Aspiring scientists from the Zurich School of Applied Sciences have built a video simulation that displays the flight path of every commercial flight in the world over a 24-hour period. There isn’t much of an application for it, but it sure is cool to look at.
While the map may look complex, Dr. Karl Rege tells us he and his team found it surprisingly simple to assemble using data readily available on the internet. “We used a commercial website called FlightStats to gather global flight and schedule information,” he says. “So there was no need to contact the different airlines.”
The team mined FlightStats for the departure and arrival times of every commercial flight in the world, then plugged it all into a computer to assemble their simulation. For the sake of simplicity, they assumed every plane traveled at the same speed and every flight took the most direct route to its destination. Then every flight was assigned a position on a Miller cylindrical projection, which is similar to a Mercator Projection but doesn’t distort the poles so much.
“After that we drew it, that was it,” Rege says. “It was that easy. We are astonished that nobody did it beforehand.”
0
Support the Blog — Buy This Book!
For Kindle and with free ePub version. Only $9.49 Great reading.
Here is what Gary Shapiro CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) said: Dvorak's writing sings with insight and clarity. Whether or not you agree with John's views, he will get you thinking and is never boring. These essays are worth the read!
Put this ad on your blog!
Syndicate
Subscribe to Main Blog feed here:
Subscribe to Comments too (below):
Junk Email Filter
We already saw this on a post about 1-2 months ago.
#1. I thought so. At least it looks the same.
I would look a lot different if they had the actual flight routes rather than defaulting everyone to a great circle route.
-pretty cool.
i’d like to see an app to be able to see it for any 24/1week/1month period..
-esp what the routing looked like during the 3day
no fly grounding during 9/11
shows how one could really spread a pathogen
around the globe way too fast for any CDC type org to deal with..:s
Europe looks like a plane.
Be nice to see in some sort of HD (720/1080) resolution though. Youtube is utterly crap for this sort of thing.
yeah..it doesn’t show the pollution being spewed and burning holes in the ozone…oops we cant talk about that
Nice work guys.
Get out the mushrooms !
I think this would look awesome in a 3-D holographic display, say at an airport. The designers ought to call it art and get a grant to display it in an airport terminal.
And to think that the FAA says that anyone can do an air traffic control job.
I get heartburn just looking at that video.
It’s a disease!
Oh no, the Earth is infected!
Oh wait, it’s just us — our little “human gnat pods” transporting humans with high ionization energy across the planet.
Humans with high ionization levels = ones with needed capabilities
Their destination: areas with low ionization levels = places where stuff needs done
Human enters gnat pod. Travels to distant place.
Human performs service.
Place receives service.
Human receives monetary tokens (dollars).
Equilibrium achieved.
Human returns to origin point (home).
I’m sure that by now, some film studio has already paid them for the rights to make a “disaster” movie using this technology. Most likely something involving a terrorist plot. And another excuse to increase airport security, and treat passengers like cattle.
couldn’t help but notice a few flights are missing, couple of inter-island hops in hawaii and a few transatlantic jogs, particularly a KLM flight. but nice work nonetheless…
#6 – Sorry dude (or dudess), the people that travel are the most important. Too bad we don’t have flying cars so the number of dots on there could increase by a factor of 200-500.
That looks awesome. Oddly enough, that’s what World War III will look like too.
Of course, anyone that matters (Congressmen, Senators, corporate execs) aren’t flying commercial flights. They’re flying around in private and military owned jets. Because the commercial carriers only have the worst of maintenance and navigational services. While the private air fleet gets the cream of it all. I’d say that this graphic is more proof for an improved High Speed Railway system. Why should only Japan, Germany, and France, have one?
Didn’t we already see this on your blog a while back?
WWIII will be cool. Nuclear winter will finally shut lyin’ Algore up. That would be worth it all by itself.