Creator here. I posted Flight-Viz a few days ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47603966) and the feedback was great. Since then I added a cockpit mode that follows any liveflight with real 3D terrain.
How to try it: go to flight-viz.com, click any plane, then click "Cockpit" in the action buttons. You'll get a first-person view wit h real buildings, terrain, atmosphere, and a HUD showing altitude/speed/heading — all driven by live ADS-B data.
This is so cool. But on iOS, clicking the plane flashes the mini modal/popup but the it immediately disappears. There no way, on touch, to keep it open long enough to click a cockpit view button, assuming there is one.
Can you make it so "exit cockpit" navigates to a route rather than execute a back on the browser, as it takes me back to the hacker news page when I push it.
Also took me about 5 minutes to find the cockpit view button after I'd selected a flight but that might be a me problem :)
It's really cool. I'm a little unsure if the website is overloaded or my browser is not rendering it properly. If I zoom in on an area and try to click on a plane in flight, sometimes I can select a plane, but sometimes I can't. Even for a plane that I was able to select a few seconds before, if I click away and try to click again, it won't select.
If you click on a city's name, you can see a list of all flights arriving and departing. Some of the arriving ones will be in flight, and you can click on the flight number to view it, then "Cockpit" view to see (roughly) what the pilots are seeing.
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I'd love if it could tell when a plane is ascending or descending and then add the last known rate of change to the simulation. Then you could watch a plane land.
Before browsers were up to this, I implemented something related, using Google Earth Plugin.
You could load up the flight data recorder data (which contains more parameters than ADS-B), and watch 3rd-person view animation of a 3D model of that aircraft's movements as it flies over terrain. With instruments, plus visual annotations of flight path over terrain.
One kludge I was proud/relieved to find: At the start of the flight, there's a zoom in to the aircraft on the ground, from the Earth view, and then a particular dance of the camera around the aircraft itself. The purpose wasn't to try to look cool at the time, but to make sure that the plugin would render the aircraft model at all, before we started to change the position or orientation of the model. (The plugin was overly aggressive about deciding some annotations weren't in the scene. Once this camera dance ritual forced the plane into the scene, it stayed in the scene, even as it moved and twisted, and as the camera moved with it.)
This is super cool! The cockpit view is the best feature. But I had trouble finding it again after picking a different plane. Maybe a dedicated button for that on the map?
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 69.6 ms ] threadHow to try it: go to flight-viz.com, click any plane, then click "Cockpit" in the action buttons. You'll get a first-person view wit h real buildings, terrain, atmosphere, and a HUD showing altitude/speed/heading — all driven by live ADS-B data.
Hao
Also took me about 5 minutes to find the cockpit view button after I'd selected a flight but that might be a me problem :)
Also, is there by chance a way to do historical flights?
Current post is by someone else
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A bit of feedback: Clicking exit cockpit goes back to the previous page (in this case this HN thread).
Not sure if just me, but I really had to search hard for the actions under menu and the cockpit button.
https://flight-viz.com/cockpit.html?lat=40.64&lon=-73.78&alt...
You could load up the flight data recorder data (which contains more parameters than ADS-B), and watch 3rd-person view animation of a 3D model of that aircraft's movements as it flies over terrain. With instruments, plus visual annotations of flight path over terrain.
One kludge I was proud/relieved to find: At the start of the flight, there's a zoom in to the aircraft on the ground, from the Earth view, and then a particular dance of the camera around the aircraft itself. The purpose wasn't to try to look cool at the time, but to make sure that the plugin would render the aircraft model at all, before we started to change the position or orientation of the model. (The plugin was overly aggressive about deciding some annotations weren't in the scene. Once this camera dance ritual forced the plane into the scene, it stayed in the scene, even as it moved and twisted, and as the camera moved with it.)
Love it.