What is Digg?66 Comments
- diggsIt, on 10/12/2007, -8/+26YOUNG
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+19HOT POCKET
- mikeazorin, on 10/12/2007, -3/+18Don't join that career yet. This is one of the most innacurate story titles I have ever seen, and even though the videos were amazing, these are clearly NOT the air traffic visualizations seen by the FAA, they are just renderings based on FAA data.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+14Not quite as cool as the first couple of times it was submitted.
- Flipsen, on 10/12/2007, -4/+15http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlBgCwj0kTg
- mucello, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9Reminds me of this nifty ATC video of FedEx planes landing around a thunderstorm:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=JdrSBzy8NwQ - Barman, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10These are very mesmerizing. I'm amazed at the amount of number of planes in flight.
- lcarsdeveloper, on 10/12/2007, -10/+16MIDDLE AGED & SENILE
- OYAHHH, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Well,
The entire Los Angeles area is surrounded by military restricted airspace. To the north is the R-2508 complex. Quite a large area where all types of aircraft and weapons testing takes place.
Coolest thing I ever saw was a B2 bomber landing at Edwards AFB. Or maybe it was the Space Shuttle sitting on top of it's 747 at Edwards. They both were pretty cool.
But back to L.A. There is a very narrow east-west corridor just east of the LA Basin where all east coast traffic squeezes through. The airlines have complained about this forever. But, I personally rather be a bit late and have to go through the corridor than to be in the southern portion of R-2508 when they are doing air-to-air combat practice. Two or four people in mach 2 jets zipping around not paying attention to anything but their enemy isn't the sort of thing you want commercial jets near. - VeryAngryJim, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Hurray for my future ulcer-inducing career. At least the pay is good.
- mutatron, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Yes, and if you keep coming back to Digg, you'll see this one again in a couple of months.
- Klarth, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I never got why people refer to idiots as "sir" on the internet, as it implies authority. Care to enlighten me?
- Habemus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Midway is NNW of Hawaii on the edge. But what is NNE of Hawaii between California and Hawaii? Several planes land there over the course of the day, one arriving from Alaska. The only thing I can think of is that there is a US aircraft carrier in that location.
See this:
http://img113.imageshack.us/my.php?image=faaws0.gif - dj_sea2005, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5CAPS LOCK
- Spetz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3You can almost tell roughly where it is early in the morning from when the spurts of activity originate from. Quite interesting time zone visualisation.
- lyric782001, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5The pay is not so good.
- marklar69, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Where are all those planes going that vanish at a spot between Hawaii and California?
- perogi21, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3It's also 3 Dimensional
- dubled, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3When viewing this http://users.design.ucla.edu/~akoblin/work/faa/color.html there are two areas near california and nevada that don't seem to get any air traffic. Wondering if those are huge no fly zones?
- waveman216, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3or Japan? The rest of Asia? Why the hell would anyone go to Midway?!!
- jonask84, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3One of the coolest things I've seen on Digg in a long time. Dugg!
- teeheehee, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Depending on what data source is being used here these may also be international flights. After the plane is in international airspace the FAA may know where it is but it may not make that information publicly accessible for some reason.
The publicly accessible FAA data primarily contains commercial and general aviation flights over the US and some parts of Canada and Mexico, and depending on levels of clearance and security London as well. Occasionally information over foreign air space is also available, but this is the exception and not the rule.
Also, Military flight information is not accessible to the public with FAA data. What is shown here is commercial and general aviation only.
The data the FAA has is aggregated from many different sources including land-based radar and equipment on board of the aircraft. When a flight is over the water there is no radar information and location is given by this equipment or by radio communication with the pilots. It is often the case that international flights no longer needing to be tracked by the FAA are taken out of the system.
Also, some sources of data that goes into the aggregated set aren't as reliable. Information from Mexican airspace is usually not as high quality - I have no idea why, I just know that this is the case. Information from Europe or Asia is usually not as useful to the FAA, may or may not be as reliable, and may be in a format not currently usable.
There may also be legal and political restrictions on using and providing aircraft identification and location data once the flight has entered a different airspace.
FYI - I am not a pilot, but I do work with flight tracking. - MotherFraker, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2That is the coolest thing ever. Well, almost. How does this relate to the iPhone again?
- aristoworks, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2It's submissions like this that keep me coming back to Digg.
- DrTreTj, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I'm Navy Air Traffic Controller. Hoping to get picked up by FAA soon. You'll need a Tower Ticket and at least an approach qual before you get into any good money.
