AR Planes: Discover nearby planes in augmented reality (opens in new tab)

Looks pretty though I can't try it out since it's iPhone-only but a few thoughts:

1. It's not a new concept, both the Planefinder and FR24 apps already have an AR point-and-tell mode on Android and iOS. The main difference is that this app seems to draw an orientated cartoon of each aircraft by type.

2. What is its back-end data feed? From Planefinder or FlightAware APIs perhaps? Without knowing that we can't determine what aircraft will appear, though I suspect it's only going to work for aircraft which transmit full ADS-B output ( large airliners & really expensive modern smaller aircraft )

3. In fact there's very little information about it at all. So it's not clear if it supports FLARM ( gliders ), PilotAware ( small private aircraft ) or Mode-S Multilateration. Does it implement the FAA's BARR list to elide corporate aircraft?

I don't intend to sound critical but being in this 'space' as a feeder to several tracking networks I've seen layperson friends rush-out to try these sort of apps and then become disappointed because they don't show the Cessna in which their son is doing his flight-training.

Addendum: also irritating that it displays the flight plan using the IATA three-letter codes. No-one files a plan using those, and they only cover a small proportion of all airfields.

Too expensive to try. EUR 4.49 is too much for something without any kind of practical use.

Works great. My passion is convincing people that air flight is environmentally wicked and you just shouldn’t do it. One barrier I hit is people thinking “there aren’t enough flights going on to make this a problem”. This app gives a visceral, visual counter argument to that, and lets the user quickly see how very far those flights are traveling. Thanks for making it. (Don’t suppose you’d add a feature to show how much fuel is being burned :-)

Why do the planes not move?

great concept. Too expensive.....

An indispensable resource on a terrorist's toolset