Air traffic as seen by the FAA

[openbah]

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The following flight pattern visualizations are the result of experiments leading to the project Celestial Mechanics by Scott Hessels and Gabriel Dunne. FAA data was parsed and plotted using the Processing programming environment. The frames were composited with Adobe After Effects and/or Maya and the final piece was highlighted at SIGGRAPH 2005 in the NVIDIA Immersive Dome Experience.

 

[DanMa1156]

Pretty wild.

 

[Punk]

that's pretty freaking cool

and by cool, I mean neat

and by neat, I mean rad

etc...

 

[Fly Navy]

That is cool. The vid took forever to load though. That is a lot of a/c. It's funny watching all the morning flights coming over the atlantic. They look like a bunch of those things that you would shoot down in some old arcade game.

Missile Command?

 

[Fly Navy]

That's a bad a@@ video, in a totally Bad Larry way.

 

[Punk]

Missile Command?

damn it, my silos are running out


need more quarters

 

[TheBubba]

That was a good vid... liked it, might link it to my website...

 

[theblakeness]

thats way cool

 

[skidkid]

i can see the 2507s and 29 Palms and the Goldwater range complex and other garden spots, cool video

 

[DairyCreamer]

Eh... that's all artsy-fartsy. Not saying it isn't real data, and it is a cool video... but check it for real, in real time

www.flightaware.com

http://flightaware.com/live/

Great video at http://flightaware.com/analysis/allflights_movie.rvt

Tons and tons of information. Best free live flight tracking flight out there at present.

~Nate

 

[Gatordev]

Both the first link and the flightaware are pretty cool. I'm trying to figure out how flightaware is pulling it's data, since it doesn't have much air traffic. I'm guessing it must be pulling it from center's system, as it looks like it doesn't display terminal traffic.

 

[DairyCreamer]

Well, with over 5100 flights currently active, i'd say that's a pretty full load. I think that ~15000# is fairly extreme, and I dont know where that number is generated from.

Why do you say it doesn't have much air traffic?

~Nate

 

[Gatordev]

If you look at areas that you know are heavily traveled by VFR traffic, you don't see them. I looked up Honolulu, which should have everyone squawking and is pretty busy, and there's only a few returns. I then pulled up PNS, and all I saw were the regionals and a couple of GA returns. There should at least be a couple of xExxx hits around PNS, or a bunch of 1200 no name hits in the areas. I'm guessing it's probably kicking those out. Regardless, pretty neat to watch.

 

[DairyCreamer]

Well, when you pull up a specific airport, you're not pulling up raw or secondary radar. You're looking at traffic that is either IFR, or receiving some level of radar service, going to and from that specific airport.

Aircraft squawking 1200 aren't discreet to the system at all, and it would be impossible to pull them up from radar data.

Without knowing the full details, I would make an educated guess that it is all non-military, or otherwise unclassified aircraft that have a discreet squawk code assigned to them. If I try and pull up, say, NAS Pensacola, I see no flights in and out, though surely there are flights going on, at least one.

~Nate

 

[VarmintShooter]

I punched in the tail number for the Cessna 172 that I soloed in (two years ago) and it popped up once, weeks ago. It has a route of flight, takeoff and land times, and assigned altitude. Guess they filed for flight following? Pretty sweet.