Live sky on the Skydex map — powered by our own feeder network
When we opened the Feeder Network, we promised that volunteer receivers would eventually put live aircraft where players can see them. That landed faster than expected: the map now has a ✈ Live sky layer.
What it shows
Hollow blue triangles, each one a real aircraft currently heard by the network's receivers — position, heading, callsign, all live with roughly five-second updates. Military aircraft, when they broadcast openly, show in a reddish tint. Tap any plane and you land on its subject page — the airframe's card, its type, operator and spotter history.
The layer is on by default on both maps — the site map and the in-game one — and politely gets out of the way while you run a Sky Radar scan, same as ships and spots do.
Watching is free. Catching is the game.
An important distinction: the live layer is a window, not a net. You can watch traffic all day at no cost to anyone — this is our own network's data, no metered API in the loop. But adding an aircraft to your collection still takes a Sky Radar scan over your position: catching is the game mechanic, and it stays that way.
This is also why the layer can exist at all. Every previous look at the sky cost a paid API request, which is why we deliberately rejected rendering live traffic. Data from our own receivers changes the math: polling our own aggregate costs nothing, so the map can finally show the sky the way it shows the sea.
Honest fine print
Coverage equals feeders. Where a volunteer receiver hears the sky, the layer is alive; where none does yet, it's simply empty — no fake data, no paid fallback for the ambient view. Right now the network is brand new, so expect the layer to light up city by city as receivers join. Private light aircraft never appear — the same privacy stance our ship map takes for private craft — and there are no alerts or movement histories for anything: watching is live-only, by design.
Want your city lit? One Raspberry Pi and a €40 antenna stick make you a feeder — and the sky over your home becomes part of the game for everyone.