Instead of movies and crappy games on those in-flight displays, they should just stream the view out the cockpit window.
Like, I'm on a plane. I don't want to watch Toy Story when I can do that at home, I want to see what the pilots see. And that way every seat has technically a window to look out of.
Why not in addition to as opposed to instead of?
I love to have a window seat and just can't take my eyes off the landscape below. It's so amazing to see the plan of farms and cities, the aquaducts and rivers, the crinkled mountains deserts and coastline. Sometimes you can see the shadow of your own plane trace along the ground. Try to guess which lake this is. I guess a night flight is boring.
Ever since I took an atmospheric science class I've come to love the view even when we're above the clouds. I try to identify cloud formations and guess whether it might be raining/snowing below. Seeing a big ol' cumulonimbus from that vantage point is cool as hell.
Also, seeing the wing control surfaces moving.
Me on my flight from Seoul to Stockholm: "oh look, grassy plains. I must be over Russia!"
13 hours later: "oh would you look at that, more grassy plains, still over Russia 😒"
Flying over Russia is like flying over the ocean except it's grass.
Sounds like driving through Kansas.
Agree. Ocean flights are boring as well.
I really enjoy watching the features of the desert when I fly to Vegas. You can almost see the geographic history of how the grand canyon came about. I love the dried up river beds that look like ancient crooked highways.
I fly from Indianapolis to Los Angeles once a year and love this as well. See the topography change over plains states…sometimes the Rocky Mountains if there is a layover in Denver or something. The Grand Canyon and cool landscapes in Utah. Maybe over Vegas/desert…Death Valley. The Sierra Nevada mountain range and “high desert” in California. Then the Pacific Ocean. Kind of amazing and people take it for granted.
If only my neck wouldn't hurt so much after staring
Passing over mountains is the best!
On night flights there's mysterious patterns of lights on the ground. What town is this, is that a stadium? Why is there one solitary light in the middle of nowhere? Why are the streetlights yellowish over there and pinkish over there?
You're right, and even flying into my hometown trying to orient based on the freeways
Or the water... the endless water, when you fly over the Atlantic ;)
One of the coolest experiences of my life was flying back to Portland from Chicago at night. Somewhere along the way, I looked out the window and off in the distance I noticed a lightning storm over a town. It was surreal how much lower the storm was than we were flying, and watching the lightning bolts branch out from the clouds to spread all over the place was just incredible.
I don't fly often, so maybe that's more common than I realize, but I thought it was pretty awesome.
I definitely never saw such a cool thing!
They did on one flight I was on. You could choose from a number of different cameras around the plane and watch the view. Short of take-off and landing, it was pretty dull.
I landed in Orlando recently and the captain said “hey everyone look out the left side and you’ll see a rocket launch.”
I was on the right side. With my kid. It would have been amazing to be able to flip on the TV and see!
Most people don't care. I seem to be the only passenger on the entire flight that looks out the window. Idk why people are so indifferent to the amazing things in their lives, but they are.
I once saw the northern lights from the airplane window. We flew from Amsterdam to Seoul and back then the route went over Russia. We went far enough north that a faint green glow was visible in the distance.
I just want to sleep and get it over with. Flying has become hellish for me . Everything sucks. The cost, the lineups, the hassle of security, the delays, the price of a bottle of water, the horrible service, the discomfort...
BUT YOU'RE FLYING! You are sitting in a chair. In the air!!! You're like a Greek god right now.... YOU ARE FLYING!!
I swear the Wright brothers would kick us all in the cunt right now if they knew... "Hey Orville, they're gonna make us wait on the runway a bit." "O shit, it hardly seems worth it then."
Add a delay and have it cut off if there's an emergency.
Yup, there was a very well known case covered on an early episode of Mayday / Air Crash Investigation (like season 1) about this. A lot of people got to watch the same terrifying view as the pilots as their plane plummeted from the sky.
Sometimes there's a map, but I wish it had landmarks. Is that cluster of lights in the distance Chicago or Salt Lake? Sorry, the map only shows the origin and destination cities.
I was on an international flight recently and the map was great. It had an sorts of zoom and different visualizations with landmarks. Really good. Only downside was realizing we were passing something cool and I couldn't see it because no window.
I remember international flights that had several outside cameras, one looking slightly down and forward was the best by far, although most of the flight it was just clouds and during landing that one turned to face forward so you couldn't see the runway. Haven't seen them recently though.
Emirates has such cameras, one looking downwards and one mounted somewhere in front of the rudder, looking forward. Maybe there's a third camera as well, I don't remember. I flew in 2019 last time.
I flew air France last month and they have them. I loved it. That was my default screen while I was watching downloaded Netflix shows on my phone.
I’ve often fantasized about a 360 cam mounted on the tip of the vertical stabilizer, and then the crew can offer VR headsets that put you “in” the 360 lookout. It’d be like flying while sitting on top of the plane! Cool even in clouds / inclement weather. Could even stream those feeds to the public for cheap tours of the skies. Would be extra interesting during landing and takeoff, I think. Maybe have a few cams around the plane. Bottom, top, each wing, cockpit, etc.
