Your DayZ server has a DayZ Tools page, and Live Map is its first tab. There is no second Live Map entry in the sidebar, because there is only ever one door onto it.

Positions come from GameGrid's own server-side mod, which we load for you with -servermod. Your players install nothing, subscribe to nothing and see no difference: a server-side mod is never sent to a client. That is also why the map works on a vanilla server with signature checking on.

The map is a read of your server, not a control over it — with two exceptions you have to right-click for, described under Point Tools below.

The Real Map Under the Markers

The background is DayZ's own map imagery, not a drawing of it. On Chernarus and Sakhal it is about one metre per pixel, and on Livonia about 0.83 metres per pixel, so it sharpens all the way in: roads, railway lines, individual buildings and the shape of a coastline are all there at full zoom.

Under the map the page states the scale it is actually showing, for example:

About 0.94 m per pixel

That number is read from the imagery your server is using, so it is never a claim about some other server.

When a map has no imagery yet

Imagery is prepared per world. A world that has none yet falls back to what your server can build from its own installed DayZ files — and DayZ's server files carry the satellite layer only as tiny stubs, so that fallback is around 60 metres per pixel. The page says which one you are looking at rather than letting you guess.

While a map is being prepared you see a note instead of a blank canvas, for example:

GameGrid is preparing this map's images on your server — 40% done. The grid and positions below are exact meanwhile.

Other notes you may see, each meaning exactly what it says: still being prepared, switched off for this server, could not be prepared (ours to look at, not yours), and a mismatch note if the server has been moved to a different map since the images were made. In every one of those cases the grid and the positions are still exact — only the picture is missing.

Who the map belongs to

The imagery is DayZ's own. Under the map, and at the foot of the DayZ Tools page, GameGrid states it:

This map is rendered from DayZ's own map data, and DayZ and its map imagery remain the property of Bohemia Interactive. WDC GameGrid is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Bohemia Interactive.

It is written under the map rather than stamped into the picture, so a screenshot you take of your server is not defaced by it.

The Grid, Grid References and Metres

The map draws DayZ's own grid. Zoomed out it is a 1 km grid; zoom in and it steps to 500 m and then to 100 m, with heavier lines every 5 km and labels in kilometres.

A grid reference is the 100-metre number DayZ players already use: three digits east, a space, three digits north, counted from the south-west corner of the map.

Grid 037 142  →  3.7 km east, 14.2 km north

The toolbar shows the grid reference and the exact world metres under your cursor at all times, so you can read a position off the map and say it in chat, or paste it into a command.

Grid references are what to give your players. World metres are what to give a tool or a mod configuration file. The map hands you both from the same point, which is the whole reason it shows them together.

Survivors and Vehicles

• Survivors are dots, one colour each. An amber ring means unconscious; a grey outline with no fill means dead. Hover or tap one for their name, state, health, blood and grid reference.
• Vehicles are small amber squares with their class name and, where the server reports it, their condition.
• Names is its own layer. A label reads as the player's name and then a short code, for example Survivor · a1b2c3d4.

That short code matters more on DayZ than on most games. "Survivor" is DayZ's own default profile name, so several people on your server can genuinely share it. The code after the name is the same for one player across the map, the survivor table, the killfeed and the leaderboard, so you can follow one person even when three of them are called the same thing. See Steam64, DayZ Player ID and BattlEye GUID for the identifiers a ban or a whitelist takes.

Beside the map, Survivors online lists everyone with their state and grid reference. Clicking a name centres the map on them. A player the mod knows about but has no position for is listed separately rather than being dropped.

Layers, Zoom and Refreshing

The Layers panel switches each layer on and off, and your choice is remembered in that browser.

Zoom runs from 1x to 16x: scroll, pinch, use the buttons, or drive it from the keyboard. Fit frames the whole world.

Auto-refresh (5s) is on by default. Polling pauses while the browser tab is hidden and resumes the moment you come back, which is deliberate: a map nobody is looking at should not be asking your game server for positions. Refresh forces a read immediately.

Terrain Relief and Contour Lines

Relief is hill shading, and it is measured on your own server rather than copied from anywhere: the GameGrid mod walks the world and reads the ground height, one sample every 32 metres, a little at a time while the server runs so it never costs you a frame that matters. Sakhal, Livonia and Chernarus each get their own measurement.

Because it is a real measurement rather than a picture, it starts empty and fills in. While it is being taken the page says so:

The GameGrid mod is measuring this map's terrain on your server — 60% done. The part it has measured is shaded already.

If the server is stopped the measurement pauses and says so, and continues from where it was when the server is running again.

Switching it on

Both Terrain relief and Contour lines are off by default, and the measurements are only downloaded to your browser when you switch relief on. Contours are drawn with the relief, so turning contours on without relief tells you to turn relief on first.

Contour spacing follows how hilly the map is: 50 m apart on a map with more than 600 m of range, 25 m, 10 m or 5 m on flatter ones. The legend says which interval you are looking at, for example Every 25 m of height.

With relief on, the toolbar readout gains the ground height under your cursor — in whole metres, or sea level — appended to the grid reference and the world metres.

Height is read from the nearest sample, so it is accurate to the 32-metre grid it was measured on, not to the centimetre. It is for reading terrain, not for surveying a base.

Point Tools: Right-Click Anywhere

Right-click any point on the map — or long-press on a touch screen, press the Context-Menu key, or use the Point tools button in the toolbar — and you get a small menu headed with that point's grid reference and its world metres.

Markers are yours alone

A marker is kept in that browser while the page is open. It is not sent to the server, nobody else sees it, and it does not appear in game. The panel says so in three places rather than letting you assume otherwise, because DayZ has no marker of its own for us to write to.

The two that act on the game

The last two entries act on the game, so both need the Manage permission on that server. Without it they are not shown at all, rather than offered and then refused.

Teleport a player here

Pick a connected player from the list — each row shows their name, their short code, and how far they are from the point you clicked. The confirmation names the player, the destination as a grid reference and in metres, and the verb, so the button reads something like Teleport Survivor to grid 037 142.

Two things the dialog tells you plainly, because both have surprised people:

• They are put on the ground at that point wherever they are and whatever they are doing — possibly in the middle of a fight.
• DayZ cannot move a player who is in a vehicle. Ask them to get out first; the dialog marks those rows so you do not pick one by accident.

A point below the surface is raised to the ground for you.

Spawn items here

The item is chosen from your own server's catalogue, not typed: start to type "Wooden Crate" and the picker resolves it to the class your server really has. You can spawn 1 to 10 copies, and optionally fill a container with up to 10 kinds of contents.

The confirmation reads Spawn 3 × WoodenCrate at grid 037 142. What you get:

• Each copy lands on the ground at that exact point, not in anybody's hands.
• Each keeps the normal lifetime your types.xml gives it, so it disappears like any other loot if nobody picks it up.
• Anyone standing there can take it, and anything inside it. Contents that do not fit are dropped beside it.

This is a world spawn, not a delivery to a player. Handing an item to a specific person is the Economy page — a shop purchase or a kit — and it behaves differently on purpose. See Kits and The Shop and Catalogue.

Every action is rate limited per server and written to your audit log.

When the Map Cannot Show You Something

The map never quietly draws an empty world. Each case has its own message, and the last known positions stay on screen underneath it:

Point tools that act on the game are disabled with the reason underneath them in the same situations — "Nobody is connected right now", "The GameGrid mod stopped reporting, so nothing can be sent to the game until it does again", or "This point is outside the map".

A map with no players on it after a restart is normal: the server has to be up and someone has to be connected before there is anything to draw.