Note from the developer:<p>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.<p>Please follow along on X <a href="https://x.com/benlimner" rel="nofollow">https://x.com/benlimner</a>, or join the mailing list for updates/suggestions!
Cool, I tried something similar 30 years ago working for a military contractor:<p><a href="http://zoom.interoscitor.com/PetersonEnterprises/Consulting/airspace01.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://zoom.interoscitor.com/PetersonEnterprises/Consulting/...</a><p>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.<p><i>Form</i> and <i>function</i> (or <i>something</i>).
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.<p>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.<p>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<p>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.<p>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.<p>I'm guessing this is because you're taking the <i>pressure altitude</i> 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.<p>(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 <i>to each other</i>. 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.<p>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 <i>healthy</i> retirement with your absolutely breathtaking <i>solo</i> project.<p>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 <i>your perspective</i> as one of many layers within their own trackers (this is where you come in, as consultant?).<p>Godspeed, ace.
Give me some of the luck you’re spreading, and brother I might have a chance to make a dollar or two.<p>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 <i>page 2</i>, it no longer does.<p>I'd recon your <i>page 3</i> has already begun, too... as you digest all these intentional comments, over the next few months: don't ever lose your glee of hackiness.<p>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?<p><a href="https://imgur.com/a/YLxRaQ6" rel="nofollow">https://imgur.com/a/YLxRaQ6</a><p>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.
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.
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
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?<p>also "copy this view" does nothing (neither location nor any settings, gives just the bare link)
What data source are you using? AeroAPI?
Really nice!<p>Absolutely killer would be integrating with <a href="https://www.liveatc.net/" rel="nofollow">https://www.liveatc.net/</a> or other live ATC stream. Drop down to choose ground, tower, approach/departure, center, etc.<p>I'll start in another tab for now.
It looks very nice. It's a nifty project. However, as the particular kind of weirdo who has a bookmark to <a href="https://globe.adsbexchange.com/" rel="nofollow">https://globe.adsbexchange.com/</a> on his phone's desktop and checks it multiple times daily, I will point out that this UI doesn't add much that the color-coded plane icons on ADS-Bx don't already do, and it is more difficult to quickly visually glean information from.
This is quite cool, seeing taking off planes appearing and rising is cool.<p>Some comments:
- Is the Up axis correctly scaled? The ascent rate of planes taking off seems very steep
- Planes landing seems to get "stuck" at the beginning of a lane at about 600 feet (tracking/radar cutoff?), maybe a fix the that slightly adjusts it to ground in a landed state if a plane "stops" or disappears from the data tracking.
Down at the bottom of the menu there's an altitude scale slider. It defaults to 1.2, changing it to 1.0 makes the trails look better.
I fixed the altitude scale issue.
This is really freaking cool.<p>Two asks -<p>(1) you should default to a busy airport, eg. Atlanta, which is the busiest in the world. They have an order of magnitude more flights landing and departing. It seems random, but I keep getting New Orleans which is 10-20x less busy than Atlanta. ATL, SFO, LAX, ... That said, the topographically diverse places like Anchorage are nice too, and the height maps on the textures are fantastic.<p>(2) Higher resolution satellite titles would be awesome. I have a high density flight path directly overhead and I'd love to see where I live on the map and know which way to look in real time, but the textures are about 10x too grainy to make out my street / neighborhood. Maybe you can download some high resolution tiles for free that won't be a big performance hit?
I’m actively looking for a better map tile provider here.<p>You’re getting New Orleans because it’s truly selecting from ~20 random US airports.<p>Stoked that you like the app!
EWR is fascinating to look at because there are three major airports in one area with all sorts of approach and departure angles.
interesting, seems to be random. I've gotten Portland which was also not too busy but nevertheless enough to understand the beauty of it.
This thing is dangerous. It's going to nerd snipe me into a new hobby.<p><a href="https://imgur.com/a/264P9Q4" rel="nofollow">https://imgur.com/a/264P9Q4</a><p>It looks completely accurate. I could see the medivac helicopters taking off, and it matched 1:1.<p>I missed a biplane flying over the city. And some other low-flying planes circling mysteriously.<p>If I had a telephoto lens and a way to alert myself of large planes flying low (happens frequently), C-130s, F-22s, etc. I think I'd waste way too much time.<p>I need to avoid looking into this more.
It’s a random assortment of ~20 US cities. I’m happy to add another one into the mix if you’d like.<p>If there’s an airport you want to default to, search for it and save the URL
I’m unable to access the website directly from Romania (I tried different connections). Is there any reason why this region is blocked in CloudFlare?
Private pilot here.
This is an awesome proyect.
I cant make air spaces work, but if you manage to render them properly with TMA, CTR, AWY and other stuff, this would be incredibly useful for students.
