We all have traveled in airplanes over beautiful landscapes and different cities. All the time, the only thing we wonder about when we look outside the plane window is the secrets that the place we are flying over holds. Well, with this app, you no longer need to be curious.
Presenting Flyover Country!
Flyover Country is an app that uses maps and data collected from databases that will provide us with information about the landscape that we fly over on a plane journey. It uses data from geological information on a particular area.
If you think that you need to purchase in-flight Wi-Fi to access these features, you are wrong. The app works with the phone’s GPS thus eliminating the need for internet connectivity. For in-depth information about the place you are crossing, the app uses cached Wikipedia articles and digs out the right information.
“I hope that people will get an idea of the connectedness of geology and weather and humans and see the scales of things. There are these huge expanses of open spaces, but you can also see massive, massive evidence of human effects on the landscape, whether it’s dams backing up rivers, mines, deforestation or agriculture. There are these incredible natural features, but there is also a huge, ever-increasing human overprint to all of this.” – Amy Myrbo, geologist at University of Minnesota.
So the next time you are on a plane and you see vast expanses of land, just pull up your app and get all the information you need about that area. You may be in luck: if you cross an area that used to have dinosaur bones in it, you get to know about it and show off your knowledge to everyone else.
The team is still working on collecting more information from reliable sources to develop the app further. Nevertheless, it is still a brilliant idea to use all of that wasted time in-flight and develop our knowledge about the world around us.
*Quotes and Image Courtesy: Smithsonian.com
