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Show HN: Random Aerial Airport Views (randomairport.onrender.com)

175 points by jorisboris ↗ HN
Hi HN!

Sharing Random Airport

Inspired by RandomStreetView (which I find weirdly addictive), and a passion for air travel.

Probably not for everyone, but I hope some of you find it interesting!

Needless to say, open to feedback!

Enjoy clicking!

Further reading:

TECH: It's Build in React, NodeJS, with a Notion DB. The code is public on Github. It is spaghetti though ... Especially open to feedback here.

DB: The db is publicly available (and editable), I can add the link in comments if anyone would like to have a look .

KNOWN ISSUES: I would like to improve the design, pic loading performance and quality of (some) pics.

80 comments

[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 183 ms ] thread
squaresp2
Omg I just spent 20 min flipping through these aerial pics and I had bunch of chores to finish. Oh well. Haha so cool:) Is there way to browse for certain cities? Made my night! Lol. Cheers
jorisboris
Thanks for the feedback, no filters yet, but it's highly requested so working on that soon :D
walrus01
As the images in the page are linked from jetphotos.net (example: https://cdn.jetphotos.com/full/5/74636_1585128961.jpg ) , watch out that they don't do something like an httpd rewrite rule for everything that comes from your http referer and serve up goatse.jpg instead.

That was one of the traditional methods of dealing with people direct embedding images in off-site forums and pages maybe 22 years ago...

If this got REALLY popular I'm sure the jetphotos.net people would probably take a dim view of the extra bandwidth and server load caused by it.

defrost
Agreed.

Jetphotos is a gem of a collection, where else can you find (say) in service photos of the remaining three Grumman Mallards still operating out of an obscure once classified WWII aistrip used to bomb Japanese bunker oil depots.

( https://www.jetphotos.com/photo/6181791 )

NKosmatos
This reminded me of an old TV series: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tales_of_the_Gold_Monkey

I know that the aircraft you posted is a different/newer one, but the Grumman Goose is somehow connected in my brain with all these similar looking amphibious flying boats :-)

defrost
Heh.

I was in my twenties when that "old TV series" aired, can't say I've see or heard of it but I grew up in the vicinity of Mungalalu | Truscott Airbase around people that flew in WWII and continued flying logistics around Northern Australia and various side of the Wallace line.

A lot went on in region in post war | cold war era with East Timor, Indo takeover of PNG, etc.

I've many memories of flying boats, STOL planes, helicopters, etc.

JackFr
Hmmmmm. Shouldn’t that be on Propphotos?
defrost
Fair point, HighWingTwinPropPhotos even.
jorisboris
Thanks for the feedback, didn't think about this.

I hope they consider it good marketing, given that their logo is watermarked in all pics.

I'll keep an eye on traffic in the meantime.

brunoTbear
How fun: the first one that loaded for me is an airport I flew out of last week! What a fun coincidence to get Samui airport!
jorisboris
I live in Thailand so I added a couple of Thai airports, proximity bias I guess
[deleted]
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cryptoneo
Love it! Is there a way to view the airport name other than zooming in on the map?
jorisboris
Thanks for the feedback, zooming is the only way currently. I could add the ICAO code somewhere in the UI.
NKosmatos
Came here to say the same comment, airport names (somewhere in the page) would be a great addition.

Very nice and addictive page for us who are air related aficionados ;-)

start123
This is fantastic! I usually use Google Maps to find interesting airports. This helps me discover more.
start123
Could you please add keyboard navigation. Arrows would be great!
jorisboris
Yes, the thought came up but didn’t implement yet. Thanks for the feedback.
donkeyd
This is fun for Flight Simulator 2020, click the button twice and fly from the first airport to the second.
canbus
That's my evening sorted!
jorisboris
If you get JFK first and Changi second it's more than an evening sorted :D
mwambua
It was interesting how many of the airports I could recognize just from playing the game. :D
carl_dr
I find this fascinating. A permalink to the currently showing airport would be nice so you can share a link, plus it'll give you the ability to press back to go to the previous airport.
stfods
Having flown to/from 186 different globally, I'd really love a competition mode with a window for IATA code :) I haven't been able to recognize all of them, but SFO, TLV, IST, LAS, FNC and many more have been easily recognizable. Sometimes it's even clear from where the aerial photo has been taken, E.g. Santos airport in RIO seem to be looking the same as seen from the Sugar Loaf mountain
t0mislav
This is great! I like sites like this, and believe me, lot of people do.

I had few sites like this (site which gives you random stuff). Some of them were great success.

My latest site is this: https://randomcountrygenerator.com/

enriquto
Why does it need google tag manager? It seems unnecessarily invasive.

