(Photo: Raita Futo)
You can look out the window on the airplane and see beautiful mountains, seas, islands, rivers, and more. What are you looking at? There's an app for that.
Shane Loeffler, a geologist, developed Flyover Country, an app that shows air travelers what geological formations they're flying over. He tells Fast Co Design that he came up with the idea while flying on a plane:
"I realized that most people don’t have my geology background, and that they might be missing out on some of the wonder of that view because there was no good way to know where exactly your plane was, let alone what stories the landforms below could tell," he tells Co.Design over email. "I tested the GPS in my phone while flying, found that it worked, and realized that there was a great scientific outreach tool waiting to be made." When you open the app, you draw your flight path (it can be very rough) to access the relevant data points, which are then downloaded to the app so you can access them offline.
Loeffler wants to develop the app further with augmented reality so that you can simply hold up your phone and Flyover Country will automatically display the geology of the area.
-via Breda Fallon