VizWorld.com

Tyler Thompson has taken upon himself the mission, nay the Quest, to redesign the travesty of US boarding passes into something that not only is pretty to look at, but properly provides the information relevant to travelers: Flight Number, Gate Number, Seat Number.   His own description of the current design of boarding passes is a hilarious start:

It was like someone put on a blindfold, drank a fifth of whiskey, spun around 100 times, got kicked in the face by a mule (the person who designed this definitely has a mule living with them inside their house) and then just started puking numbers and letters onto the boarding pass at random (yes, I realize that a human didn't lay this out, if a human had, judging by the train-wreck of design, they would have surely used papyrus). There was nothing given size or color importance over anything else, it was a mess.

His website shows some initial designs put forth by himself, then several more community iterations that leads to a truly beautiful and standardized design that I know I would prefer.

Given that I’m hopping on a plane this weekend, I’m sure to be reminded of just how hard current boarding passes are to decipher.

via Redesigning the Boarding Pass – Journal – Boarding Pass / Fail.

Graphics design, flights

InformationAesthetics brings us news of a Real-Time 3D Airtraffic Network Simulation.  A 14-meter, 180-degree field-of view presents the real-time status of 16,000 Lufthansa and Star Alliance flights with an interactive 6-DOF interface and spatial sounds.

The navigation interface provides 6 degrees of freedom, while time and content filters can be activated with buttons and sliders. The user can swiftly move from a macro view of a local hub to a global overview of the worldwide air traffic routes. All flight patterns are linked to spatial sounds that follow the visual representations through virtual space.

Very impressive indeed.  See video of the installation after the break.

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Science flights, realtime, simulation