The site should display the airport code, or the location, or at least the longitude/latitude coordinates. Thus if you find a cool airport you can know where it is!

jorisboris
Only using it to track visitors, and didn’t have time to dive deep into an alternative

If you know an alternative to Google, would be happy to switch!

enriquto
The alternative is to not track your visitors. Why would you want to? It's creepy.
jorisboris
Pure vanity, I like to have an idea how many visitors I had

Edit: I realize my previous comment isn’t accurate, i want to tracker visitor numbers, not visitors specifically

lamporchestra
This is really cool, seeing aerial views right next to the map

Being able to search cities would also be really nice if you're looking for your fav airport or something

jorisboris
Yes, thinking of adding filters to be able to zoom in to cities of regions. Thanks for the feedback!
mmvora
This is so cool! But I also kept clicking until I found my home airport...20 mins still didn't see it :D
jorisboris
It only has a select number of airports now. Which one is your home airport, I’ll add it?
djbusby
Please add/verify BOS, MHT, MKE, OAK and SEA.

Thanks for the awesome.

jorisboris
Added Seattle, Oakland and Boston. Checking for MHT, MKE.
calewis
Thanks for ruining my productivity this afternoon. I love HN for interesting small projects like this.
Micoloth
I can see how many people think these pictures are cool.

Unfortunately, all i can think of looking at them is how they are literally scars of the earth.

We are obliterating everything that was there before and converting it into barren wasteland, thousands of square kilometers at a time.

And i mean, i'm a Software Engineer so my job is technology all the way down.. There is exactly 0 nature in what I do around me.

But sometimes, it's only when looking at these (literal) bird's eye view that you are reminded how sad it is..

empyrrhicist
I get exactly that feeling every time I fly and see the scale of human development.
aflag
We are part of nature, so all we do is also nature's doing. I think you're anthropomorphising earth. Earth and nature don't care about anything. You may argue that the way we are modifying the environment around us is not good for humans in the end. But that's an entirely human view. Nature does not care.
Micoloth
I am not anthropomorphising anything!

Nature doesn’t care, and i never said it does.

Finding beauty in nature is a deeply human thing.

It’s me who is sad, not the birds and the trees..

(*Nature as an ecosystem that is rich with biodiversity, yet stable and self-sufficient, and has been there for milions of years (There’s beauty there too). Yes cities are technically nature too, but i think it’s clear what i mean..)

hypefi
I think the website is cool, but your comment is spot on, so much ugliness, I am sorry but airports are just ugly, compared to what raw nature has to offer
farnerup
This one is interesting: https://cdn.jetphotos.com/full/5/76042_1547934155.jpg Loudenvielle, French Pyrenees
alistairSH
Ski resort, IIRC. Was in one of the Bond movies (with snow). Probably others. Looks scarier than it is (at least relative to other scary airstrips in worse place - a few high in the Himalayas come to mind).

Edit - hmmm, looks like I'm thinking of another mountain top airport in the French mountains.

dividuum
The Bond one is Courchevel (with runway designation 22, not 09) and a bit bigger from what this image looks like. Source: I've taken a stupid video there: https://redd.it/v7vkx6 :-)
jorisboris
I actually think the Bond one is the Pyrenees one, they even renamed it to 007 airport or something like that. It’s from Tomorrow Never Dies.
dividuum
Wow. You're totally correct. Thank you. I must have picked up the wrong fact a while ago.
lom
I also got this one as the 2nd airport.. quite a surprise
oliv__
Thanks for making this, I'm loving it!
hiidrew
Awesome project, enjoyed clicking through these. Only feedback is that I wish I could go back to a previous picture – accidentally skipped a really cool looking one!
jorisboris
Yes, I’ve had that problem myself as well. I’ve built it in React and frankly I don’t know how to make the ‘return’ button work. But there is a solution for everything!
robga
You're calling the google maps API with every visitor? Might get expensive.
jorisboris
I got the impression it could be expensive because it seems I just got billed a ~100 usd. Any way to work around this?
robga
The geocode API converts "addresses or Place IDs to latitude/longitude coordinates and vice-versa". The results aren't going to change them anytime soon so cache them as static resources (e.g. latlong columns in your DB). Right now you are asking the API thousands of times for where Changi airport is, etc.
jorisboris
Combined with a bug, the geocode api made costs explode. So I took it out.
munro
love the aesthetic
ape4
I guess expense is the reason taxiways don't go under runways.
cporios
A taxiway that goes under a runway would require large, long inclines and declines. An A320 is ~12m tall, and with a 5% incline/decline (which is very large) you'd require 480m of horizontal distance in incline/decline, which sounds like a lot. And some airplanes are two times as tall as the A320, and with some margins added, it's probably safe to guess that an underground passing would require airplanes to taxi hundreds of additional meters to pass through the tunnel.

Airplanes burn a lot of fuel when taxiing, and taxi very slowly. So it's likely an expense, time and space constraint.

tablespoon
It's not so random. I got Austin, Malta, and NY LaGuardia twice each in about 10 clicks.
jorisboris
Thanks for the feedback, it’s a relatively small selection for the moment, only ~60 airports.

And I don’t take the ones a user has seen out of the queue.

gofreddygo
I'd love some way to put this as the background for our living room tv connected to a chromecast.