Exactly.
This is the link to the FA global map, the equivalent of the FR24-map
https://flightaware.com/live/
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Thank you for persevering with me on this.
I noticed that Plane Finder is like Skyawareâitâs address is on the local network-192.168.., not *.com, like FR24 and Radarbox. Just to confirm, though, my feed is part of what FR24 aggregates, right? Does FA use my feed on FA.com?
Is there a reason why Skyaware limits itself to only the local feed? Seems like the FR24 implementation provides more comprehensive information.
The Planfinder client includes a map interface that you can view on your local network. This should be displaying the same information as is showing on your âSkyawareâ page, since it is taking the data from your local receiver. What you are seeing on the local Planefinder client, is effectively what you are sending to Planefinder.
The major exception is that you will not see mlat results from Flightaware on the Planefinder client. You will see these on the Skyaware page.
The two serve different functions. The Skyaware page is showing you what your dongle is receiving directly. It is the default display for the dump1090-fa decoder. On it, you will see aircraft in range who are transmitting ads-b, and mlat results fed back to you from Flightaware.
The FR24 page, is the website of Flightradar24 which will show data from all the receivers feeding them in the area you are looking at.
The equivalent Flightaware page is the one @abcd567 posted above, which will also show data from all receivers covering that area.
So if you want to see what you are receiving directly (which is useful for assessing your receiver performance) look at the Skyaware page. If you want to see all aircraft received by you and others, you need to look at one of the web pages.
The web page is delayed, right?
I donât think there is deliberate delay (except for FAA radar data, but most places are covered by ads-b so this doesnât normally apply) on any of the major sites. Any delay will be how long it takes for the data to be ingested and processed which will vary from site to site, but itâs likely to be on the order of several seconds rather than minutes. Your local receiver page will be much more immediate as it will display updates as soon as they are received.
Even the FAA feed isnât delayed these days.
Most of the delay on the FA website map is a combination of:
- processing/aggregation delays, typically around 5 seconds or so.
- ratelimiting of which positions are selected for the track; this means that there might be no new position selected for up to 30 seconds while live data continues to arrive, which can look like a delay.
- display delays on the web interface; the map animates the plane towards the latest position such that it will arrive at about the time a new position is available; which effectively adds another 30 seconds or so.
In addition to what caius said, FlightAware does a lot of aggregation work to match the raw ADS-B data with our other data feeds to produce useful flight information, rather than just positional information. That process tries to filter out a lot of what it considers noise (e.g. stationary beacons, aircraft that are on the ground or in a hangar, etc) so the end result is not equivalent to a live ADS-B view - thatâs not what weâre trying to produce.
Well, the better your reception, the better the information on your local map.
No website will match the update rate and very low delay you get from your own receiver.
This isnât very useful if your reception isnât good obviously.
Still interesting because itâs what you are receiving yourself. Or at least thatâs interesting to some people.
FR24 updates plane positions every 10 seconds and then displays an animation of the plane following the previous path.
This might look to match up with your local map, but predictive data is not the same as live data.
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The thing is, you arenât comparing apples with apples. SkyAware is the web interface of a package built to run on a fairly low powered device with limited memory, which could potentially be running on batteries or solar power. Whereas, the servers hosting FR24 will have vastly more power and memory.
Personally, I reckon SkyAware is pretty good at doing what it is intended to do given the limitations of the hardware.
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