Can you give the iata codes for these? I can only find TMA in ForeFlight, and it looks like it’s uncontrolled airspace so there wouldn’t be anything represented in my app
There’s a bug where airspace doesn’t like to load after searching for an airport. I’m working on that.<p>Try loading airspace on one of the default random airports & let me know if it still doesn’t work for you
As an old-timer who learned programming with punched cards, this visualization blows my mind. I want to turn it into my desktop screen saver.
Very nice. My only feedback is that on a 2017 iMac (Radeon Pro 580), while rotating around, there is a brief hiccup every 1 second. Probably transferring data to the GPU periodically, but something is blocking rendering. Reproducible on Safari and Firefox.<p>Not reproducible on Windows Edge or Firefox, on a RX 5700, where it's consistently smooth.
Super cool app, saw someone posting about this on insta the other day. Do you have any info about how you've gathered and united all the different kinds of data you needed to build this? I've been working on a bunch of GIS/mapping stuff recently and I would love to hear more about other people's approaches to this sort of thing.
Very cool!<p>Buttery smooth on mobile (iPhone 14), but the slider thumbs have a vertical anlignment issue (consider using a component library that has solved all the niggles rather than rolling your own).<p>Also, you might consider setting the default airport according to time of day – Memphis is dead rn, whereas Heathrow is super busy and fun to watch…<p>Also, lots be the name!
Very cool!<p>Buttery smooth on mobile (iPhone 14), but the slider thumbs have a vertical anlignment issue (consider using a component library that has solved all the niggles rather than rolling your own).<p>Also, you might consider setting the default airport according to time of day – Memphis is dead RN, whereas Heathrow is super busy and fun to watch…
Very cool. I don't think the glow effect on the plane adds anything and somewhat obscures them. Would be slick if there was a way to smooth the motion (delay one update and interpolate?).
This is fabulous. I wonder if something like this with 3D vision could make air traffic control much safer?
Planes flying w/ multiple transponders [1]?<p>[1] <a href="https://files.littlebird.com.au/Screenshot-2025-11-29-at-8.27.31-am.png" rel="nofollow">https://files.littlebird.com.au/Screenshot-2025-11-29-at-8.2...</a>
This is really cool!<p>Only enhancement I can think of would be the option of using the FAA published (and free) sectional maps instead of the satellite view. In combination with the 3d airspace you did, would be amazing!
I'm only seeing a circle that is lit up? Am I supposed to see the whole globe or is this a glitch on my system? I'm on a M1 Macbook Pro, Sonoma w/ Chrome.
I tried Firefox Android, it instantly loaded a 3D view of a 2D map projection with glowing planes at an airport
No glitch. It’s purposefully limited upon initial load. Adjust the search radius to increase your view range
This is pretty amazing. It would be pretty cool if clicking on plane shows additional info of plan like destination
Wow, great idea well executed, congrats
It just sits at "Initializing 3D Space". I don't get anything else.
Neat project.<p>Minor usability note, zooming by pinch on a MacBook trackpad is painfully slow.
Pretty cool! I made something similar a while ago, and used cesium primarily.
I love turning the trail length up and watching the air traffic patterns
As a bit of a Flight Aware addict, well done.
this is really cool! can you make it interpolate and smoothly animate based on velocity and trajectory?
Could, yes.<p>I’ve tried it in 2d to pretty good success. It’s a bit low on my list of items to add, partially because I have a hunch that calculating and projecting thousands of vectors is going to cost more compute than simply accepting coordinates and drawing lines.
I love this, and would pay for native or electron app on Mac. Like Google Earth for global airspace.
Working on it!
Please. No Electron!
Why not?
<a href="https://josephg.com/blog/electron-is-flash-for-the-desktop/" rel="nofollow">https://josephg.com/blog/electron-is-flash-for-the-desktop/</a><p>Please use native toolkits. At least Gtk or Qt :)<p>Flash is just “We don’t like to pay developers. We prefer you to pay more for memory. And your processor. And by the why, we don’t care about your security.”<p>Ironically memory prices are skyrocketing right now. Even the best known Electron application (Signal) is eating memory like it is free. Similiar native applications integrate much better and use a fraction of memory (e.g. Fractal).<p>PS: If autonomous locally usage doesn’t make sense a mere web-app is good way. At least it is then a single tab in the web-browser and most platforms are covered (if you don’t target Chrome exclusively…). In this case possible step? At least not 500 MB wasted.
I think the common opinion is that unless you are really careful, it becomes quite a big executable eating a huge amount of ram even for low functionality and often slow.<p>There are very good electron apps, but the engineering to make them small and fast is quite important.
This is amazingly cool
This website is really cool; I love its clean and clear information display. The expanded panel on the side has a lot of configuration options, but I don't quite understand most of it.<p>I also followed you on Twitter; my name is winterx.<p>Bro, you could try creating a 3D version of the Earth using AI and Three.js. You'll gain 10 times more attention online.
Don’t use “loom” in your product/company name. ChatGPT LOVES to suggest it, and it makes it obvious you used it.