My first 360 degrees video taken during a flight in a Piper Archer 3

Interesting video. I take it you didn’t get your IFR clearance?

BTW can you get Tafs & Metars on that DeLorme device?

Nice technology! Hadn’t seen that before for a video clip. Thanks for sharing.

Very impressive technology. Very big improvement over mounting GoPros in every corner of the a/c and editing it afterwards.

I dimly remember that there was a product in the 80ies (or 90ies) that provided collision avoidance for gliders lightplanes by registering the flashes of other aircraft’s anticollision lights. It could only resolve the direction (like the passive infrared sensors used for example to turn on bathroom lights) but was said to work well in bright daylight and also in haze. Of course it relies on other aircraft having anti collision lights, just as TCAS and FLARM and other systems rely on transponders and/or FLARM. Unfortunately I don’t know who manufactured this or what the product was called.

Great video – thanks for sharing!

Yes, range may very well be the problem, although it should really be about the visual detection angle, as range itself strictly should only be limited by met vis. Of course a detection range of only a few hundred meters is of no value. Throwing money into it could also be a problem, as the number of midairs is fortunately small, and the big boys (and their big money) already rely on TCAS.

@huv I imagine range is a big issue. The better systems in cars employ also LIDARs and radars (latest S-Klasse has no less than six radars, three up front, three out back, plus a host of other sensors, all that to cover just a few hundred meters in two directions). Even light detection for high-beam assistants, which is comparatively simple, is severely range limited. Throwing some extra money on the problem would improve things, I imagine. I vaguely remember some research into strobe light detection (I think it was strobe, not position). However, I’m not sure how it worked.

Makes for a much more interesting video than the usual fixed direction recordings. Very impressive. I found myself scanning for traffic a lot while watching, and slightly annoyed by not being able to read the instruments ..

Forgive my thread drift, but this video gave me a thought that never occurred to me before. Why is it that optical digital traffic detection has never been heard of? (Or maybe it has?) With small size high resolution cameras, 360 degrees capability and mature software for realtime pattern recognition available at modest costs, it should have the potential to help every pilot in his visual scanning. On the road that technology now works so well that is it considered failsafe. In the air, distances are of course larger so the targets appear smaller, but the pattern recognition itself should be simpler. Think about drones, birds and other non-transponder traffic that go undetected by TCAS-like technology. Just a thought.