Exploration

Altiscope

What's flying over me right now?

I keep hearing a plane and wondering what it is. Altiscope answers that from free, public aircraft data.

Radar on the backFace down on the table, the dot display on the back becomes a heading-up radar: a sweep, a crosshair and a blinking dot for each plane within 30 km.

Radar in the appHeld flat, the app is the same radar with line-art planes drawn by type. I tap one to lock it, and NEXT steps to the next nearest.

Lift to the skyAs I tilt the phone up, one camera lifts off the map and turns into a sky view with a heading tape, and the locked plane stays in brackets.

Flight detailTapping the locked plane opens its route progress, live readings, altitude profile and its track relative to me.

A name for the sound overhead

Every flight tracker I tried wanted a subscription or a screen full of noise. I wanted to point at a sound in the sky and get a name. Aircraft already broadcast where they are, and community networks share those feeds for free. So I started there.

One view, not two

There is no AR switch. Held flat, the phone is a radar that points the way I'm facing. Tilt it up and the same camera lifts off the map and into the sky, where planes are drawn as line art by type. Tilt is the only control.

Quiet on purpose

The palette is monochrome. Red means an emergency squawk and yellow means military traffic, nothing else. Labels get a collision budget so they stay out of each other's way, and a crowded cluster fans out when I tap it.

Version 0.5

Version 0.5, and still an exploration. The data is free, so the real work is how it feels to use. I keep coming back to it.