On this page 8 sections
A radar is the quiet member of the cheat family. It does not move your aim and it does not draw boxes over the game. It sits in a corner and tells you where everybody is.
What a radar hack is
A radar hack is an overhead map of the players around you. You sit in the middle, usually as an arrow showing which way you face, and every other player appears as a dot at their real position relative to you. Enemies, teammates and AI enemies each get their own colour.
Unlike the minimap most games already have, a radar hack does not wait for anyone to spot an enemy. It shows every player the game client knows about.
How a radar hack works
A radar needs much less work than an ESP, which is part of why it is so common.
Reading positions
Like every visual cheat, the radar starts with the player data your game client keeps in memory: the position of each nearby player, their team, and often whether they are alive. The client needs this to draw players when they come into view, so it is always there.
Turning positions into dots
An ESP has to project 3D positions onto your screen through the camera, which is fiddly maths. A radar only needs the flat distance and direction from you to each player. It takes the difference between their position and yours, scales it to the size of the radar, and rotates it so the top of the radar points the way you face, or north if you prefer a fixed map.
Drawing it
The radar is then drawn in a corner of the screen as a small dish or square. Settings usually cover its size, zoom, range, opacity and which kinds of things appear on it.
The in-game radar trick
Some games have a radar of their own that already knows how to show enemies. In Counter-Strike, the minimap shows an enemy once a teammate has seen them. Early radar hacks for that game did not draw anything. They simply marked every enemy as spotted, and the game’s own radar did the rest. It is a good illustration of the point that runs through all visual cheats: the information is already on your PC, and the cheat changes what you are shown.
Radar with a real map
A basic radar draws dots on a blank background. That tells you a player is 200 metres north-east, but not what is there.
Better radars draw the map underneath. In Rust, the server can generate an image of its own procedural map, and the Rust build loads it, detects the map’s seed and size, and plots players on real roads, monuments and coastline. A dot stops being a direction and becomes a group at a known monument or a player on the road between you and your base. After a wipe the map changes, so a reload pulls the new one.
Radar, ESP and wallhack compared
| Feature | How it shows players | Strength | Weakness |
|---|---|---|---|
| Radar | Dots on an overhead map | Full awareness, clean screen | No detail on height, health or gear |
| ESP | Boxes and labels over the game | Full detail on every player in view | Clutters the screen in busy fights |
| Wallhack | Players visible through cover | Instant read of who is behind a wall | Only covers what is in front of you |
The radar’s blind spot is height. On a flat map that rarely matters, but in a multi-floor building a dot directly on top of you could be on the floor above or the floor below. Builds that care about this colour or label dots by height, or players switch to ESP for close fights.
When players choose a radar
- To keep the screen clean. Nothing covers the aiming area, which some players find easier to play with and less distracting in long sessions.
- To read rotations. Watching dots move across a map makes it obvious when a team is flanking or leaving an area.
- On stream or in recordings. Elocarry overlays are hidden from screen capture either way, but some players simply prefer a setup where their own screen looks closer to a normal game.
Like any visual cheat, a radar shows nothing to other players, so it can only be noticed through behaviour. Rotating away from a fight before it could have been heard, or always arriving at the exact spot a lone enemy is looting, is what draws attention.
What a radar cannot show
A radar is limited by the same rule as every visual cheat. It can only show players whose positions your game client has received. Games that cull positions on the server, or only send players within a certain range, limit every radar in the same way, however good it is.
Frequently asked questions
Is a radar hack the same as the in-game minimap?
No. The minimap shows what the game decides you should know: your position, objectives and enemies your team has spotted. A radar hack shows every player the game client has loaded, spotted or not.
Why would I use a radar instead of ESP?
A radar keeps the play area clean. Nothing is drawn over the part of the screen you aim at, and a glance at the corner tells you where everyone is. Some players run both: ESP for the fight in front of them, the radar for everything else.
Can a radar show players the game has not loaded?
No. It plots the positions your client already holds. If a game only sends positions for players within a certain distance, the radar only shows players within that distance.
Do radar hacks show the real map?
Some do. Basic radars draw dots on a blank circle. Better ones draw the map underneath, so a dot becomes a player on a specific road or in a specific building. The Rust build, for example, loads the map image the server itself generates.
First published 6 October 2026. Last updated 6 October 2026. We update Wiki pages when the game, the anti-cheat or the build changes, not on a schedule.
Radars in the live builds
From a corner dish to Rust's full map read, see how each game's radar looks and what it marks.
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Updated 6 October 2026Still stuck?
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