GlobeSiphon turns the sky into something you can look at. Spin a 3D globe and watch thousands of aircraft sitting at their real altitudes, trunk routes arcing between the world's busiest airports, and satellites sweeping their orbits overhead.
It works the moment you open it, with the network off. A snapshot of real air traffic, the world's scheduled airports and a satellite catalogue all ship inside the app, so the globe is never an empty sphere waiting on a connection. Go online and one button pulls fresh positions; stay offline and everything still turns.
Highlights
- Thousands of aircraft, where they actually are - every plane sits at its true altitude above the surface, so a climbing regional and a cruising long-haul are visibly at different heights.
- Routes that move - trunk routes are drawn as arcs with a travelling pulse running along them, and you can narrow the map to the Atlantic, the Pacific, Asia or any other region.
- Satellites on a clock you control - run time at normal speed or wind it forward 1800 times faster and watch whole orbital shells rotate. Low, medium and high orbits are coloured apart so the structure is obvious.
- Click anything for the real numbers - an airport gives you its codes and city, a route its distance and block time, an aircraft its altitude, speed and track, a satellite its altitude and orbital velocity.
- A watchlist that survives the clutter - pin the airports and satellites you care about and they stay listed and findable even when the globe is showing only a fraction of what it knows.
- Honest about its own data - the status bar always says where what you are seeing came from and how old it is, so nothing stale is ever dressed up as live.
- Tuned to your machine - a slider per layer decides how much is drawn, and the app spreads what it keeps evenly across the globe instead of piling it all over Europe.
How it works
Open the app and the globe is already turning with real data on it. The panel down the left switches the layers on and off: country outlines, flight routes, airports, live traffic and satellites. Drag to spin, scroll to zoom, and click anything to open its details.
When you want current positions, press the fetch button and fresh aircraft arrive; press the elements button and a current satellite catalogue is downloaded. Both are saved, so the next time you open the app with no connection it picks up exactly where it left off.
Perfect for
- Aviation enthusiasts who want to see the whole picture at once rather than one flight at a time
- Anyone curious about what is above them right now, and how crowded it really is up there
- Teachers and students who need orbits and great-circle routes to be visible rather than described
- Anyone who wants a beautiful, living globe on a second screen
