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24 Hours of Air Traffic Never Looked So Beautiful (20,000+ Planes)

users.design.ucla.edu — The Flight Patterns visualizations are the result of experiments leading to the project Celestial Mechanics by Scott Hessels and Gabriel Dunne. FAA data was parsed and plotted using the Processing programming environment. The frames were composited with Adobe After Effects and/or Maya.

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  • outsidethebox, on 11/10/2007, -2/+30Dugg for the awesome wallpaper!
  • MikeonTV, on 11/10/2007, -17/+154My father is a flight aviation inspector. He really appreciated this when I sent it to him - 4 months ago!
    • bsolidgold, on 11/09/2007, -6/+8I am a former Air Traffic Controller.

      ... glad I'm not anymore :)
    • manageMyRights, on 11/09/2007, -2/+17You must be new here.. if you think its a dupe bury it. If enough people haven't seen it (or still think its worth digging) then it gets to the top again.
    • cresquin, on 11/09/2007, -6/+3This is actually a number of YEARS old. I first saw this on Digg in 2005 when I was at UCLA with Mr Koblin.
    • repmekevets, on 11/09/2007, -1/+9another digger who got his panties in a bunch because of a dupe. get over it, some people haven't seen everything on the web.
  • tangofish, on 11/09/2007, -2/+9Wow that wallpaper looks like the best fireworks display ever.
  • wangarific, on 11/09/2007, -3/+69This looks mighty familiar...
  • DeskFlyer, on 11/09/2007, -0/+34Very cool stuff. Just to give you an idea on how many IFR flights can be in the air in the U.S. at any given time, this is about what it looks like at about right now at 11PM ET (screen shot taken from the flight tracker here at work): http://img122.imageshack.us/img122/5936/sspe3.jpg
    • emailingRob, on 11/09/2007, -0/+35Of all the people I wish weren't looking at digg instead of working...
      • bsolidgold, on 11/09/2007, -0/+2That traffic is actually not that dense. Considering most of those aircraft are on flight plans and in-between nav-aids. The hairy part for ATCers is 20 or so converge on one airport and want to land... in bad weather.
      • DeskFlyer, on 11/09/2007, -0/+1Relax, I don't work ATC. ;)
    • pu-z, on 11/09/2007, -2/+14Of all the computers I wish weren't using Windows...

      BTW: What are the red dots?
    • Endies, on 11/09/2007, -2/+1Glad your doing your work and not just playing on the computer.
  • philbutler, on 11/09/2007, -0/+2This is pretty cool. My brother worked in Miami for years - he loved this !
  • BiohazardJ, on 11/09/2007, -0/+8The FAA view should be a screen-saver. It looks like an old arcade game.
  • shagie, on 11/09/2007, -11/+4Impressive... when i saw it months ago!
    • ticktock4, on 11/09/2007, -6/+1MANY months ago.
    • johnnybluejeans, on 11/12/2007, -0/+17I saw it years ago. I win.
      • meridian300, on 11/09/2007, -2/+0No you fail. This sites dated to to 2007.
      • bsolidgold, on 11/09/2007, -0/+4I DID this many years ago. I win.
        • colto, on 11/09/2007, -0/+5I flew in an airplane many years ago. Can I win too?
          • bsolidgold, on 11/09/2007, -0/+3Yes. But only because you asked nicely.
    • Jeffler, on 11/08/2007, -0/+2I gave these to Jesus before the last supper to show everyone, and then flew away in a Delorean. I win!
  • AlwaysDuggDown, on 11/09/2007, -0/+8Next time you get nervous about an upcoming flight just think of this image.....even if it was a CERTAINTY that a plane was going to crash the day of your flight (longshot in itself), you'd still have only a 1 in 30,000 chance of being involved (about the same odds as calling a coin flip correctly 14 times in a row).

    • slashbot, on 11/09/2007, -0/+7I know, it is simply amazing.

