16

Shortly before reading that this Brainstorm forum was up and running, I was just perusing http://www.flightstats.co.uk/ to track exactly at which point in the middle of the Arctic my parents were currently being hurtled through near-space at 600mph! And I was thinking, hmm.... these online tracker sites are all slightly inadequate....... but if I could hook it up to Marble and spin the globe around and track flights...... wouldn't that be fantastic?

Well, I don't know if tracking data is made freely or easily available, and it seems that most of what's available at present is fairly US-centric, but does anybody think this would be a worthwhile thing to incorporate?

gumb wrote:Shortly before reading that this Brainstorm forum was up and running, I was just perusing http://www.flightstats.co.uk/ to track exactly at which point in the middle of the Arctic my parents were currently being hurtled through near-space at 600mph! And I was thinking, hmm.... these online tracker sites are all slightly inadequate....... but if I could hook it up to Marble and spin the globe around and track flights...... wouldn't that be fantastic?

Well, I don't know if tracking data is made freely or easily available, and it seems that most of what's available at present is fairly US-centric, but does anybody think this would be a worthwhile thing to incorporate?

We had this idea in the back of our mind since long as well. This would definetely be a nice addition to marble.
It takes some free data source and somebody to implement this feature to make it happen. I currently don't have it on the TODO. Maybe somebody else feels like coding it? Any patch appreciated.

Torsten

Added tag.

And oh yes, it would be fantastic.

tackat wrote:It takes some free data source and somebody to implement this feature to make it happen.

Isn't this rather reliant on the airlines though? And/or the departing and destination airport? I remember only too well the last time I called an airline trying to get an ETA...so I wouldn't be stuck waiting for the plane to land for an eternity. Long story short: I couldn't get an ETA from the airport until an hour and a half before the scheduled landing so if that experience is something to go by, I kinda wonder how feasable this idea is (even though it would be great to have!) although I'd love to be proven wrong!