augmented reality at 30,000 feet

Catching up on nutritious boingboing nuggets from last week, I saw (and immediately amazoned!) this book Window Seat by Gregory Dicum.

Broken down by region, this unusual guide features 70 aerial photographs; a fold-out map of North America showing major flight paths; profiles of each region covering its landforms, waterways, and cities; tips on spotting major sights, such as the Northern Lights, the Grand Canyon, and Disney World; tips on spotting not-so-major sights such as prisons, mines, and Interstates; and straightforward, friendly text on cloud shapes, weather patterns, the continent's history, and more.

What a cool book concept, I'll take it along on my upcoming flight and let you know how it goes.

I've been thinking wishfully about a similar idea for a few years: an augmented reality thingy for air travel. Basically, a handheld or laptop style display synchronized to the view out your window, overlaid with geolocated information about the mysterious landscape below. Easy, prosaic map stuff like city names, rivers, mountain ranges, political borders. Fun, useless stuff like "who blogs down there?" Maybe even throw in some of Matt Jones' funky embodied versions of Tufte's sparklines, endless hectares of "squirming data" writ large across the terrain.

It wouldn't even be that hard to do, folks. Planes have all the location and altitude data you would need to get the projection matrix right for any given seat. Images are a bit trickier, but how hard could it really be to capture a database of clear-day pictures along the major routes? Pipe it all to an ethernet jack in my armrest, or just plop it onto that in-seat video screen if you must. I'd probably pay extra for it if that helps, are you listening United? Just don't seat me on the wing ;-)

[via boingboing]

Posted by Gene at June 1, 2004 11:58 AM | TrackBack