Hi all! I'm the creator of Stowaway.live and I really appreciate you
posting it here.
All this attention has maxed out my Google 3D Tiles quota, so the ground
textures in ride-along mode are being throttled. Everything else works —
sky, aircraft and satellite tracking, sound — it's just the terrain that
may come in flat or missing. I'm working on a caching layer and a proper
fallback rather than just buying my way out of it, and I'd take
suggestions if anyone's solved this before.
There is good free data available. Consider using EASA Sentinel satellite tiles for the imagery, and JAXA's ALOS Global Digital Surface Model for elevation. And the USGS has higher-resolution lidar elevations in much of the US.
I will look into this, thanks! In the meantime I'm going to implement a fallback to 2D tiles which has much higher quota limits. Try to stop the bleeding first.
I can empathize with your quota....was gifted a FlightWall recently (https://theflightwall.com) and it constantly throws a 'too many flights' indicator given that I live in a major metro with quite a bit of air traffic. I'm sure it was thrilling and terrifying to see your usage spike. Wishing you all the best of luck!
I love this: the sound effects oddly are what really make it. It was quite something clicking a flight, turning round to see behind it, and recognising my location.
What surprised me is how satellites far away (in the night zone, it's daylight for hours yet) could still 'see' me, or rather, I could see them not even that close to the horizon. I would love to see how far away one of the objects is when clicking or hovering over it.
Nice work! I got lost in a clouds only view after setting my location but I’m sure I’ll figure it out, the first couple flights were over an unfamiliar area but worked fine.
When I was a kid — back when travelling still felt new and exciting — I
would see a plane crossing the early evening sky and try to put myself in
it. Not to go anywhere in particular. I just wanted to know what the world
looked like from up there, right then, to whoever was sitting by that
window.
The feeling was strongest at sunset. I'd be watching a good one from the
ground and think about how much better it had to be from up there, above
the haze, with the light coming in level. The same sunset from a
perspective I couldn't reach.
Travel has lost most of that. Airports, queues, delays: everything wrapped
around flying has got steadily worse. But the flying itself hasn't changed.
An hour into a clear evening flight, forehead against the glass, looking
down at a world you almost never see from that angle, and it is still one
of the quietly moving experiences I know.
Hi all! I'm the creator of Stowaway.live and I really appreciate you posting it here.
All this attention has maxed out my Google 3D Tiles quota, so the ground textures in ride-along mode are being throttled. Everything else works — sky, aircraft and satellite tracking, sound — it's just the terrain that may come in flat or missing. I'm working on a caching layer and a proper fallback rather than just buying my way out of it, and I'd take suggestions if anyone's solved this before.
Thanks for checking it out!
There is good free data available. Consider using EASA Sentinel satellite tiles for the imagery, and JAXA's ALOS Global Digital Surface Model for elevation. And the USGS has higher-resolution lidar elevations in much of the US.
I will look into this, thanks! In the meantime I'm going to implement a fallback to 2D tiles which has much higher quota limits. Try to stop the bleeding first.
This is very neat! Great job :)
I can empathize with your quota....was gifted a FlightWall recently (https://theflightwall.com) and it constantly throws a 'too many flights' indicator given that I live in a major metro with quite a bit of air traffic. I'm sure it was thrilling and terrifying to see your usage spike. Wishing you all the best of luck!
I love it. I use it to try to trick people into believing it's a live view, and that I work for the government.
I love this: the sound effects oddly are what really make it. It was quite something clicking a flight, turning round to see behind it, and recognising my location.
What surprised me is how satellites far away (in the night zone, it's daylight for hours yet) could still 'see' me, or rather, I could see them not even that close to the horizon. I would love to see how far away one of the objects is when clicking or hovering over it.
I wish I could see Google Maps labels like this during a real flight!
Wow, this is really great!
Nice work! I got lost in a clouds only view after setting my location but I’m sure I’ll figure it out, the first couple flights were over an unfamiliar area but worked fine.
This is so very cool.
Since I'm here, the why:
When I was a kid — back when travelling still felt new and exciting — I would see a plane crossing the early evening sky and try to put myself in it. Not to go anywhere in particular. I just wanted to know what the world looked like from up there, right then, to whoever was sitting by that window.
The feeling was strongest at sunset. I'd be watching a good one from the ground and think about how much better it had to be from up there, above the haze, with the light coming in level. The same sunset from a perspective I couldn't reach.
Travel has lost most of that. Airports, queues, delays: everything wrapped around flying has got steadily worse. But the flying itself hasn't changed. An hour into a clear evening flight, forehead against the glass, looking down at a world you almost never see from that angle, and it is still one of the quietly moving experiences I know.
Stowaway is that part, without the rest of it.