Looking Outwards 07: Information Visualization

Flight Patterns

http://www.aaronkoblin.com/work/flightpatterns/index.html

Aaron Koblin, Scott Hessels, and Gabriel Dunne

Celestial Mechanics–Flight Patterns

The Project is an exploration and visual representation of flight patterns in North America.

What I admire a lot about the project is that the project not only provides status images to show the overall patterns and frequency of flights in different cities but also a video to show the dynamic routes of the flights.

The data used is from Federal Aviation Administration and the Processing programming environment and Adobe After Effects and/or Maya are applied for the visualization and representation of data.

The background is set in black and the flights are set in lighter colors, and the denser the lines or the more frequent the flight routes, the brighter the colors and closer the colors to white. This use of contrast of dark background and light lines creates strong contrast and makes the flights more prominent. It is also easy to identify the places where flights are more frequent by comparing the line weights and colors. On the aesthetic aspect, the overall effects of both the diagrams and the video are very visually appealing and the lines remind the audience of lightning or fireworks.