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I converted 2D conventional flight tracking into 3D

191 pointsby kewonittoday at 2:43 PM41 commentsview on HN

Comments

patcontoday at 4:05 PM

I love airloom[1], but since yours is open source, I'll try to make use of it next time, and contribute code or ideas :)

Fwiw, my use-case is simply throwing it on the TV as a screensaver of sorts for my nephews when someone they know is travelling. Just a way to make the world seem smaller!

It's led to some cute situations where their mom was flying almost directly over my dad living in our childhood home, and we video called him and directed him to the spot in the sky where my sister (his daughter) was flying over. Her kids were ecstatic. We live in interesting times

[1]: https://objectiveunclear.com/airloom.html

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Liftyeetoday at 8:23 PM

Neat project, but it looks like you forgot to convert the world into 3D too :P

Mercator projection looks really strange when you look at it sideways to see the layers of aircraft, but the world doesn't fall away on the horizon.

It would be really cool to visualise the sightlines available when on a flight at 10km altitude.

wolvoleotoday at 5:14 PM

Great app/site!! Only thing I'm missing is a jump to here button (using GPS to switch to my location on the map)

sledprocyontoday at 4:13 PM

This is really cool. Have you considered showing the aircraft model/type? Since the ICAO24 is already available, a lookup could add it.

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0_-_0today at 7:50 PM

beautiful! my only issue was the trails are not consistent with the vertical speed -- it appears they curve even if the plane is descending (see the sfo arrivals and how they appear to be "stepping" down). Airloom solves this by not rendering trails until after the plane has moved.

fwipsytoday at 8:00 PM

This is cool! It's funny reading through the comics and most of them are asking for more features.

Is the vertical distance to scale? Jets look a little higher than they should be to me.

wongarsutoday at 3:46 PM

Looks cool to look at. Something that would be cool to have in an airport lounge, or just any public space near an airport

I wonder how feasible it would be to render all airplanes at once, not just those near the chosen airport. A quick google says there are about 12-14k planes in the air at any given time, which sounds reasonable to render with some optimizations

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altmanaltmantoday at 5:40 PM

That altitude scale could use something that makes logical sense than the seemingly random colors? Like its super hard to tell it by the color without knowing the index.

ge96today at 3:55 PM

I was wondering, I flew about 1,100 miles one way then back (no stops). The first path we were very high up I'd assume like 30K feet, the way back we flew I'd say 10K feet, much lower. I was wondering why.

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MobileVettoday at 3:42 PM

Fantastic. Nice work using color as additional altitude information.

Maybe I missed it, but it is always fun to see the origin and destination when looking at flight tracks.

whywhywhywhytoday at 5:20 PM

it's 3D but I can't go first person mode on the planes feels a missed opportunity

rtkwetoday at 4:22 PM

That's fun. Having helicopters and their entire flight trails would be neat too.

ameliustoday at 3:37 PM

Looks flat to me ...

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jessekvtoday at 3:35 PM

Very cool! Have you considered rendering clouds?

NetOpWibbytoday at 5:26 PM

The planes look like swords, made me think Cloud Strife was going outta control with his Smash special.

rustyhancocktoday at 7:32 PM

Utterly beautiful I never appreciated the 3D structure of flights coming in and flying out of airports but it's so cool.

How challenging would it be to create a VR experience to view it?

adolphtoday at 6:17 PM

I wonder how this could be inverted to display the "planes overhead" [0] (so little progress in 15 years) in AR similar to how SkyView [1] displays points of interest in space.

0. https://tech.yahoo.com/phones/article/2011-11-26-siri-wolfra...

1. https://www.terminaleleven.com/skyview/iphone/

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Johnny_Bonktoday at 4:29 PM

I love this

owlcompliancetoday at 7:52 PM

fsdfsd

benaguirretoday at 4:14 PM

this is awesome!

superkuhtoday at 3:45 PM

See also, https://objectiveunclear.com/airloom.html?airport=MSP . Another very nice 3D viewer for adsb info.

Both this post's viewer and the older one I linked directly above have greatly exaggerated vertical scaling. It is not proportional to the distances on the map. With actual 1:1 height scale all these planes, even the stratospheric jets, would be much closer to the ground.

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