Flight mapper
 

Hi there!

I have many ideas (of course :) One of the ideas is a tool that will churn through all your possible itineraries and find you the cheapest one. For instance, if you want to go from SEA to PEK with a side trip to HKG and UUD, it checks SEA-PEK-SEA, SEA-UUD-HKG-SEA, SEA-HKG-SEA, UUD-HKG, HKG-SEA and so on. You might be surprised what combination will be the cheapest but it's really hard and time consuming to check everything by hand.

Naturally, the first step in creating such an app would be to create a mapping engine that will present you the route combination in the cutest possible way (:D) So that's what I did and that's where I'm at currently.

You see, I don't like gcmap.com. I personally think it's not that nice looking, and color choice is really bad. I liked how Google Maps shows flights and did the same look and feel. Here's how a map with all Condorde flights will look like in this tool:

http://i.imgur.com/Q7PZkvr.jpg

You can do a lot of customization. Here's some samples about world's longest flights:

http://i.imgur.com/DoNdboB.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/Z8t6YOK.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/YfXUQRP.jpg

Unfortunately, one of the limitation of Google maps is that everything on the route must fit on a single screen. Lines are not geodesic and they are not actual flight paths. Because of that I cannot draw "around-the-world" route like GC can, instead I can only do "around-the-screen":

http://i.imgur.com/24wrP8D.jpg



How to use it:

1. Open Microsoft Internet Explorer (yeah, I know, I know... I have some weird clipping issue in Chrome and MSIE seems to ignorant to that)
2. Go to http://FlightChurner.com
3. Click Enter New Route and enter the route you like (like, SVO-SIN-SFO).

Now, I use airport discovery engine that is not very smart and doesn't know everything. It cannot discover cities (you have to specify airport) and also it doesn't know all airports (for instance, I cannot map the Island Hopper).

4. Click Render!

You can drag the map around and the routes will change directions to stay on the current screen.

Try and play with different options. You can enter anything in the airport label field, even some HTML tags like <br> or <font color=red> or whatever.


Go ahead and try it! If you can create a nice map, please take a screenshot and post it here. I would love to see your feedback, your suggestions and your ideas.

Please note the code is copyrighted. I'm open to collaboration but I'm also looking for a job right now (wink! wink!). Anyway, will appreciate your feedback! And please please please post the maps you design in this thread. Enjoy!

Here's some more ideas for ya!

https://i.imgur.com/h7aEGqo.jpg

Awesome idea! I've been looking for a better visualizing tool for routes for a long time.

I tried it out but didn't manage to get the dots/airport names working in Firefox and Chrome - maybe also a mistake on my end?

https://i.imgur.com/Zi8MWIL.png

Thank you!

It looks like Chrome does some clipping of the lines -- they are cut short of their end. It also possible I have a bug that appears only in Chrome :)

Could you please retry the same thing in MSIE? Also, could you please share the URL that you're getting -- it contains all necessary info for me to repro the issue.

Ah, now it works when using IE :)

https://i.imgur.com/ugT74cJ.jpg

Sorry, I don't have the old URL anymore to repro the bug...but it seemed like an issue with FireFox/Chrome