A window seat on anything

There is a particular feeling that goes with watching a plane cross an evening sky: wondering what the world looks like from up there, right now, to whoever has that window. Stowaway is that feeling, without the airport.

Everything on screen is the real thing. The aircraft are broadcasting their positions as you watch. The satellites are on their actual orbits. The sun and the moon are where they truly are, and the atmosphere is computed from scattering physics rather than painted as a gradient — which is why a contrail at cruise altitude still burns after the ground below it has gone dark.

Why accuracy, and not just something beautiful

It would be easier to fake. A convincing sky is a solved problem, and nobody watching would be able to tell you the moon was three degrees out.

But the fantasy only works if it could be true. The moment you know the aircraft overhead is a real flight, with real people on it, going somewhere specific — the picture stops being a screensaver and becomes a place. That is the whole trick, and it is why the accuracy is in service of the feeling rather than the other way round.

What it is good for

Some of it we expected. Some of it we did not:

• Sending someone your flight. Pick the aircraft you are actually on and send the link. Whoever opens it sits in the window seat beside you, from the ground, with no account and nothing to install.
• A wall that is different every day. Museums and planetariums have asked about running the live local traffic as an exhibit, which needs a screen and a network connection and nothing else.
• Somewhere to put a quiet twenty minutes. Roaming hands you from one flight to another, somewhere the light is currently good.

If one of those is you, the partnerships page has more, and getting in touch reaches a person.