- masgrada, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3What's the point that the flights keep going to that's NNW of HI, and and 2/3x that same distance W from mid Cali?
http://users.design.ucla.edu/~akoblin/work/faa/color.html - Blackmane, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2In the colour version you can see on the right where the North Atlantic route is to go to the UK, and Europe. At the begginning you can see all the aircraft leaving (red), then near the end of the film you can see them all coming back (blue).
- tmattoneill, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I want to see the one from 0:00 GMT 09/11/2001 - 23:59 09/11/2001 or even better, enter in any date/time span, lat/lon, and zoom radius.
- jmichaelg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Creamedweasel - Hawaii isn't west of California, it's southwest. The point the parent is referring to is about 1000 miles due west of Monterey, California.
I had thought the Pacific was all water between Hawaii and California until I saw this plot showing a few planes headed for some island. I looked on Google maps to see if it showed up but whatever is there I couldn't find it. Perhaps some pilot who reads digg might know what the name of the island is and who runs it? - Pilot85, on 10/12/2007, -6/+7CONFUSED
- juice22, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Did anyone notice the area over Nevada with absolutely no Air Traffic. Must be where Area 51 is. Pretty large No Fly Zone.
- malhombre, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1blobular 3D - viral human flight patterns. cool visualizations all, even tho seen some of em before.
- seoul_scurry, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1*nods in agreement* Third or so time I've seen this on the front page in the past year or so... BUT always a cool view into air traffic. I saw a machine once maybe on the discover channel that let air traffic controllers watch air traffic in 3D there in the tower, it was awesome! Who's got the link to that thinger?
- jacotyco, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1that looked pretty cool
- megagram, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1There are also regulations to help stop that from happening. For instance, East-flying planes fly in the odd-thousands of feet while West-flying planes fly in the even-thousands of feet.
Also, for the basic fact that this is a small-scale diagram. In 1:1 scale, these dots are still thousands of feet apart. Hence why "near-misses" are a rarity. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Kind of reminds me of when you kick over a fire ant mound and they start swarming. Anyone that's done that will know what I'm talking about.
- Creamedweasel, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Yes, some islands have airports. One of those islands is Hawaii. Another if the one just south-southeast of Hawaii, to which I can't remember the name. I think it is owned by the french though.
- bigbchew, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Pretty darn cool. Love to see an international version of this too.
- jesuschrysler, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@jacotyco
you sir, don't pay attention well enough - OYAHHH, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@mikeazorin
While,
The FAA certainly isn't looking at exactly the video presented in this article they do have a system which presents exactly the same information real-time to them.
The system is called ASD (Aircraft Situation Display) and has been up and running since at least 1991 when I saw it for the first time.
At that time it was a fairly hush-hush system that not a lot of people knew about.
Apparently they still don't know about it.
As an exercise in plotting data then I guess it would rank as pretty cool for perhaps a beginning to early intermediate programmer. - ckedge, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1You know, errors in data are entirely possible. What if someone/some-process garbled the coords of a small regional airport or the destination of a few flights?
- spriggig, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I prefer the Google Earth real-time tracking toy:
http://www.fboweb.com/antest/ge/intro.aspx?old=1 - component, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1This reminds me of Stamen Design's Taxi Cab visualizations called Cabspotting.
Stamen is the firm who did Digg Labs. Cabspotting: http://stamen.com/clients/cabspotting - akira117, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2LOVE TROLL
- VeryAngryJim, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"Don't join that career yet. This is one of the most innacurate story titles I have ever seen, and even though the videos were amazing, these are clearly NOT the air traffic visualizations seen by the FAA, they are just renderings based on FAA data."
don't worry, I wasn't assuming that's what air traffic controllers stare at all day. I know what real radar looks like. - robdazomba, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Not totally related, but this seems like a good place to ask.
A long time ago I found a site (presumably run by the FAA) that had flight tracking and flight tracking archives. You could literally enter a date and a flight and it would show the flight path for current or past flights. I've been looking for that site again for almost a year and cannot find it via Google or any other means of searching. Anyone know what I'm talking about and have the URL? - patthew, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Why are none of the decent looking pictures available as wallpapers?
- carguy84, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1LOL @ the fly over states, no love
- havaloc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@rob...
http://flightaware.com - waveman216, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2inaccurate? It says it was data parsed and plotted. Not actual visual shots from the FAA. tard.
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