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benlimner

Note from the developer:

I’m so glad that many of you like this app. I’m a solo dev, actively building between my 9-5 and raising a 9mo.

Please follow along on X https://x.com/benlimner, or join the mailing list for updates/suggestions!

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Cool, I tried something similar 30 years ago working for a military contractor:

http://zoom.interoscitor.com/PetersonEnterprises/Consulting/...

I was asked to come up with a 3D display of the airspace around an aircraft for the pilot to use and which could replace the 2D displays used then. People were impressed, but decided it was impractical for a variety of reasons. You can't really tell where the aircraft are relative to each other and the ground without rotating the display (which means the pilot loses their orientation), and there are no altitude indicators and it's difficult to tell where each aircraft is relative to the others. (Which is why I added the vertical lines and ground tracks.) Also things get visually messy when several aircraft are close together, even if you use different colors (which doesn't work for the colorblind). For example, could you use this display to tell if a collision is imminent near ground level in proximity to an airport? The display does give you a high level sense of what is going on in the airspace; it may not have enough details to be of practical use to pilots and air traffic controllers. I'd suggest consulting with them to get feedback. Maybe this would be practical as a VR display? How did they solve this in the F-35 helmet display?

You might find interesting how space games have tackled this issue. Most share the same design for a radar display that shows targets around you in all dimensions using vertical lines to offset the markers above or below. Check out a video of Elite Dangerous combat to see it in action. It seems conceptually very similar to what you came up with.

Thank you both for sharing your gaming and IRL experiences. It's neat to see how problems overlap, in and out of reality.

Form and function (or something).

Homeworld (1 and 2) also had a great 3D interface for viewing and controlling ships.

This is the coolest thing I’ve seen this week.

You faced all of the same usability problems. Until there is a true 3D display I don’t think this will be super useful for true traffic awareness. The cockpit is just too chaotic.

It’s very interesting to see your graphic. Was this supposed to be displayed on a cockpit TV?

Yes, it was supposed to be an alternative graphic for a cockpit radar display in a jet fighter. The goal for any such display is to convey maximum information at a glance. I got feedback from a fighter pilot who said he wouldn't use it. Most people don't think in 3D, they think in 2D. Pilots have to think in 3D to some extent, but in a battle a fighter pilot wants to know what they immediately need to pay attention to, which is usually something heading directly at them (another jet or missile) and they mostly want to know the direction it is coming from, not so much what its altitude is. I made the path histories fade out so they didn't get too long and clutter the screen. The vertical bars were calibrated to indicate a specific distance so they also gave an idea of velocity. It would be possible to add/remove things from the display based on some automatic assessments of priority (i.e., remove everything not headed at the pilot, though having things appear and disappear can be confusing also). The aircraft icons were actual wireframe models representing the type of the aircraft, but had to be oversize to see them, which added some confusion also. The pilot found a fixed size icon with a few numbers next to it and highlighting for approaching/receding much more useful. Took me a long time to digitize them with just a ruler. While such a display may not have a technical use, it might be useful in advertising, showing travelers at an airport what is going on around the airport at the moment for example.

> which doesn't work for the colorblind

Does the military have colorblind pilots?

Not everyone sees color exactly the same way, for example some people can see a little into the IR and UV. While the pilots may not be colorblind, the people who repair the displays might be. Situations can also make pilots colorblind, like strong glare coming through a window. It's better to have an unambiguous display that is easy to interpret rather than to rely on something that can be subjective like color. People can only reliably identify a few distinct colors, so if you have 300 kinds of planes and missiles to identify using shades of red and purple doesn't work so well. An ID number next to an icon can handle thousands of kinds of entities. People can tell color #F0479E is different then #F04750 when comparing them side by side, but they probably can't tell you what the exact name of each shade is, and at a glance they might think they are both the same color. So it's not so much colorblindness as it is the limits of human perception. What I call Hunter Green and English Racing Green might look like the same color to you.

Cool project.

I noticed one minor area for potential improvement: when I look at the ATL area right now, it looks like aircraft are clipping through the ground at takeoff and landing.

