Airloom – 3D Flight Tracker • Hacker News Board

Re: Airloom – 3D Flight Tracker

#101

Post by benlimner » Sun, Nov 30, 2025, 10:39 PM UTC

whizzter wrote: post #2

This is quite cool, seeing taking off planes appearing and rising is cool. Some comments: - Is the Up axis correctly scaled? The ascent rate of planes taking off seems very steep - Planes landing seems to get "stuck" at the beginning of a lane at about 600 feet (tracking/radar cutoff?), maybe a fix the that slightly adjusts it to ground in a landed state if a plane "stops" or disappears from the data tracking.

I fixed the altitude scale issue.

Re: Airloom – 3D Flight Tracker

#102

Post by benlimner » Sun, Nov 30, 2025, 10:59 PM UTC

uyzstvqs wrote: post #75

benlimner wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m actively looking for a better map tile provider here. You’re getting New Orleans because it’s truly selecting from ~20 random US airports. Stoked that you like the app!

> I’m actively looking for a better map tile provider here. What about OSM Carto?[0] It's free and open-source. [0] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OpenStreetMap_Carto

I’ve been using them through their free api, and I got rate limited. So I’ll maybe self-host, or find a paid provider with better tiles

Re: Airloom – 3D Flight Tracker

#103

Post by benlimner » Mon, Dec 01, 2025, 2:28 AM UTC

g4cg54g54 wrote: post #56

benlimner wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Copy this view really only works when you are following a plane or are at an airport you searched for. If that doesn’t work, ping me. I think the map tiles are a symptom of the overnight success of the app. I might have to find a new map provider if they permanently limited my IP

without an airport near "my current location" is my goto. is there a direct link for this? (otherwise i may hack together some userscript that clicks that button for me...) "my assumption" would have been some x/y/angle/zoom params on the url, maybe even with some of the settings encoded in... (autorotate, render-radius or terrain height would be first to come to mind) my "not getting any tiles" must have been 2 or 3…

Done! Use ?airport=nearme

Re: Airloom – 3D Flight Tracker

#104

Post by benlimner » Mon, Dec 01, 2025, 2:32 AM UTC

urlig8746 wrote: post #72

Private pilot here. This is an awesome proyect. I cant make air spaces work, but if you manage to render them properly with TMA, CTR, AWY and other stuff, this would be incredibly useful for students.

Can you give the iata codes for these? I can only find TMA in ForeFlight, and it looks like it’s uncontrolled airspace so there wouldn’t be anything represented in my app

Re: Airloom – 3D Flight Tracker

#105

Post by benlimner » Mon, Dec 01, 2025, 2:34 AM UTC

1000100_1000101 wrote: post #98

benlimner wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the note. I hear you on the zoom pain. What would be your preferred means of zooming?

Just noticed you also support scroll to zoom, and it works at a decent speed.

I’m glad you noticed. I’ll still look into pinch zoom for ya regardless

Re: Airloom – 3D Flight Tracker

#106

Post by rapjr9 » Mon, Dec 01, 2025, 4:22 AM UTC

HWR_14 wrote: post #73

rapjr9 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cool, I tried something similar 30 years ago working for a military contractor: http://zoom.interoscitor.com/PetersonEnterprises/Consulting/... I was asked to come up with a 3D display of the airspace around an aircraft for the pilot to use and which could replace the 2D displays used then. People were impressed, but decided it was impractical for a variety of reasons. You can't really tell where the aircraft are rel…

> which doesn't work for the colorblind Does the military have colorblind pilots?

Not everyone sees color exactly the same way, for example some people can see a little into the IR and UV. While the pilots may not be colorblind, the people who repair the displays might be. Situations can also make pilots colorblind, like strong glare coming through a window. It's better to have an unambiguous display that is easy to interpret rather than to rely on something that can be subjective like color. People can only reliably identify a few distinct colors, so if you have 300 kinds of planes and missiles to identify using shades of red and purple doesn't work so well. An ID number next to an icon can handle thousands of kinds of entities. People can tell color #F0479E is different then #F04750 when comparing them side by side, but they probably can't tell you what the exact name of each shade is, and at a glance they might think they are both the same color. So it's not so much colorblindness as it is the limits of human perception. What I call Hunter Green and English Racing Green might look like the same color to you.

Re: Airloom – 3D Flight Tracker

#107

Post by CarVac » Mon, Dec 01, 2025, 9:06 PM UTC

benlimner wrote: post #80

CarVac wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got one random plane that was black instead of color-coded by altitude. Bug? https://imgur.com/a/YLxRaQ6 Another bug: when you adjust altitude scale, it doesn't rescale the existing trails, it simply moves the planes up and down leaving stairsteps in their paths.

Thanks for the note. I’m actively chasing down both of these. The scale change one will be easy to sort out. The black one is a little harder, sometimes the adsb data comes in corrupted.

One more suggestion: if the camera is below the ground, hide the ground texture.

Re: Airloom – 3D Flight Tracker

#108

Post by xnx » Tue, Dec 02, 2025, 6:48 PM UTC

Very cool. I don't think the glow effect on the plane adds anything and somewhat obscures them. Would be slick if there was a way to smooth the motion (delay one update and interpolate?).