VATUSA 24 hour time lapse (6/16/2017)

[Don Desfosse]

Yeah, but Daniel lives in Alaska.  They just got internet last week....

[Daniel Hawton]

Yeah, but Daniel lives in Alaska.  They just got internet last week....

No.. that's Barrow.  Barrow, for instance, has bandwidth caps that are measured in thousands of megabytes per month (15,000).   Fairbanks is a mix between 21st and 20th century.  Hell, there are 2 Blockbusters still.

[Daniel Hawton]

Other than offering services as another mirror, is there any way for the average Joe like myself to get higher fidelity data in the manner you do?

No.  There are limits to how often you can pull from the mirrors and there isn't a perfect interval for when the data arrives at the mirror, either.  In fact, most mirrors monitor for abusers pulling more often than every 2-4 minutes and will block access.. so you can't just constantly call it to see if it's updated.  Truthfully, the data feeds weren't really designed to be used for a FlightAware-esque style capture.. as I was building my data capture scripts is when I realized the update interval didn't line up with the update interval specified in the data feed itself as each tweak and run of my script was generating different results within 2 minute spans.  Just happened to be one of the benefits having direct access to it.

Interesting.  I suspected that the 2 minute interval wasn't accurate, but didn't want to piss anybody off looking in to it.

Is there any mechanism for individual users to get direct data feed access?  This is VATSIM, after all, it's not like we'd be looking at Terabytes of bandwidth a month on a status page.  I'd almost be willing to host another mirror if it could get me the data I wanted.

Negative.  And there are some serious bandwidth draws.. in excess of 300GB per month from my mirror (and I pull from my feeds via the harddisk).  Running a mirror isn't a small thing, really.  In comparison, the VATUSA website pulls between 6 and 7GB per month and Aircharts pulls about 3 and 4GB.

Matter of perspective, I suppose.  300GB/mo is small potatoes these days.

Depending on the provider.  On my Digital Ocean droplet it ends up using more than 1/10th of my monthly bandwidth allocation just for the mirror, not counting the other services I run on it.  Hence why AirStats will not have a publicly accessible API.

[Alex Ying]

If you're still taking requests, a time-lapse of Northeast Corridor from tonight (6/29) would be cool to see.

[Ian Fisher]

Dan,

Think ZDV could have a time lapse from two hours before and after our recent Telluride Summer Festival event?

[Daniel Hawton]

Dan,

Think ZDV could have a time lapse from two hours before and after our recent Telluride Summer Festival event?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBbXDwIkmtk

[Robert Shearman Jr]

Think ZDV could have a time lapse from two hours before and after our recent Telluride Summer Festival event?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBbXDwIkmtk

Daniel -- weird question.  Any chance the Zulu time stamp on this is an hour off?  In watching this playback, I'm almost certain that I'm the "blip" that zooms in from the upper right corner of the screen at 2243z, splits the difference between KDEN and KCOS, flies an ugly rendition of the hold at Cones, then limps his t-storm-battered Citation into KTEX at around 2343z according to your screen.  Which would make that 743pm EDT (local time for me in Baltimore).  Yet my recollection is that I finished up that flight an hour earlier, almost exactly 645pm local, which would've been 2245z.

Not a nitpick (because I absolutely love these timelapse videos!), but, I figure you want the times to be accurate!

Actually, seconds before hitting "Post" it occurred to me to check Vataware, which seems to confirm my timeline above.  Figure you might want to look into it!

http://www.vataware.com/flight/596bd28d535233693f000003

[Daniel Hawton]

Think ZDV could have a time lapse from two hours before and after our recent Telluride Summer Festival event?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBbXDwIkmtk

Daniel -- weird question.  Any chance the Zulu time stamp on this is an hour off?  In watching this playback, I'm almost certain that I'm the "blip" that zooms in from the upper right corner of the screen at 2243z, splits the difference between KDEN and KCOS, flies an ugly rendition of the hold at Cones, then limps his t-storm-battered Citation into KTEX at around 2343z according to your screen.  Which would make that 743pm EDT (local time for me in Baltimore).  Yet my recollection is that I finished up that flight an hour earlier, almost exactly 645pm local, which would've been 2245z.

Not a nitpick (because I absolutely love these timelapse videos!), but, I figure you want the times to be accurate!

Actually, seconds before hitting "Post" it occurred to me to check Vataware, which seems to confirm my timeline above.  Figure you might want to look into it!

http://www.vataware.com/flight/596bd28d535233693f000003

I've verified the timestamps on my database nodes, they're all showing the same.  They sync times several times daily with a well known time server.  In fact, your flight didn't get logged at all: https://www.airstats.org/search/1155655 -- there are several checks it does, and if something doesn't fit its criteria it scratches the flight rather than logging as incomplete.  Either the data feed I get didn't get your FP info before you went airborne, it didn't see you arrive at the other end, or you were disconnected from VATSIM for at least 5 minutes.

[Sam Lambert]

Looks Very Nice!

[Dhruv Kalra]

Could I trouble you for a timelapse of ZMP's Northern Migration last week? 07/21 2230-0500z period?

[Daniel Hawton]

Could I trouble you for a timelapse of ZMP's Northern Migration last week? 07/21 2230-0500z period?

Coming in the next couple hours.

[Daniel Hawton]

Could I trouble you for a timelapse of ZMP's Northern Migration last week? 07/21 2230-0500z period?

Coming in the next couple hours.

https://youtu.be/ILGZX0PoEG0

[Josh Glottmann]

Could we get a time lapse from ZOA's FNO last night. 10/06 2300-0600Z. Thanks!