I'm guessing this is because you're taking the pressure altitude which is derived from aircraft transponder data, and incorrectly interpreting it as altitude above sea level, without correcting for local air pressure variations. Right now, local barometric pressure in Atlanta is about 1028 mbar, which means pressure altitude is about 450 feet lower than true MSL altitude.

(Pilots need to know their altitude relative to sea level and the ground, so they have to manually adjust their altimeters to correct for pressure variations, based on the latest local weather conditions. For ATC, it's more critical to know aircraft's altitudes relative to each other. So transponders report the pressure altitude without correction, to guarantee that inconsistent pressure corrections can't cause errors.)

No this is a known issue, there is some mitigation for it right now, but I haven’t chased down all of the edge cases.

There are some places on the map where the terrain texture isn’t great, or is below the elevation of the centered airport, and the planes will breach the mesh. There’s a setting in there where you can manually tweak the ‘ground elevation’ if it gets annoying to you.

I am not a developer at all (electrician, retired, live in a flightpath), but I'm pretty sure you can build a healthy retirement with your absolutely breathtaking solo project.

At the same time, I'm not sure how you monetize such an easily "stealable" idea. My hunch is that you'll see other flight trackers debut your perspective as one of many layers within their own trackers (this is where you come in, as consultant?).

Godspeed, ace.

Give me some of the luck you’re spreading, and brother I might have a chance to make a dollar or two.

But if nothing comes of it, I’ve had a ball making it, and chatting with the community.

At a minimum: If your resumé previously lacked page 2, it no longer does.

I'd recon your page 3 has already begun, too... as you digest all these intentional comments, over the next few months: don't ever lose your glee of hackiness.

Luck, given — but you've already done all the work!

I got one random plane that was black instead of color-coded by altitude. Bug?

https://imgur.com/a/YLxRaQ6

Another bug: when you adjust altitude scale, it doesn't rescale the existing trails, it simply moves the planes up and down leaving stairsteps in their paths.

Thanks for the note. I’m actively chasing down both of these.

The scale change one will be easy to sort out. The black one is a little harder, sometimes the adsb data comes in corrupted.

One more suggestion: if the camera is below the ground, hide the ground texture.

For interesting flights to visualize in 3D, try to get data from one of the Zero-G planes on their parabolic flights. F-HNOV is the European one.

I’ll try!

Also watching the high altitude balloons pop and fall straight through traffic is awesome

Oh and you should check out the fighter jet training around San Antonio

Suggestion - make it default to an airport that is currently in daytime. Clicked on it this morning EU time and Boston was obviously dead to the point of the site seeming empty/broken

Sounds like a fun challenge

had it bookmarked since the last share, but had noted the world-tiles would regularly not load, seems okay (and with colors?) now, but maybe that could need some low-detail fallback when arcgisonline servers are busting? - some 16k image to fill all the black void?

also "copy this view" does nothing (neither location nor any settings, gives just the bare link)

Copy this view really only works when you are following a plane or are at an airport you searched for. If that doesn’t work, ping me.

I think the map tiles are a symptom of the overnight success of the app. I might have to find a new map provider if they permanently limited my IP

without an airport near "my current location" is my goto. is there a direct link for this? (otherwise i may hack together some userscript that clicks that button for me...)

"my assumption" would have been some x/y/angle/zoom params on the url, maybe even with some of the settings encoded in... (autorotate, render-radius or terrain height would be first to come to mind)

my "not getting any tiles" must have been 2 or 3 days ago - and from the last time i had to mess with tiles i do remember that to be fairly ugly in regards to performance/scaling so i feel you ;)

also addon after trying the "direct link to an airport": - this still loads at the random-US-airport first. with some tweaking there is likely an entire tilefetch you can save^

thx!

I’ll work on adding a ‘near me’ direct link. I totally missed that feature so thanks for mentioning it.

Thanks for also pointing out the direct link to airport bug.

I’m planning on furthering the deep link capabilities so you can save other settings.

The premium that I’m planning will have more robust ability to save settings presets.

Done! Use ?airport=nearme

What data source are you using? AeroAPI?

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