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Wishlist

Below are some ideas and visions for future enhancements to FlightVisualizer.

Support for Multiple Sources & Targets

Initially, Flight Visualizer is "hard-coded" to support flight track data from a single source - AeroAPI - and generate visualizations using a single target - Google Earth KML.

The application could relatively easily be extended to support multiple sources of flight tracking data and/or multiple targets for orchestrating flight visualizations (see some potential candidates identified below).

In addition to expanding the number of sources and target output formats, conformance to data exchange standards (such as AIXM and FIXM) is a goal to increase interoperability with, and usefulness of Flight Visualizer.

Support for "Live Visualization"

Flight Visualizer operates now only as an offline batch processor that simply transforms a static set of data (e.g., responses previously received from AeroAPI) into another format (e.g., KML).

This vision is to extend the application so that it can do "on the fly" transformations of an incoming stream of flight track data, feeding it in "real-time" to a rendering engine (such as Google Earth or Microsoft Flight Simulator), to enable visualizations of flight(s) in progress.

See the "Live Cam" and related video demo of how this is already working for a real-time view in Google Earth of a flight being flown in Microsoft Flight Simulator.

Proposed Implementation Plan using "AeroAPI"

A use case this morning was to track my wife's flight to D.C. Using the following APIs I was able to get periodic updates:

  1. Find the fa_flight_id value using the /airports/{id}/flights/departures API.
    • For this you need to provide the (ICAO or IATA) airport ID and the {id} code for the airline, and provide a reasonable time range containing the time of the flight's departure.
    • I used a 30-minute time range capturing the actual time of departure somewhere in its middle.
    • Both of these input values can easily be found using FlightAware's web and mobile apps, though if needed a call to /operators and /operators/{id}/flights could be used, though that would be expensive given the number of calls that would be necessary.
    • E.g.: 
      • $ curl -X GET "https://aeroapi.flightaware.com/aeroapi/airports/KSFO/flights/departures?airline=ASA&start=2023-07-19T15%3A00%3A00Z&end=2023-07-19T15%3A30%3A00Z&max_pages=2" \
-H "Accept: application/json; charset=UTF-8" \
-H "x-apikey:  <AeroApiKey>"
  2. Use the /flights/{fa_flight_id}/position API to periodically retrieve the flight's position and speed; e.g.: 
    • curl -X GET "https://aeroapi.flightaware.com/aeroapi/flights/ASA8-1689607273-airline-443p/position" \
-H "Accept: application/json; charset=UTF-8" \
-H "x-apikey: <AeroApiKey>"
    • Which returns at jpath $.last_position: 
      • "last_position": {
  "fa_flight_id": "ASA8-1689607273-airline-443p",
  "altitude": 370,
  "altitude_change": "-",
  "groundspeed": 512,
  "heading": 101,
  "latitude": 40.14427,
  "longitude": -85.72974,
  "timestamp": "2023-07-19T18:57:05Z",
  "update_type": "A"
},
  3. The last step could be repeated to generate and feed KML updates to the destination based upon the last position and speed using a configured spline function, etc.

Candidate Sources of Flight Track Data

Some potential candidates for additional sources of flight data include:

Flight Planning

Visualization of a planned flight can be both entertaining and a prudent step to take prior to takeoff; and is an obvious use case behind products such as ForeFlight 3D Views.

If implemented, this vision would enable FlightVisualizer to accept flight plan track data (such as waypoints, planned altitudes / headings / airspeed, etc.) to give the user a pre-flight visualization and familiarization with a planned or proposed flight.

Support for popular flight plan data formats such as Garmin's FlightPlan or other popular formats would be needed.

Flight Track Logs

These products and websites appear to offer alternate sources of flight track data which could be supported by Flight Visualizer:

Candidate Visualization Targets

In addition to KML, other output formats and technologies should be embraced in order to expand the type(s) of visualization(s) supported by Flight Visualizer. Some examples include:

  • GeoJSON
  • Other data formats supported by geospatial (GIS) or Virtual Reality (VR) applications according to future use cases, potentially including:
    • Geography Markup Language (GML)
    • GPS Exchange Format (GPX)