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Maps, the Most Popular Elements of In-flight Entertainment Systems, Are About To Get a Big Upgrade -- and Some Ads (wsj.com)
The in-flight moving map, object of fascination for travel geeks and impatient fliers, is going in a new direction. But have your credit card ready: The beloved map will become one more revenue-generator for airlines [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled.], reports the Wall Street Journal. From the story: Maps are the most popular elements of in-flight entertainment systems, capturing passenger attention by posting live updates about a trip, most importantly when you'll arrive. Airlines offer movies, TV shows, podcasts and games on entertainment systems, but the boring map, which made its debut over 30 years ago, turns out to be the most useful, maybe even anxiety-reducing, focus of bored passengers. The map gives you a sense of control, showing not only exactly where you are, but altitude, airspeed, time zone, temperature, distance traveled and miles left to go. For some, there's a sense of adventure built in: You may never visit the Faeroe Islands, but you feel like you've been there when your flight draws a line over them.
Now manufacturers are giving maps a makeover. You'll be able to get encyclopedic details on Mount Fuji as you fly past, track your spouse's flight from your seat and zoom in for details on points of interest like the top 10 rides at Disneyland compiled from social media. The map will be loaded with data about your flight, down to which languages flight attendants onboard speak, when dinner will be served and how long you'll be in Brazilian airspace. And guess what? Airlines will be using the maps to sell you things like tickets to those popular amusement park rides. Hotels, theme parks, restaurants or other attractions may be throwing advertising onto your route. Shopping malls and stores, too. After all, they know where you're going.
Now manufacturers are giving maps a makeover. You'll be able to get encyclopedic details on Mount Fuji as you fly past, track your spouse's flight from your seat and zoom in for details on points of interest like the top 10 rides at Disneyland compiled from social media. The map will be loaded with data about your flight, down to which languages flight attendants onboard speak, when dinner will be served and how long you'll be in Brazilian airspace. And guess what? Airlines will be using the maps to sell you things like tickets to those popular amusement park rides. Hotels, theme parks, restaurants or other attractions may be throwing advertising onto your route. Shopping malls and stores, too. After all, they know where you're going.
I guess someone got paid to put the maps server on the plane.
Lucky bastard.
Sounds like this article was written by someone that thinks Maps on their iPad equals "the Internet"
But because “it’s on a plane” it’s news.
I've always wanted my infotainment centre to play snake... so I can play "Snakes on a Plane".
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
As someone who flies a lot, it's annoying enough with the ads you can't skip before movies. Putting ads on the map is taking it a step too far. That kind of solidified my use of a tablet stocked with games I'll actually play, movies I want to watch etc.
I play with mine quite often!
Sometimes, on my favorite airline, there's even a guy letting you play with his!
You'll be able to get encyclopedic details on Mount Fuji as you fly past, track your spouse's flight from your seat and zoom in for details on points of interest like the top 10 rides at Disneyland compiled from social media.
No I won't, because I won't use the map if it ceases to do the one thing I care about it doing well. Quit trying to make everything "better" with stupid shit no one asked for and ruining the experience with the added cruft and bullshit.
For some, there's a sense of adventure built in: You may never visit the Faeroe Islands, but you feel like you've been there when your flight draws a line over them.
Who the hell writes something like that with a straight face? Are we still doing sacrifices to the volcano gods?
takes high heat to thin that stuff? eat 'em & weep eye gas?
Everyone has a camera. Pax will just gang up and share. With a SDR, maybe we will pick up the gps signals too.
So far, anyone you advertises in my space - I never buy their products new. Stream the New Britain episode where the drunk pilot is having one more for the road. Stream parody ads like SNL. The weight of everyone slipping a bigger tablet in their carry on will outweigh measly ineffective ad revenue.
Typical tech companies. Give you some basic shitty word-bubble pamphlet feature and think that it is enough to "make up for" a constant onslaught of ads while they take the profit.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Most people don't pay the high prices they charge on a plane for their entertainment. The map is the default free thing you get.
They're not done until people dress like this: https://nyoobserver.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/maya-rudolph-idiocracy-7e492.jpeg
For example letting passengers unlock the "optional" safety features of their 737 Max the airline was too stingy to purchase and Boeing too greedy to include in the $121M base price.