I can't remember off the top of my head, but there is at least one airline/airplane that offers a live camera from the tip of the rear stabilizer to those displays. VR is of course a bit much currently, but it would be an awesome experience, no doubt.
Bottom would probably be most interesting because on top you can only see the sky
@helmet91@lemmy.world I was on an Emirates A380 recently (massive, double-decker beast) and they had three selectable cameras: cockpit, downwards and vertical stabiliser (unfortunately not controllable). The vertical one was weird as it felt like being in a racing game or something since it seemed too high to be part of the plane.
They left the camera on the whole time, which was great to watch the landing and taxiing. We must have been in a decent crosswind early in our flight, as the downwards camera was showing the ground go by diagonally.
Emirates do this, there is a choice of three cameras.
Last.flight I was on had exactly that and several other views from a virtual plane in out virtual location over a 3d virtual earth. Would have been neat but I think it cost me 3-4" of leg room lol
I mean that sounds cool but that would get boring pretty quickly.
Definitely would be cool on takeoff and landing.
Unless it suddenly isn't boring.
Another jet zooms right beneath/above you.
Pilot banks to avoid birds and hit a few.
Suddenly the feed turns off and pilots come on the PA and ask folks to buckle up.
What's even the point of having a view from the cockpit if I can't drive the plane? Forget the crappy movies and games, if you truly want me to not be bored just stream to me control over the flight console.
twitch plays pokemon, airliner edition
Makes me miss the trains that had on board entertainment that allowed you to steam a camera feed from the front of the train
Emirates does this, at least on theor A380s.
And as someone said, apart from takeoff and landing, it's pretty boring.
There is absolutely fucking nothing to see at 40,000 ft.
They do
Done airlines give you outside views, but shoot with potatoes. So it's better not having that. Also there is nothing to see at most of the cruise height.
Yeah except the cloud layers. For some that's beautiful and it makes an even better backdrop for reading
Air France offers this feature at least on international flights.
I think basically every international flight has this, at least ones that are over the 4 or 5 hour mark and have screens for customers.
Probably depends on the plane somewhat. I flew Air-France to go to Mexico and didn't have that on their a380
Honestly that's fucking brilliant. It should be an option of course, not the default, but definitely would be really cool for those who want it.
it's an option on many airplanes, but the problem is that it looks like the list of the cameras approved for this use by the FAA has been updated in the late 90s, the quality of the feed is terrible, in daytime everything is white, and in night time everything is black
It's basically just a windows desktop background.
I can already see the nothing and clouds out the side window. You think the front is gonna be different? At least you can also look down below out of the side windows. You can't really look at the ground from the cockpit. Well, I mean... You can, but it's not very fun because you have to point the nose of the plane down.
Years ago I was on a flight that did this. They also showed the altimiter. When they pull the flaps you drop like a stone, and seeing that altimiter drop so fast is pretty unsettling. Last night I flew on a plane that did the same, but they turned off the altimiter view before that point.
I was on an international flight recently that had a few different camera angles you could watch. Flying over the Himalayas was an exceptional view out the window so I was glued to that angle instead of the cameras on a six inch screen. I think it was a Thai airlines flight from Bangkok to London but I don't recall.
IMO they should make the screen into a phone / tablet mount. And move back the announcement screen back to the isle to comply with regulations, etc.
They should have the camera looking out the cockpit window slowly point downwards toward the ground as the camera is flying along.
Agree. Straight down might be best. I want to see the world as we pass over.
Almost all airlines with screens now have cameras you can choose to watch. That being said, none of them are actually out of the cockpit window and are all external cameras. They are usually not very interesting except during takeoff/landing as they’ll usually just show clouds or ocean or land that’s too far away to make anything out.
I am just sleeping nowadays, dont give a fuck about movies or anything else. Its 8 hours of nothing, i better go sleeping
How do you manage to sleep, I feel like I never have enough space to do it without disturbing others
Some have maps which I enjoy watching. When you can't see the land below you can at least see which random tiny islands you are flying over.
Maybe having all of the passengers watching the pilot's every move might put too much pressure on them
Some of them do.
Many do now. They shut it down prior to landing which sucks.
Some of them show landing too. I had one that show us descending through a fog bank that was crazy. I don't know how those pilots do it, balls of steel I guess.
In my country our flag carrier does it because they usually arrive too early and have to circle around which for some reason caused bad reviews.
So they just turned the damn thing off, which makes things worse IMO. This happens with both ouTGoing and incoming flights, unfortunately.
I imagine if the slightest thing seemingly goes wrong it could have a snowball effect.
People rushing in panic in any direction out of fear or curiosity.
Landing a plane that size is hard enough but with all the mass tumbling around makes it even more unpredictable.
The seatbelts aren't for your safety allone, they also keep your mass in place so the plane doesn't react unpredictably.
Also a big plus if during the turbulences you're not getting flailed by the whirling around extremities of a beltless corpse or getting crushed by its torso.
Remember, force equals mass times speed and there can be a lot of accelerstion during turbulences.
The A350 with Lufthansa for example had it.
Yeah, I've seen this on flights since 2010