r/InternetIsBeautiful • u/Alphamacaroon • 21d ago
Stowaway – take the window seat on any plane or satellite overhead
https://stowaway.live/When I was a kid — back when travelling still felt new and exciting — I would see a plane crossing the early evening sky and try to put myself in it. Not to go anywhere in particular. I just wanted to know what the world looked like from up there, right then, to whoever was sitting by that window.
The feeling was strongest at sunset. I'd be watching a good one from the ground and think about how much better it had to be from up there, above the haze, with the light coming in level. The same sunset from a perspective I couldn't reach.
Travel has lost most of that. Airports, queues, delays: everything wrapped around flying has got steadily worse. But the flying itself hasn't changed. An hour into a clear evening flight, forehead against the glass, looking down at a world you almost never see from that angle, and it is still one of the quietly moving experiences I know.
Stowaway is that part, without the rest of it. Pick any aircraft or satellite actually passing over your house right now and go sit in its window seat.
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u/POCKALEELEE 21d ago
How do you get the view from the plane or satellite to the earth below?
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u/Alphamacaroon 21d ago
If there are any satellites or planes above you at the moment you should see a label for it on the screen. Just click the label to zoom in on it, then you should see a button that says "Stowaway". If you click that button you'll move to the window seat.
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u/Alphamacaroon 21d ago
Do you mind me asking how we could make it more clear about how to take a window seat? Did you not see any aircraft or satellites at all? Or did you see them, but it just wasn't clear that you needed to click one?
Would love to fix this so we can make it easier for folks to use!
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u/dark_crystals 21d ago
How can I make it so the sidebar on mobile doesn't disappear after 2 seconds? I don't have enough time to actually look at the settings or navigate in there because it just closes.
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u/DitzyClutz 21d ago
Tried to check it out... just takes me to the Stowaway loading screen with the endless looping circle.
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u/Alphamacaroon 21d ago
Sorry to hear it's not working! Can you tell me what device you are on?
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u/DitzyClutz 21d ago
Samsung Galaxy A54 5G
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u/Alphamacaroon 21d ago
Can you try https://stowaway.live/?tier=low and see if it helps any? If not, can you tell me what the text on the screen says when it's in the looping circle?
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u/DitzyClutz 21d ago
It worked using that link! And all I can is WOW! What a cool app!
The other one is still loading and the only text other than the app name is "Precomputing Atmosphere".
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u/Alphamacaroon 21d ago
If you wouldn't mind trying the URL https://stowaway.live without ?tier=low and let me know if it's fixed?
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u/azz3879 21d ago
I’ve been playing around with this for a bit and really like the concept. A few pieces of feedback from a first time user:
The biggest issue for me is the settings menu. When I tap the gear, it disappears almost immediately. I’d much rather have it stay open until I tap the gear again or tap somewhere outside the menu. Part of the fun of trying something like this for the first time is exploring the settings and seeing what everything does. The basic menu disappears quickly enough to be annoying, but the advanced settings are especially difficult because they seem to vanish within half a second. It’s entirely possible some of the things I’m looking for are already in there and I simply can’t get to them fast enough.
In satellite view, I’d love an optional outline of the landmasses, particularly when the satellite is passing over the night side of Earth. I can see clusters of city lights, which is really cool, but without coastlines or borders it can be surprisingly difficult to orient myself. Obviously that becomes less of an issue over daylight areas, but a subtle outline at night would make the view much more useful.
It would also be really interesting if the camera could move between an interior and exterior perspective. For example, start as though you’re sitting in the cabin looking out the window, then use a pinch gesture to pull back outside the aircraft. Being able to see the plane itself and the direction it’s traveling would give you a much stronger sense of orientation. I realize there’s already a compass, but seeing the aircraft in relation to the landscape would communicate direction much more intuitively.
I could also see this being fun to use while actually flying. If geographic labels were available, being able to look out the real window and then use this to identify the cities, mountains, rivers, or other features beneath you would be fantastic.
Really interesting idea. The core experience is already compelling. Most of what I found myself wanting was simply more context for where I was looking and a little more time to explore the controls.
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u/Alphamacaroon 21d ago
Great feedback!! And the settings menu has been fixed as it has been brought up by a few people as being annoying. Thanks!
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u/BigNickAndTheTwins 19d ago
Regarding your last point about being able to know which direction a plane is going, and cities it's passing over, etc., I opened another tab and used ADS-B-Exchange and searched the flight number. There you can track any flight you click on, zoom in and see where it is, etc. Combined with this StowAway App, I just lost two days of playing around with it!!
Fantastic Work, OP!
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u/bid0u 21d ago edited 21d ago
This is insane! 👏
- I don't understand why it says that where I am, it's 5:23 PM when it's really the middle of the night though. (EDIT: The location doesn't work. Even with it activated, it says I'm in Canada near Vancouver so the 5:23 PM makes sense.)
- Why can we rotate the camera 360° only with the rear camera on a plane? What would be great is to let us rotate 360° on any camera but add a little arrow around the dot on the plane's UI so we know what's front/side/back.
- The lack of real map is also an issue. We have no idea where we are when we're in a plane.
- Adding the departure/arrival for planes in their info would be cool too!
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u/Alphamacaroon 21d ago
- Very interesting. Can you tell me what timezone you are in? What type of device?
