If
you're not into voyeurism, this could be a fairly inoffensive place to
start. Wouldn't it be nice to know where that plane overhead was headed?
This App offers that very information in a sometimes very detailed way.
Now for the ACIDS test:
Aesthetics
Apart from choosing the colour of the plane (and the shape as well via an In-App purchase (Ugh)), tapping on a plane will bring up masses more information. This includes (as a first stage), the routing, altitude and speed. This can then be further developed to show airline, flight number, aircraft type, registration, distance to destination, time to destination, ETA (Estimated Time of Arrival), position (latitude and longitude), track, vertical speed (ascent, descent), Squawk and Radar... should give you hours of fun.
You
can also filter flights, as well as going directly to general areas.
One of the particularly well implemented aspects of this App is the
extremely smooth rendering of the graphics; impressive.
Cost
There is a banner-supported free version which has a lot of the bells and whistles disabled. It is a good place to start if you just want to find out how much of a peeping tom you really are.
Indispensability
This is just for fun... or at least as far as I am concerned it is.
Dependability
I honestly haven't compared the data from the App to detailed airport take-off and landing information. The fact is that a fair number of flights are cargo flights and, as such, do not necessarily figure in arrivals and departure information from main terminals. I suspect that it is correct, and certainly that tails could be made out to coincide with the suggested airline. The developer honestly states "... technique to receive flight information from aircraft is called ADS-B. That means the Flightradar24.com can only show information about aircraft equipped with ADS-B transponders. Today about 60% of the passenger aircraft and only a small amount of military and private aircraft have an ADS-B transponder." and "Flightradar24.com covers about 90% of Europe. There is also some coverage in USA, Canada, Australia, Brazil, Middle East, Japan and other parts around the world".
Cost
There is a banner-supported free version which has a lot of the bells and whistles disabled. It is a good place to start if you just want to find out how much of a peeping tom you really are.
Indispensability
This is just for fun... or at least as far as I am concerned it is.
Dependability
I honestly haven't compared the data from the App to detailed airport take-off and landing information. The fact is that a fair number of flights are cargo flights and, as such, do not necessarily figure in arrivals and departure information from main terminals. I suspect that it is correct, and certainly that tails could be made out to coincide with the suggested airline. The developer honestly states "... technique to receive flight information from aircraft is called ADS-B. That means the Flightradar24.com can only show information about aircraft equipped with ADS-B transponders. Today about 60% of the passenger aircraft and only a small amount of military and private aircraft have an ADS-B transponder." and "Flightradar24.com covers about 90% of Europe. There is also some coverage in USA, Canada, Australia, Brazil, Middle East, Japan and other parts around the world".
Security
I'd be more concerned at knowing that you knew I was "up there" than the other way round.
ACIDS Test Rating:
This is just a bit of fun but very elegantly done, hence the high score.
To find out how the ACIDS Test works, click here.
To find out how the ACIDS Test works, click here.
You can get Flightradar 24 here and support for the App here.
The developer advises that there has been an update to version 4.7 of the App.
ReplyDeleteThis includes the following enhancements and alterations:
* Cockpit view added - experience what the pilot of an aircraft sees in real-time by clicking on the "3D" button. Available on iPhone 4S, iPod Touch 5th gen., iPad 2 and above. Requires iOS 6.0 or higher.
* Airports are now showing arriving flights even for flights we don't have ETA for - Arrival Table in-app only
* Bug fixes, including airport arrival table bug
The developer advises that there has been an update to version 4.7.1 of the App.
ReplyDeleteThis includes the following enhancements and alterations:
• Improved search functionality
• 50 updated airline logos - most new, some updated
• Miscellaneous bug fixes (including and start-up crash that affected small percentage of users) and general stability improvements
And if you haven't checked it out already, in the last release we added Cockpit View. Experience what the pilot of an aircraft sees in real-time by clicking on the "3D" button. Available on iPhone 4S, iPod Touch 5th gen., iPad 2 and above. Requires iOS 6.0 or higher.
The developer advises that there has been an update to version 4.8 of the App.
ReplyDeleteThis includes the following enhancements and alterations:
* Plane information views have a new look and feel
* Augmented Reality view has a new look and feel - plus on the iPhone, plane annotations are now 'clickable' to show flight information
* An attitude filter have been added
* Bug fixes and improvements, among other things, the alert validation process have been improved
The developer advises that there has been an update to version 4.9 of the App.
ReplyDeleteThis includes the following enhancements and alterations:
* Flight status information is now available for most flights, including scheduled time of departure, actual time of departure, and scheduled time of arrival. As before, estimated time of arrival is also presented. Flight status times are shown in the local time of the airport in question. However, in Settings you are able to change the time shown to your local time zone or UTC (Coordinated Universal Time), the time standard used in aviation.
* The 'Data consumption' setting has been split into two separate settings so that you can individually control the data consumption for frequency of aircraft position updates, and types of aircraft images used.
* Cockpit view has been turned off for the devices that don't support it - iPhone 4 and below, iPod Touch 4th gen and below, plus iPad 1. Cockpit view tended to crash the app when used on these devices.
* Fixed various issues and bugs, including the bug that caused the compass to be 90 degrees off for some users.
The developer advises that there has been an update to version 4.9.1 of the App.
ReplyDeleteThis includes the following enhancements and alterations:
* Improved search abilities (includes a list with nearby flights and a better text-search)
* New alternative 3D-view, with the new maps from iOS7
* Bugfixes
The developer advises that there has been an update to version 4.9.2 of the App.
ReplyDeleteThis includes the following enhancements and alterations:
Bugfixes regarding the empty or incomplete airline list seen under some conditions, the pick airport buttons in the 'goto' area in iOS7, and a stability issue.
The developer advises that there has been an update to version 4.9.3 of the App.
ReplyDeleteThis includes the following enhancements and alterations:
A couple of bugfixes regarding iOS 7
The developer advises that there has been an update to version 4.9.4 of the App.
ReplyDeleteThis includes the following enhancements and alterations:
Bugfix regarding in-apps
The developer advises that there has been an update to version 5.0.2 of the App.
ReplyDeleteThis includes the following enhancements and alterations:
This release includes a major update to the ‘Custom alerts’ in-app. In addition to making the interface more user-friendly, we’ve re-introduced altitude as a trigger and added a destination trigger
We’ve also added a realistic icon for the world’s largest aircraft, Antonov An-225 Mriya, to the ‘Aircraft icons’ in-app.
Finally we’ve fixed some bugs, primarily for iPad 1 users.
For the recent 5.0 release most of the app was redesigned and now:
- You can quickly zoom map to your location by clicking the arrow icon in the bottom left corner of the screen
- The ‘Go to’ menu has been replaced by ‘Airport search’ (available in the Search menu by clicking the magnifying glass symbol)
- The Augmented reality (AR) view is accessible by clicking the ‘AR’ icon in the top menu
- Alerts functionality has been improved and has its own menu (available by clicking the menu icon in the top left corner)
- The map radar is still available, go to ‘Settings’ to switch it on