Planespotting: Google Earth/Second Life mash-up tracks LAX airplane traffic in dynamic, immersive scale model

I haven't decided if this qualifies as cool-but-impractical or cool-and-revolutionary,  but it's very much worth a look:  a UK metaverse company called Daden recently partnered with flight tracking service fboweb to create a data modeling demo of plane activity over LA's main airport.  "We developed this ourselves as an example of mashing up Google Earth and Second Life," Daden's Corro Moseley tells me, "and then took it to fboweb to check that they were OK with our using their Google Earth feed."

Teleport directly to the Daden demo by clicking the image

They approved, and so the Daden system in Second Life makes a call to the fboweb site, then transmits that data into SL, representing it as simple model airplanes. Fboweb was so impressed, Corro adds, they plan to use it for this week's Business Aviation show.  Other commercial applications may follow.

Which brings me back to the original question: while cool, what's the practical use?

"You start relating to the data in a more natural way," Moseley argues. "Even compared to the existing 3D displays the patterns in the data become far more visible... You also don't become quite so disoriented as you can in pure 3D displays where you have no avatar presence - your 'body' is always there as a point of reference, but if you want to walk/zoom in and focus on one particular area you can do so."

Still, it is a prototype.  "As with so much of this virtual world stuff we're in the early days and we're not claiming that air traffic control is about to be run from within Second Life, but it begins to get the discussions going about how virtual worlds can be used to present consumer, market and operational data in different ways."

See and decide for yourself on the island of Daden Prime: direct teleport to the site at this link.

Comments

[Sered]

It's a bit comparable to IBM's Wimbledon build. IBM used RL data gathered on the tennis courts to plot the course of the ball on a SL court.

[sean percival]

Just went here, they have tons of great stuff for integrating data into secondlife. Recommend checking out the RSS tools.

They even have a nabaztag connection, this is a great little wifi toy I picked up in europe last year.

SL needs more companies like this.

[Cyn Vandeverre]

Fascinating and clever!

(Except for the use of "orientate" instead of "orient.") Why, yes, I am a member of Pedants Anonymous.

[Ley Wrangler]

Great idea :-) I see some perspectives though. Maybe the risk monitoring airplanes is too big. However tracking your parcels or mail around the globe is already possible - although SL could make it even more visual. Also - as I've written in my blog - I see a fun mash-up application allowing me to follow the brave sailors in the Volvo Ocean Race (yeah, yeah I am a RL sailing nerd as well). Combined with on-the-fly weather conditions and wind and wave development following this otherwise non-spectator-friendly sport will be alot more fun.

I bet there is much more ideas outthere waiting to be born. Great job, guys :-)

Yours

Ley Wrangler (aka Ken Ley)

[David Burden (aka Corro Moseley)]

Glad you all liked it. The comments about object tracking are spot on, and one of the next projects we're working on is aimed at tracking objects (and people) as they move around a building. Hope to have something to show you in a couple of months (it's the RL tech that slows us down!)

David Burden (aka Corro Moseley), MD Daden Limited

[Extropia DaSilva]

'what's the practical use?'

That is what the Prime Minister asked Micheal Faraday, who had just demonstrated his invention, the electric motor.

[Hamlet Au]

That's very true. But then again, when a guy walked into the patent office with a $2000 robot shoelace tier that ran on coal, people also asked that question. :)