      This is why I no longer worry about flying :P. Now only to worry about the drive to the airport.... bad drivers!
    • xtmno3, on 11/09/2007, -0/+8Wouldn't it be about the same chance as calling a coin flip 15 times in a row?
      One call = 1 in 2
      Two = 1 in 4
      Three = 1 in 8
      etc
      2^14 = 16384
      2^15 = 32768
      I could be wrong (probability was my worst class in college), but I think it is 15 times in a row.
  • slashbot, on 11/09/2007, -2/+23This video has already been front paged (and still is with 700+ diggs)

    Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPv8psZsvIU
    • SEN5241, on 11/08/2007, -0/+1Which would you rather see - a cheap youtube knockoff or the original article?
  • monarch00, on 11/09/2007, -10/+2This is so OLLLLLD.

    It was on Digg a couple of months ago. Burried.
  • codehkr77, on 11/08/2007, -2/+4all these flights and whenever i look out the window of the plane, i never see other airplanes
    • slashbot, on 11/09/2007, -0/+5There is still a lot of airspace in 3 dimensions =p
    • castevens, on 11/08/2007, -2/+1I almost always see other planes when I'm flying. At least a few during the course of the flight
      • Ndiggnation, on 11/09/2007, -0/+7I always see some beast creature gnawing on the wing..no one ever believes me.
  • cmccool, on 11/09/2007, -1/+3dugg for no other reason than this: i needed a new desktop background.
  • hollywoodphony, on 11/09/2007, -8/+1I don't see any planes?? Lame!
  • Werrismys, on 11/08/2007, -0/+4Looks like a screen from the defcon game.
  • madmax85, on 11/09/2007, -4/+7That's alot of CO2...
  • jprez, on 11/08/2007, -3/+5This is quite the dupe
    • BenderFlexo, on 11/08/2007, -0/+1This is the third time in 6 months isn't it? Either lots of new diggers, or lots of short term memory loss...
      • bsolidgold, on 11/08/2007, -0/+2I think it's because... wait, what was I gonna say?
  • tuxidomasx, on 11/09/2007, -8/+1lol@ the jizz visualization

    i shoulda graphed some data using a jizz visualization in college
  • Sibre, on 11/09/2007, -2/+4At least pay attention to what is already on the front page:
    http://digg.com/videos/educational/A_Day_s_Air_Tra ...

    Buried
    • SEN5241, on 11/08/2007, -0/+1Why would we want to watch an inferior ripoff version of the original article?
  • shark615, on 11/09/2007, -7/+2Holy crap this exact article is in the top 10 already!? How ***** stupid are some of these diggers
    • DonKarnage25, on 11/09/2007, -0/+1How ignorant of you to assume that some Diggers spend countless hours each day browsing through Digg's front page.
  • NSMike, on 11/08/2007, -0/+1I would like to see this with origins and destinations highlighted.
  • TBerrigan, on 11/08/2007, -0/+2Track flights live in google earth:
    http://www.fboweb.com/antest/ge/intro.aspx?old=1
  • naterpoke, on 11/11/2007, -7/+4buried for stealing : http://digg.com/videos_educational/A_Day_s_Air_Tra ...
  • elvisB, on 11/09/2007, -5/+1CHEMTRAILS!!! Do you copy? Earth to stupid. Google it!
  • BrokenVisage, on 11/09/2007, -9/+2Geez, I wish my dupes were this successful. Oh yeah.. I DON'T POST DUPES!
  • gunnerycox, on 11/08/2007, -1/+2Amazing
  • vwvan, on 11/09/2007, -3/+2I didn't see this the first time round. Very interesting.
    See lvwarren.blogspot.com for similar work in stocks and interstellar radio sources.
  • cusoman, on 11/09/2007, -7/+2Big dupe, bury this guys. Join the No Clutter Foundation.
  • PJBovoNox, on 11/09/2007, -10/+4Buried for Quicktime.
    • slashbot, on 11/08/2007, -0/+4Scroll up for link to youtube...
    • ThreeDee912, on 11/08/2007, -0/+2Quicktime pwns YouTube quality-wise. And YouTube is in the process of converting everything into H.264 QuickTime movies.
  • sputnike, on 11/09/2007, -4/+2buried due to dupe.
  • frederoil, on 11/09/2007, -8/+2Mmm, yeah, beautiful... Until you realize the filth that pours out of every single one of those jet engines. Take your beauty and shove it.
    • slashbot, on 11/08/2007, -1/+2Filth? You do realize that much more pollution would result if we all had to drive to our destinations....