Maps, the Most Popular Elements of In-flight Entertainment Systems, Are About To Get a Big Upgrade -- and Some Ads
Here's an idea, just shut down the damn entertainment system and read a book (I know, radical thought).
Just what I need. Additional reasons for the person behind me who does not understand that only a gentle press is needed for a touch screen to be tap-tap-tapping the back of my seat.
Brought to you by: "Al"toids - the curiously weird mint.
Now the passengers will know they are flying to the wrong city earlier in the flight.
And put it through the screen!!
Tell them no, we will not tolerate this any more!
... where your existence is reduced to an advertising ID that determines every interaction you make. As you get older, everything from the ads you see to the media that you consume is crafted specifically to your current age, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, religion, etc.
Is this inevitable?
"The cause of fear is ignorance."
Thanks /.! I needed a fresh reason for never flying commercial. I first flew commercial a month after the new Boeing 747 entered service. That was super! Extremely comfortable, plenty of room for everyone, an actual bar, and terrific service. I met my soon-to-be wife that day too, a nurse(wuv me sume nursies!) working as a flight attendant. OK, backintheday she was a stewardess, but y'all get the idea. I was a lilbit younger then, and hoped that experience would last. Sadly, it's gone to carp, as horrible today as it was great back then. Thanks, greedy capitalists, for the perspective, and nuffin else. Barstids. /. and WSJ. /. rocks!
I avoid things I see advertised and/or suck. Flying today sucks arse. Ads suck more arse, and don't even take me anydangwhere. Ads AND flying, jammed in a tube, rubbing shoulders with smelly people, passing thru TSA and the rest of carppy airpatches? Thanks, airlines, ya monetizing, leveraging fookers, I'll happily pay substantially more to avoid all that, um, stuff. My wife and I fly a few times a year, and apart from billboards we can ignore on the drive to the airport, we see no ads, get a more informative map, relax in cool comfort, and enjoy the great service that we learned to love.
Thanks for the warning
Olphart at play. Ruck FepubliKKKans. Welcome to the Worldwide Idiocracy, y'all.
It is only a matter of time until economy class gets always-on advertisements without ability to turn off, mute, or skip on infotainment.
When ticket price is the only metric and all feasible optimizations already achieved, airlines will turn into abuse and heinous behavior to further drive costs down.
He's exactly right. This is not news. This is not even anti news. It's just ... why did they make me read this? What could I or anyone *possibly* gain from this? What could they even gain from *posting* this?
is always going to add ads long term.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Hey boss, you know that basic flight info we threw on there because it seemed like the least we could get away with?
Yeah
People seem to actually quite like it.
CHARGE FOR IT AND COVER IT IN ADS!
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
There are only a few times in my life that I've considered illegally constructing a military-grade GPS receiver, and this is one of those times.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
And why a book? Is it somehow a bad story when it appears on a screen?.
And why text? Is audio, video, or even an immersive haptic holographic binaural experience somehow making the story worse?
And why only put information *inside* your brain, like a zombie?
Is being creative *yourself* somehow worse??
Frankly, exchanging life stories and drawing something with your seat neighbor is most likey the most fruitful thing you can do on a plane.
Doing it over the Internet, with a friend somewhere else, is likely the second best thing.
What makes planes suck, is that you can't get any of a human's core instinct-driven things there: (Enjoyable) food, sex, sleep. Even social interaction is made taboo by you anti-social psycho snobs.
Only learning, and distracting yourself stay. Stupid.
If that is one's idea of a 'sense of control' then wow. Regardless, not worth paying up for a 'premium' maps experience.
IFE maps rack up screen time because travelers leave them on as a bland, background default - not because they're actively watching or engaging with them. Most of the IFE map screen time is as a nightlight.
So far as I know (aside from local oscillator leakage which must hardly be a problem if the rest of the phone/tablet has clocks running) it is perfectly fine to receive GPS signals on a phone while it is in airplane mode.
If an app can store a reasonable map of the world on the phone so that it does not need an internet connection, then I see no reason why it could not display where you are, your speed and, given a destination, its estimate of when you will arrive.
What with that and the movies I have on my sd card, I suspect all I would need is a little double sided tape to mount my tablet on the back of the seat in front of me
Nullius in verba
Might be a touch of hyperbole there.
