First of all let me say I have been using Flightaware since its inception …This new “Flightaware” is horrible and very very frustrating to use …I refer to the “Big Map” of any chosen airport.
Why oh why do we have to hover a mouse across the screen to see what that plane is !!
It refresh’s more than before and when doing so, comes over the top of any programme or screen being used !!!
There are not enough aircraft shown in my area while before there were lots !!
The way is was before was good … “If its not broke dont fix it”
I am looking at other options than flightaware, even if it means paying a little money for it !!!
Good luck. You can’t get better than FlightAware, paid or not.
When the screen refreshes (note: the screen doesn’t refresh’s!) you say it over comes over the top of any program (note: in America, the word “program” has only 1 “m” and no “e”). What do you mean? I can’t duplicate that.
Free or not its not a patch on the old flightaware from a few weeks ago …and yes there are alternatives out there, I cannot see it being of any use to any professional pilot or business, having to hover a mouse over the aircraft.
As for my “spellin” lesson, I am English and taught to spell as correctly as possible.
Your comments were as of as much use as an “Ash tray on a motor bike” …
Allow me to address your complaints, if the FA gurus will allow me.
First, the mouse overs were a popular request because in the “old” maps, it was often that all of the aircraft would not always show who/what they were. By allowing the mouse over, you are now allowed to see who/what every aircraft on the map is, not just a selected few. Basically, this gives you a better idea of what is in the area and where they are.
So possibly updating positions for a closer to “real time” is bad? That is the first time I have ever heard that one. Usually people complain that there is too much of a delay in the data.
How far out are you zoomed on the big map? It has been discussed in other threads why FlightAware decided to do this. By now having the ability to zoom out and see pretty much the entire world, FlightAware has now filtered out any aircraft that are NOT coming/going to your selected airport. This reduces clutter BIG TIME. Also, do you have “inbound”, “outbound”, and “vicinity” checked in the filtering options (little “+” in the top right hand corner of the maps)? If not, enable those options and you should see more aircraft in your area, but remember, you will need to be zoomed into a certain level for everything to show up.
It wasn’t broke, so they didn’t fix it, they improved it.
If this attempt at an explanation doesn’t work for you, then I will do my best to get a refund for your membership to FlightAware sent to you as soon as possible.
Actually, I kind of figured you were from another English speaking country that adds superfluous letters to words.
Now about the flight tracking screen appearing over programs. That may be a setting on your computer. I cannot duplicate it. I’ve been running a screen for nearly 30 minutes now and it still hasn’t popped over my other programs.
I think slicer750 complaint is not directly related to the frequent updates itself. I have seen his symptoms when the website refreshes, if you don’t have the web page as the active window, the refresh forces the tab within the web browser to be the active window within the browser.
This can interrupt what you are in if you are using a multi-tab browser. It’s not consistent so I can’t even say if it’s a specific page, specific browser version or even flavor of browser, but I have seen it.
As a fallout from his complaint, I think it would be nice to allow the user to customize the refresh update times so the interruption for the focus of window won’t be so frequent.
I will say, I like slicer750 analogy of an ashtray on a motor bike
I must say that the FA website has become virtually unusable if you are viewing it from a mobile device – it is far too resource-intensive (CPU time and bandwidth). The map and enormous ads are in a constant update cycle.
I’d love to see a slimmed-down version specifically for mobile devices with a static map, smaller ads, and no dynamic features. I know there is an iPhone app and I use it, but it is no substitute for the website itself.
I appreciate being able to use FlightAware and as is often the case you can please some of the people some of the time but not all of the people all of the time. On my pc I am pleased with how it works but on my iPhone it is basically unusable. I am not complaining, its just the way it goes sometimes.FlightAware was not developed just for me and the world does not revolve around me.
I don’t need a “refund” and I don’t see why people have to get off of the subject just because another culture chooses to spell words differently. There are a lot more important things in life.
Why won’t the filtering option box for “Hover for Route” retain the unchecked status? All the other filtering options do, but that one re-activates itself with every refresh.
Any chance we could get that option to behave like the others?
Well said Cajun. Improvement cannot happen without change even though all changes may not be an improvement.
I would not want this site to revert to what it was when I first started using it. I even like the colours of the backgrounds and fonts.
I appreciate all the effort that has been going into enhancing the maps and interactivity of them. Put me in the “happy customer” category.
So with that in mind, the following comments are meant to be constructive rather than complaints.
I am using a 27" iMac set to high 2550x1440 resolution, so I’m pushing these maps to the limits I suppose
√ Hovering over specific aircraft to obtain their info requires split-hair precision most of the time. One or two pixels off, and it won’t display.
√ When the map refreshes, it often re-centers or re-zooms and I have to go on a search & rescue mission for the aircraft I was tracking.
√ When viewing the maps on an airport’s tracking page, the horizontal banner advertisement (usually flash-driven script) seems to make everything hang up, including the map display. Those ads seen to take a while to generate themselves, and all of the interactive data on the page is frozen until the ad figures itself out.
