Launched this week
Overflight
Identify every aircraft in your sky.
126 followers
Identify every aircraft in your sky.
126 followers
A live radar scope of the sky above you. Every aircraft you can actually see, plotted, with airline, flight number, route, altitude, and which way to look. iPhone and iPad in your pocket, Apple TV as an always-on ambient display. Free, with Pro for routes.
The session split is not just two audiences. It puts your funnel and your engagement on opposite screens.
Almost everything in Pro is Apple TV value. Always on, ambient routes, spoken traffic, inbound interesting. That is the surface with the thirty minute sessions, so it is where the reason to pay actually forms. But the sub minute iPhone session is the one where someone answers what is that and puts the phone away, and that is the surface where paying is easy. The screen that earns the upgrade is the awkward one to buy on, and the screen that is easy to buy on is the one nobody lingers in.
Which makes the interesting move handing the moment off rather than trying to close it on the TV. Capture the intent while the ambient session is running, because that is when it exists, not eight seconds into the next lookup on the phone.
Does the tvOS app take the purchase directly, or does it send people to the phone to finish it?
@abdullah_javaid3 That split was observed during the beta when all features were available to all users. Yes, you can purchase directly thru the Apple TV interface—no phone handoff required. Thanks for the comments!
the "which way to look" part depends entirely on phone compass accuracy, and phone compasses drift constantly especially near buildings or in a car. have you had to build in some kind of correction for that, or does it just trust the raw magnetometer reading? that seems like the thing that'd make people distrust the app fastest if it's ever pointing you at the wrong patch of sky.
@omri_ben_shoham1 Fair concern. I use the iOS system heading as-is, but it’s not just raw magnetometer data. CoreLocation combines the magnetometer with the gyro and accelerometer, which handles most short-term drift. If it becomes an issue, I could use the heading-accuracy estimate reported by iOS, but no one (other than you) has reported trouble with it so far. Are you seeing heading accuracy issues? If so, what device are you using? Thanks for the feedback!
This is one of those apps you dont think you need until you try it. Identifying planes overhead is surprisingly satisfying. Does it work in real time or is there a delay from the ADS-B data?
@abdurrahman_fakhrul There’s a tiny bit of latency, but it’s near-real-time.
Would love to see a simple AR overlay mode where you hold up your phone and it draws arrows right onto the sky pointing toward each plane's actual position, basically mapping the radar data onto the camera view so you don't have to figure out bearings from a 2D screen.
@hafizekang6uei That would cool! I’ll put that in the feature-request hopper.
no mention of Android or a web version anywhere, is that international given the Apple TV ambient angle or just where bandwidth ran out first.
@kyle_bennett6 TBH, I apply the Willie Sutton rule. (When asked why he robbed banks, he replied, “Because that’s where the money is.”) :) If it becomes a hit on iOS/tvOS I will look at an Android port, but until then it’s tough to justify the development/testing expense and complexity.
"inbound interesting" mode sounds like it could get concerning fast.
@dustin_warren Ha, yeah. But the truth is it’s mostly military transports. Fighters typically don’t advertise their location.