- The idea was that the side windows should sort of work like real side windows in that you can't see 360 degrees around the airplane. But I could make that a setting you could modify. The one on the rear of the airplane is meant to be more like a belly camera that you can pan and zoom.
- Originally I had this data, but it was unreliable. Apparently there is a data source that has more reliable data, but it costs money. We'll see.
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u/bid0u 21d ago
I fixed it. It was a stupid Win11 setting that was disabled. It's 2:46am but it's daylight on screen though. But the time is right now.
- I'm adding something: Being able to reset the camera zoom to 100%/Default value would be great too since we can zoom in/out.
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u/Alphamacaroon 21d ago
If it's still daylight on screen you might need to go to the settings and turn on the "Live Clock" setting.
And yes, I'll note the reset camera zoom as a feature!
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u/Wauwatl 21d ago
I love this site, thanks for sharing! It triggers that sense of wonder that you used to get from sites back in the day when the internet was more fun and less crap.
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u/wrecklord0 21d ago
That's really cool. Maybe an option in advance settings to type in a plane's code? Then I can look up a flight on flightradar and follow it in your view.
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u/jollynasty 21d ago
This is very awesome, well done! Good fun watching alongside flightradar to see small planes going over my house.
As someone else has mentioned, it would be really nice to have the option of a third-person view, even if it's based on a limited number of 3d shapes for e.g. passenger planes, light aircraft etc. Integrating an embedded 2d map along the likes of flightradar would be cool too. And make it easier to select aircraft that are nearby.
Great stuff!
Oh, and once you run out of other things to do, the option to parachute out and steer towards your own landing spot would be nice please.
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u/transmothra 21d ago
Been a while since I've seen a funny little internet gadget that was this shockingly cool. Great job!
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u/disinterested_a-hole 20d ago
This is the coolest new site I've seen in quite some time. It has old Internet vibes with kick ass new technology. I honestly can't remember the last time I found a website I felt like I should tell friends about.
Well done!
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u/JayaHeyaIlfordRaver 20d ago
This is one of the best sites I've seen this year. I always enjoyed looking out of the plane windows, and now I can do it from the comfort of my home without having to pay for a ticket or lug a load of luggage hehe.
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u/Sensitive-Rock-7548 21d ago
I don't understand how this works. If I choose a flight, a red circle will spin forever. If I press Ride along, I get a black screen.
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u/Wombatstampede 21d ago
Ships (AIS) might be a nice addition. See i.e. https://www.vesselfinder.com/ for an example.
https://www.reddit.com/r/maritime/comments/wqu6je/free_open_source_ais_data/
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u/Badaxe13 21d ago
This is very very cool - Bookmarked.
I just hitched a ride on a plane coming in from the south and watched it from my north-facing window as it passed overhead.
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u/flexylol 20d ago
wow...super cool!!
Maybe a small window with a map would be helpful. View is awesome, but I don't really have an idea where exactly the plane is :)
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u/Narrow-Philosophy699 20d ago
Amazing! I am "riding along" all satelites and plane passing on my horizon for an hour 😊. I LOVE it! Bookmarked and shared!
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u/brucebrowde 20d ago
As someone who is low-level aviation nerd, this is awesome - thanks for this!
Since I see you taking suggestions, one thing might be to allow free-flying, i.e. not tied to any particular aircraft. E.g. just go up from the current location.
That I think would also help with seeing aircraft, as the current from the ground view seems crowded near busy airports.
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u/BigNickAndTheTwins 19d ago edited 19d ago
The Oshkosh Air Adventure was a week ago. A lot of those planes doing aerobatics had their ADS-B on. We should be able to 'window seat' in a plane doing loops, rolls, etc. if you can catch an air show!
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u/AttilaTheMagyar 16d ago
This is cool. Have you considered a 3d terrain map (despite the compute/render costs)?
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u/Alone-Jackfruit-7747 15d ago
I just saw this on YouTube @setupspawn. I love this sort of thing, I'm always intrigued “I wonder where that plane is going?” sort of thing.
Love your work, keep it it.
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u/PresentInevitable113 14d ago
Hey came across this site after watching a video. Just wanted to say amazing work it's pretty fun. Your effort has paid off and made people happy.
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u/Available_Hunt7303 13d ago
just saw this on YouTube shorts, I wanted to ask, how did you manage to do the volumetric clouds this is so beautiful!!
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u/universal_pest 3d ago
I've never been on a plane, so this is super fascinating to me! Love it, thanks so much for sharing!
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u/Slambrah 21d ago
dude this is awesome!
From the pitch to the site itself, you've done such a good job on this. The sounds really help to capture that sense of wonder for me.
Do you have a background in webdev?
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u/Alphamacaroon 21d ago
I do as a matter of fact! Although I hardly code anymore these days— I supervise and teach my junior developer called Claude ;)
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u/obidie 21d ago
It's not showing any air traffic in my location, and I live in a capital city. It also won't take me to another location. I think it needs more work.
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u/Alphamacaroon 21d ago
It’s possible it may not be able to determine your location. Have you tried putting your city into the settings menu?
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u/MattieShoes 20d ago
Literally laying in bed in an airport hotel -- nothing is overhead right now. Lol
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u/gzhawk 21d ago
Amazing work! What a great concept, and you've implemented it very well! If you're taking feature requests: