July 10, 2005 No doubt we’ve all experienced it at one time or another – looking out the window of an international aircraft en route from and to well known ports but over completely unknown territory and wondering what life might be like just a few thousand feet below. The usual plane-on-a-map features of international aircraft don’t help much but a new service -AirTrack - is expected to set a new standard for in-flight entertainment moving map systems. AirTrack is based on satellite imagery and provides 2D and 3D detailed topographical maps and satellite imagery, as well as new aerial scenes of views from the outside. Resolutions of 10 meters or 1 meter per pixel can be provided, with the latter providing unsurpassed detail even for city street views.
Further features of AirTrack are a video overlay function for flight data, where flight and en route information are displayed as “ticker-tape” across the bottom of the screen. In addition, AirTrack will provide an extra video output for airline advertising. AirTrack has been developed by Lufthansa Technik and TEAC Aerospace and offers a worldwide terrain image database with 30 meters per pixel as standard.