Ghost Lap: ahead of pace or behind, live

The idea

Racing games show a "ghost car" — your best lap replayed beside your current one. Ghost Lap does the same for a storm. When a storm goes active, Snowmass forks a shadow simulation from the same starting conditions — the open stops, the roster size, the depot, and the storm's own direction and route-order settings — and runs it through the engine on a throwaway copy.

What you see

On the live-ops board, the real fleet's progress is compared to the ghost's: for the number of stops you've actually completed, did the ghost get there sooner or later? The board shows ahead, behind, or on pace, with the gap in time. Small gaps (under a minute) count as on pace.

Turning it on

Ghost Lap is off by default. An admin enables it per organization in Settings — "Show Ghost Lap on live ops". Once on, every new storm gets its ghost automatically, shortly after it goes active, once the roster has settled.

Advisory only

The ghost is a pace-setter, not a referee. It runs at engine constants with no weather, breakdowns, or traffic, so treat "behind" as a prompt to look — not as a verdict. It never touches the live storm, and the indicator simply stays hidden until the ghost run has finished.