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Transportation planner creates beautiful visualizations of flight patterns

May 30, 2013 at 00:40:17 GMT

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Michael Markieta, a transportation planner at global engineering and design firm Arup, has created a series of beautiful visualizations of aircraft flight paths as they span the globe. Using different shades for short and long-distant flights, the images, which are based on data from geographical information systems, map the world in a ghostly spiderweb of connections from airports small and large.

Markieta has marked more than 58,000 flightpaths and the results are stunning.

Frankfurt airport (somewhere in the messy web of flightpaths in the middle of this image) is one of the world's busiest hubs, but Africa is clearly outlined by flights which join its many coastal airports.

Image: Michael Markieta, GIS Consultant, Arup

Markieta has spent a year working on these visualizations, which show short-distance and long-haul flights as they criss-cross the globe.

Image: Michael Markieta, GIS Consultant, Arup

Click here to see a larger selection of images at BBC.co.uk

Comments

Total comments: 30

[sarcastic mode]
Was this image composed with Photoshop?
[/sarcastic mode off]

0 upvotes

Visually impressive but factually incorrect, as Dubai International topped Paris CDG as second busiest airport in the world this year. Forecast is that Dubai will supersede London's Heathrow by 2015. Please go back to the drawing board ;)

0 upvotes

Not sure these routes match reality...?
EU<-->US & Asia<-->US are often polar, no?
(at least my flights have skirted Alaska, Iceland)

And, yes, nothing to do with general photography.
Barely related to travel photography.

Comment edited 3 times, last edit 2 minutes after posting

0 upvotes

Wow... there's seriously so much more traffic over Europe than US? I thought that North America is most busy region in air flight.

1 upvote

Let's just say that the population of Europe (excluding Russia) about matches the population of all of North America (including Alaska, Canada, Greenland) plus Central America and the Carribean. Just crammed into a much smaller area. Go figure.

3 upvotes

Lots of cars and trains?
;)

0 upvotes

It is an image, just not one made with a traditional camera.

0 upvotes

Although I cannot see what this has to do with photography, it was more interesting that an article about some pro photographer using an iPhone to take photographs :-)

14 upvotes

I begin to wonder what the "P" stands for in the title "DPReview" when I see topics like this

0 upvotes

there's a typo, it should read "DPreview"...

3 upvotes

May I suggest another topic that may be of interest to all of us?

Currently there are two popes in Rome. Why don't we move one of them back to Avignon?

Comment edited 16 seconds after posting

1 upvote

Where is Avigon?

0 upvotes

It's a nice city in the south of France. It is very famous for its pope palace (almost not used, as of today) and for a bridge where people used to dance.

Avignon also has a tiny airport and I am sure that the design firm "Arup" draw some small hairlines from Avignon to somewhere... That in order not to be accused to be off topic.

5 upvotes

And why would we care where the "old" pope lives? Why is it your business now?

0 upvotes

Easy, Plastek. Because I can get amazingly stingy replies like yours.

1 upvote

Stingy post, stingy replay. What did you expect? Glorification? ;)

0 upvotes

Demonstrates conclusively that there are more air transport movements in the vicinity of large first-world metropolises. Staggering revelation.

0 upvotes

Yes, the western US is underdeveloped ;-)

1 upvote

I can just imagine the dpreview editors smiling to one another as they anticipated the cries of "what does this have to do with photography?" :-)

3 upvotes

I'd still be quite interested in the answer to that question, though. :)

2 upvotes

The "editor" who chose to publish this item on the day it was announced that Olympus would make lenses for Sony ( no mention that I can see on this site ) has some self-examination to do. If you want to give links to other publishers of good photo's (these are beautiful images but hardly photographs ) then the Daily Telegraph has a regular series that only lacks the EXIF data

3 upvotes

There were videos like that long ago.
Those are nicely done however...

...ok, I can't hold that stupid thought anymore:
He's good at Markieting! :-D

Comment edited 58 seconds after posting

0 upvotes

I find these to be somewhat interesting from an informational standpoint, but also eerily creepy-looking .. and un-aesthetically appealing to my eye (and yes, quite off topic for this website, as has already been mentioned) ... but hey, to each their own.

Comment edited 4 minutes after posting

2 upvotes

Digital Imagery Review
Doing It Right
Dinner Is Ready

Maybe DPR should be DIR and then there would be fewer worries about off topic.. loss of focus with respect to articles.

I thought it was interesting and didn't consciously realise I had just read an article unrelated to photography until it was pointed out below. Sneaky DIR

3 upvotes

These are renderings and not photos. Still lovely nonetheless but it has little to do with photography.

5 upvotes

With as much post as is being done on "photos" these days, making images more art than pure capture, the line between photo and image is blurred.

0 upvotes

I wonder if Mr Markieta could do that to our office layout.

It will show the thickest traffic over the staff kitchen and fridge...

10 upvotes

Beautiful. More news like this and lens gear news please.

1 upvote

But, thats what they do, they review stuff. Its in their name. Anything extra is just that.

0 upvotes

I love it. Off topic? Who cares. Having filled 4 passports traveling over the world over last +32 years, this gives me a slightly altered perceptive of my life inside a flying 200 ton metal tube with seating for hundreds :) I love it, I think.

0 upvotes

Total comments: 30


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