Ghost replays: how to learn from your own best run

A ghost in Slipline Garage is a replay of your own personal-best run, shown as a translucent cyan car driving alongside you. It cannot be hit, it is clearly labeled “Ghost: your personal best”, and it is recorded from you alone — it is not another player and not live multiplayer.

When a ghost is saved

A ghost is stored only when all of these are true:

• the run was completed (not quit or restarted),
• the mode was a challenge, the Daily Run or Quick Drift,
• the result was a new personal best for that exact configuration.

Lessons, Free Drive and Local Duel never record ghosts.

When a ghost appears

At the start of a run, the game looks for a ghost matching the same challenge or track, the same car, the same tuning setup and the same assist setting. If one exists, it is shown. Change the car or move a tuning slider and that ghost no longer applies, because it would be showing you a line driven in a different machine.

You can switch ghosts off in Settings → Graphics → Show my personal-best ghost.

What is recorded

A ghost is deliberately small. Ten times a second the game notes three numbers: the car’s position east-west, its position north-south, and its heading. On playback it interpolates between those samples, so the ghost moves smoothly at any frame rate. A 90-second run is 900 samples.

Each ghost also carries the game version and a compatibility tag for the car, track and scoring data it was recorded against.

Why a ghost might be hidden

If a future update changes a car’s handling, a track’s layout or the scoring rules, the compatibility tag changes. Older ghosts are then hidden rather than replayed, because a line recorded on a slightly different track would be misleading. Your recorded score for that older version stays in its own category. Drive a new best and a fresh ghost replaces it.

Storage limits

• At most 12 ghosts are kept. When a thirteenth is saved, the oldest is removed.
• No ghost is longer than 180 seconds.
• If the browser refuses to store one — storage full, or blocked in private browsing — the game tells you and carries on. Nothing else is affected.
• Settings → Progress and data → Delete all ghosts removes them.

Ghosts live in your browser’s database on this device. They are not included in the progress export file, which carries scores, medals and settings only.

Reading a ghost

A ghost is most useful as three questions.

Where does it start sliding? If the ghost is already sideways while you are still straight, you are initiating late. Late starts push you wide on exit.

Where is it mid-corner? Further inside than you means your angle is larger or your entry was faster. Decide which by watching your angle readout.

Who leads on exit? If you arrive ahead of the ghost and leave behind it, you are overdriving the entry and paying for it on the way out. That pattern costs more chains than any other.

Do not chase it. The ghost’s score is not on screen for a reason: following a car is a distraction, and your best run had its own mistakes. Use it to notice differences, one corner at a time. Drifting lines explains what to do about them.

Sharing a result

The result screen has a Share button. It builds a card from your real run — mode, track, car, score, date and an in-game image — and a link that opens the same challenge. Shared scores are labeled as unverified local results, because they are. If your browser cannot share an image, the text and link are copied to the clipboard instead.

Back to the drifting games overview.