It's a rare traveler who hasn't looked out the window of a plane and wondered what they are flying over. There's a relatively new app called Flyover Country that attempts to solve this dilemma for you. This app is available for both Android and iPhone, was created as part of an NSF-grant to a couple of geologists at the University of Minnesota, and has great potential for turning any flight into a learning experience. Obviously, as a geology professor I have both a personal and professional interest in this, so I put this app through a trial run as I returned to Denver from Seattle a couple of days ago.
First off, you should know that I don't care for apps that have a huge learning curve. I basically want to fire the app up and have it working quickly without having to go through too much trial and error. Yes, I have the attention span of a three year old ,and getting me to read a manual or go through a tutorial just isn't going to happen. If you want to know about the documentation for this app, you've come to the wrong reviewer.
So, I before I left home, I opened the app and started playing around. Within 1 minute the app was downloading all of the information I would need for my upcoming trip to Seattle (since I'm too cheap to buy wifi on flights, having the material stored off-line on my phone is a requirement for me, and the app passed this first test beautifully). I would be flying over some amazing country, and the downloaded material was supposed to allow me to identify the features I would see below me. My first impression was that this app had some real potential, and passed the ease of use criteria with flying colors.
So, I flew Southwest on the way from Denver to Phoenix. Unfortunately, some unforeseen circumstances resulted in a late check-in, and a lousy boarding number. I settled for the last aisle seat, with all the window seats already occupied. Unfortunately, the app couldn't undo my poor planning and I wasn't able to use it on the way out.
However, I was a little more prepared on the way back home, and grabbed a nice window seat with a great view. But of course, I'm flying out of Seattle. In November. And it's wet. Very wet. But, I figured I would play around with the app and hope for some clear spots before the sun set half way through my trip.
Let me just say this app is a blast! Even though I couldn't see the ground for some of the flight, it was still fun to track my progress on my phone, read and learn about places below that I couldn't see but have never visited (the app downloads wikipedia pages for any feature along the flight route that has a page). I had about an hour with a clear view of the ground, and I eventually was able to figure out which features I was looking at. Even once the sun went down, I could use the app to identify the small towns we flew over, look up nearby geologic sites, and think about places I might try to visit next summer. Overall, it made the time pass quickly, and I learned an awful lot about places I haven't had the pleasure of visiting. You can also use it driving, hiking, and at night (I like being able to identify different cities along the way, or look at forest fires and see where they are burning).
The app is excellent, but not perfect. It sucks the battery pretty hard (I have a Samsung S6), so if you have a portable charger bring it! It won't be able to tell you every feature below, so there will be landforms that you will pass over and still not be able to learn much about. Some of the app features don't always work - the app showed my elevation correctly, but showed my speed as 0.0 miles per hour the entire flight. I'm not sure if that is because there is a bug in the app, or if I maybe didn't have something set right in the GPS (the app never asked any information about the GPS, and I didn't go through tutorial or read any documentation of course!). At present, it only works for US routes, so for international travel you are out of luck.
It takes a little time to match up the scale on maps in the app with that on the ground, so zooming in and out while looking out the window and trying to figure out what is what might take some getting used to. I was a little disappointed with the resolution of the satellite coverage (you have several choices as to which map format you display, and the most realistic map to use from an airborne perspective (the satellite image) lacked resolution when zoomed in tight. I wish there was an option to use DOQQs (these are super high resolution aerial photos that look exactly like the view from an airplane), but they are data hogs some I'm sure there is no way to include those without having the downloaded file size be too big. Also, there occasionally was a widipedia link that would not pop up for me, but that was rare. I would give this app 4 volcanoes out of 5 - a very good rating from me. Below are some more details on how the app works, along with some more screen shots from my phone as I used it.
Using the app
When you first fire up the app it will look something like this. The blue dot shows your location. To load the maps for an upcoming flight, zoom in to your starting point using the "+" zoom in button. Once you see the airport that you will be departing from, just touch that area on your phone and the app will place a marker there.
Below, I've zoomed in on the Denver airport, tapped the screen, and this is what the marker looks like. Now you zoom out, and then zoom in on your destination and tap it. The departure and destination locations should be linked by a line now, and if you tap the "Load R" tab in the upper right then the download for all the maps will begin. The first image below shows my marker for Denver, the next image shows the marker for Seattle (along with the line connecting the two). I zoomed out to take the third image so that you can see the entire route. Also, if you look in the upper right you will see the "Load Path" button that you should hit once you have your route.
Once your route is saved, you can access it from the menu button (the three horizontal bars in the upper left). You can see in the top image the saved Seattle/Denver route - tap on it and it will load the maps and wikipedia pages for the whole trip (second image below).
You can now zoom in and start using the app! Below is what it looked like when I zoomed in on Seattle. I'm in the plane at this point, and the blue dot is my location. The "W"'s are geology-based wikipedia pages that will pop up if you tap them. If you see a round black circle with numbers, that means there are more than one page linked to that site, and if you tap on it all of these locations will appear at the bottom where you can choose the page you are most interested in. In the second image, I tapped on the circle with the number 33 on it, and 33 links to wikipedia pages showed up on the bottom. The third image is the wikipedia page for one of those points of interest
The top blue dot along the right side of the screen allows you to choose your base map. I prefer the satellite map below for trying to find landforms, but the resolution is poor when you zoom in. I ended up using the road map and topographic map options quite a bit for more detailed looks.
As I mentioned earlier, not all features that you see out your window will have information associated with them. If you see something of interest, the menu allows you to search for general features so that you might identify what you are looking at.
Well, those are the high points. There are quite a few more features that I haven't mentioned, but you can learn those on your own. This review is intended to get you started with an app that can add some enjoyment to airline travel. If you are like me, this app can keep you occupied for hours (just bring that portable charger). I mean, who doesn't want to learn about Whiskey Dick Mountain???
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