First, some general videos (circa 2008) showing:
- World Air Traffic (not
just AMDAR-equipped aircraft). (wmv file, 5.8M) This dataset
developed by Thomas Ruosch and Dr. Karl
Rege; Institute of Applied Information Technology, Zurich
University of Applied Science.
This dataset tracks commercial flights from the approximately 9000
civil airports worldwide. The day/night terminator is included as
a time reference. Flight traffic picks up noticeably during
daylight hours and drops off through the night. Each yellow tail
is one plane in this visualization.
More detail is available on the NOAA SOS datasets webpage.
- 24 hrs of AMDAR data shown on the
GSL web display (animated gif, 7.5M). This shows 2-hr long
tracks of AMDAR-equipped aircraft.
You can
download the individual parts if you wish -- each is self-contained
and lasts 5-7 minutes. Or, you can download all parts and play them
as one continuous video. This video lasts 16 minutes.
First, a word about formats:
- Quicktime files take the longest to download,
but are playable
on Macintosh, Unix, and Linux computers as well as PC's. Some
players start playing the video before the whole file has
loaded, in which case, this may be the quickest choice.
- executable files download the fastest, but
these can only be played
on PC's. You must have privileges to install programs on your
PC, or your system administrator can do this for you. [If you
get a warning saying something like "Authenticode signature not
found," you can ignore it.]
- AVI files only play on PC's using the Windows
media player, but you must have the
"TSCC codec" installed on your computer. If you are using
Internet Explorer, you may click on this link to install the TSCC codec. This
will not interfere with any other audiovisual preferences you
may have already set.
Tutorial 1: Understanding the plan view: flight tracks, data
points, wind barbs, zooming (4 min 45 sec)
Tutorial 2: Understanding soundings: overview, selecting multiple
soundings, overlaying, zooming, getting text (6 min 30 sec)
Tutorial 3: Understanding the world view and extra information:
resetting the default map, the forum, the help pages, and the main
page (4 min 45 sec)
Tutorial 1-3: All of the above as one package (16 min)
Prepared by Bill Moninger,
Bill.Moninger@noaa.gov
Last modified: Tue Dec 30 16:31:45 GMT 2008