I'm not sure it's an "object of fascination" so much as "something slightly distracting to while away the mind-numbing boredom of a long distance flight"? I see it as a digital equivalent to a cat-toy or one of those baby-mobiles, except for adult humans.
-Styopa
And have your credit card ready to read this article
They don't give you any real information of where you are at the moment. At least the Delta ones I've seen recently didn't. They show the U.S. with a giant plane covering four states! I couldn't zoom in to see which state I was actually over at the time. Useless!
Haven't tried in years, but my old Garmin GPS used to work for a 'map' giving location, speed, altitude, etc. Neat to know, but I wouldn't pay or suffer through ads to see that info.
What might be neat - at least for a few flights would be a video feed of the pilots forward-looking view...especially take-off and landing. I might pay a buck to watch that once.
Bring a GPS?
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
30 years ago? I've yet to see a live map of any sort on a commercial flight. That would be all the things they've just described but where exactly does this supposed map live? You've got a seat back, potentially a window, and a screen up front that shows airline commercials and lame movies. Oh and a headphones jack. Once upon a time you also had an ash tray but I only got to use it once as a kid and pesky adults all ready to jump in and parent ruined it.
You'll be able to get encyclopedic details on Mount Fuji as you fly past, track your spouse's flight from your seat and zoom in for details on points of interest like the top 10 rides at Disneyland compiled from social media.
So in other words, the poison that is social media will now infect the one thing on a flight you could enjoy in peace, a simple GPS map showing you were you are. Now we get to wade through all the malware--excuse me, adverstising--and get bombarded with information we neither want nor need, if we want to see where we are.
I've been a technophile all my life, and I'm just about ready to smash my iphone to pieces, throw my laptop off my balcony, and smash my bespoke, self-built Gentoo PC to smithereens. This is how vile advertising, and social media, have made what was once a shining example of human ingenuity and knowledge: the Internet. I already tune out and just listen to music on flights because the "entertainment" systems have become such cesspools of advertising and promotion, with just the GPS map on to track my progress. Now that that is going I'll just shut off the screen, or paste a piece of paper in front of it if they, as I predict they will do next, remove the off switch.
If a technophile can become utterly sick of technology, just imagine what this shit will ultimately do to the rest of the population.
And yes, I realize this is just one example of the rot, and not even a major one at that compared to engineering elections, brexit, and the like, but it is collective sum of so many little things that is making the Internet antithetical to human mental health and well-being. It's gotten so bad the Luddites are starting to look like reasonable prognosticators.
...before breathable air will become a fee based "value add" on commercial airlines.
~Any apparent grammatical or typographic errors are caused by defects in your display device.
In the past, it was possible to listen to the air traffic chatter (channel 4 in the seat audio, as I recall). I actually enjoyed that. It was just the cockpit comms on whatever frequency they were on, but it allowed me to know what was happening along the flight.
As I said, it is a feature that was removed to protect us from the terrorists (who didn't use it) and I would like it back.
Engineers and the like will start throwing adjectives out "cold, wet, white, sticks for arms", but people with other personality types come up with all sorts of stuff. Last time this exercise was done at a shitty team building event I was forced to go to, one person wrote a poem about children building a snowman, the other only described what he felt "joy, happiness, Christmas, etc"
Heh. Funny you should say that. After I read that bit the GP was complaining about, I immediately thought "The Faroe Islands? Well, that's not exactly the sexiest... um, a commercial flightpath right over the Faroe Islands without stopping? I'm not sure if that's ever happened. If so, it would have to be something like nonstop Reykjavík to Oslo, maybe. In which case, I really doubt you're missing out on very much you couldn't get at either your origin or your destination, except for perhaps.... [checks Wikipedia]... nope, nevermind, you could gorge on freshly killed puffins while you're still in Iceland."
They forget to mention that maps was like the only option that didn't include some form of video ads, so if it were on there was no chance of distraction.
But now we have to wring every last penny out of every aspect of life. Get bombarded with ads or pay to be ad-free.
That's probably the next step in the maps evolution; people will turn the crap off if it becomes too ad-laden. Then they'll offer an ad-free version for a small price...