      The only people who are making it worse are those like Al Gore flying around in their private jets
  • theforrester, on 11/08/2007, -1/+4Behold...the power of a top digger to make submissions magically re-appear.
  • dgrimez, on 11/09/2007, -3/+2Where are those planes landing northeast of Hawaii, about halfway to California?
    • MrObjectional, on 11/08/2007, -0/+1That one at 12:31 looks like it went down over the Pacific.
    • BAFrayd, on 11/09/2007, -0/+1I had the same exact question! There is no island there that I am aware of. Is there a military base on some obscure island there or what? This is really strange. Have we discovered something here?
  • cerberes, on 11/11/2007, -4/+1Buried for stealing from the movie Wargames
  • guerj, on 11/08/2007, -2/+0 Puertoricans love to go to Disney. jeje
  • FrankButcher, on 11/08/2007, -0/+0Thought I had sneezed on the screen for a moment. Dugg!
  • elhaf, on 11/08/2007, -0/+1Who knew Florida was so busy with air traffic.
    • lpmusix, on 11/08/2007, -0/+1all the drug dealers flying in and out, duh.
  • Omeganon, on 11/09/2007, -3/+1Guess it never gets old (it should)... At least the third time posted here and at least the second time it's made it to the front page. Thank goodness there are an infinite number of stories that can be posted and repeated over and over again.

    "Air traffic pattern visualizations as seen by the FAA - video
    aaronkoblin.com — The Flight Patterns visualizations are the result of experiments leading to the project Celestial Mechanics by Scott Hessels and Gabriel Dunne. FAA data was parsed and plotted using the Processing programming environment. These are some amazing videos of air traffic over the USA as seen by the FAA.More… (Design)

    — made popular 285 days ago"
  • therx7kid, on 11/08/2007, -0/+0This is really cool, as an Air Traffic Controller myself the animation really puts things in perspective on the amount of traffic we as a whole really deal with. Though I do feel for my fellow controllers on the east coast :(
  • Godlesswanderer, on 11/09/2007, -0/+4Reminds me of DEFCON for some reason.
  • roberto_deneero, on 11/09/2007, -1/+3Thumbs up to the FAA and all flight controllers who make this happen every day. It's amazing that we don't have more airline accidents. Cheers.
  • markiemarke, on 11/08/2007, -0/+1absolutely fantastic
  • brodie7838, on 11/08/2007, -0/+2It's interesting how the East coast stays busy while the West coast dies down, then everything suddenly surges from East to West for awhile.
  • trollick, on 11/09/2007, -5/+2Photoshoped
  • kindwarrior, on 11/08/2007, -0/+1That was fascinating: of course, I'd rather have the color density map at the bottom of the page as a wall paper but, even so, very cool.
  • gostars, on 11/08/2007, -0/+1Yea! Someone knows its not "as seen from space"
  • Liembo, on 11/09/2007, -0/+4What destination is this, with Hawaii below:

    http://www.bahneman.com/liem/tmp/whatisthis.jpg

    (from: http://users.design.ucla.edu/~akoblin/work/faa/col ...
    • Ndiggnation, on 11/09/2007, -1/+2Cheney's secret desert isle mountain bunker..
    • WhiteHamster, on 11/09/2007, -1/+1its Atlantis, they moved it to the pacific ocean, thats why you can't find it
    • Hartley1942, on 11/09/2007, -0/+2Aircraft Carrier.
    • KiltedMile, on 11/09/2007, -0/+1Good question - small island for researchers maybe? Hartley might be correct about Aircraft Carrier but I don't think those flights are tracked in the FAA data that was used. I would bet there are more military flights per day than commercial flights, can you imagine what that would look like?
  • Liembo, on 11/09/2007, -0/+3Also if related interest: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBDATD4y5Qs

    Just 24 hours of FedEx
  • tman84, on 11/09/2007, -1/+1i don't think people care if its a dupe or front paged. it seems like some people treat digg as if its a myspace, and they have to be the one to have the popular news story, the most friends and so on.

    with that said i'd like to add that the blobular one looks like an alien head
  • davesawyer, on 11/08/2007, -0/+1The entire site boiled down to a Quicktime video: http://users.design.ucla.edu/~akoblin/work/faa/Doc ...
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