App: SkySpotter

Try it at useskyspotter.vercel.app

Lie back in the grass and watch planes fly over. That’s it, that’s the idea.

Every other flight tracker gives you God’s view — cold and omnipotent, a screen full of blips moving across a flat map from thirty thousand feet above the action. Detached from the thrilling hum of jet engines and the sizzle of rain. SkySpotter puts you at ground level, either laying with your head down, or seated comfortably for a bit of plane-spotting. Watching real aircraft crossing real weather, in a 3D world designed at human scale.

It pulls live ADS-B data and renders it against procedurally generated airport runways anchored to real-world coordinates, in weather matching current conditions out there — fog, storms, clearing skies, stars coming out after midnight. Five vantage points are available: Changi Beach (Singapore), the TWA Hotel (New York), Myrtle Avenue (London), Jonanjima Seaside Park (Tokyo), and Al Garhoud Park (Dubai).

Climb to bird’s eye height if you want the lay of the land. But the view worth staying for is flat on your back, watching the underside of something enormous drift silently overhead while the sound catches up.

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Disclaimer: I made SkySpotter with the help of Google’s Gemini 3/3.1 Pro LLM and take no responsibility for any damage or missed connections.

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