We don't have to turn everything into a revenue source...
The beloved map will become one more revenue-generator for airlines
Are they kidding? Who is going to pay money to see a plane icon on a map? I occasionally will see where we are at via the maps, but only because it doesn't cost anything. I wouldn't pay ten cents to look at that.
You may never visit the Faeroe Islands, but you feel like you've been there when your flight draws a line over them.
Really?
What next? "You may never be get surgery to remove that cancerous lump from your lung, but you'll feel like you have when we draw a red x through it on the CT scan!"
These improvements get a lot of attention because they connect with long (and expensive) international flights. What about those of us in the flying public who rarely fly that far? I've flown less than 1,000 total miles in the last 18 months myself, and I can't recall the time I last flew more than 3 hours nonstop. On these flights we're happy if we have a power outlet to charge our laptop or phone, and we are lucky if we get a back of pretzels as a snack.
Will these upgrades trickle down or will we be left out?
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Can you just stop monetization already.... 100% won't be looking at an Ad Polluted map.
I'm going to Brasil to get drugs. duh.
If you have an Android device, download the Avare app. It provides you with the same sectional map that pilots use. And it is much better than the map that the airlines show you. You have to download the correct maps for the section of the country you'll be flying over.
You'll need to hold it near the window on many airplanes for it to get a GPS signal. But, once it locks, you'll get all the airspeed and ETA data that the airlines have. You'll have more fun tracking which of the airways the airplane uses.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
People don't realize the new cell services will still work while you're on a plane.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
When was the last time, more than 10% of /. was actual news?
In can't remember.
But I do remember /. having more than 30 posts a day. And 500 comments per post. And trolls being funny.
It's largely an open-access website. How many submissions of what you consider real news have you taken the time to write up this year?
I also think what we've witnessed is the entirely expected fragmentation of "tech" nerdery. 20 years ago, everything was big news because everything was NEW. "Handheld phones in the future may be able to send and receive HD video" would have been a blockbuster headline that blew everyone's minds. Everyone would stop what they were doing to talk about that one big change. These days there are 500 "new" things every day which are technically-tech, because we've got freaking light bulbs with freaking wi-fi cards attached to their heads. It's much harder to discern what ought to be considered "news for nerds" when the technological society has forced nerditude on every aspect of our lives. Your refrigerator now tells your grocery-delivery service when to order more milk. Are milk jugs news for nerds?
Was "Hellmouth" really news for nerds, even back in the day?
Being a nerd 30 years ago, when the people who created /. were entering adulthood, was much more pan-nerdy. The range of "nerd" was much more narrow. Generally the physics nerd and the math nerd and the computer nerd and the networking nerd and the sci-fi nerd were all the same damn nerd. This meant there was a very easily-targeted common space of topics you could post on a nerd news site and feel confident 95% of your readers were either already interested in, or were broadly curious enough to enjoy hearing something different.
Nowadays, you have coding nerds who know zero physics.
You have science nerds who actually suck at using computers.
You have "cyberspace/cloud" moguls and web developers who have no personal experience with dial-up modems.
And of course you have all the culture nerds who think liking Avengers and Big Bang Theory makes them a nerd.
And many more.
I don't envy the editors trying to find the right way to target, capture, and maintain readership in this bizarre constantly-shifting niche which was in large part CREATED by Slashdot 25 years ago.
At the same time, the level of triggering in Politics has allowed it to spread past its previous egghead/policy-wonk domain. It is no accident that the articles with the highest comment totals are usually global warming and net neutrality. I could guarantee you the site mods try to walk a line between allowing political discussion, using political discussion to generate comments/pageviews, while also not letting Slashdot become "/pol/ for nerds, stuff that triggers".
Again, the site is largely a result of what the userbase needs it to be. The world has moved on since 20 years ago; maybe people don't need Slashdot to be what it was 20 years ago. Maybe they get that somewhere else. Or maybe we're all middle-aged dudes now and our attention is captured and held by different things, so the fresh takes are gone. Maybe as sci/tech nerdery has gone mainstream (and in fact come to rule society), we no longer need to have a special geek ghetto we all hide in and tell each other the same fr0sty inside jokes to feel some kind of belonging.
Hollywood, Television, has become the dream machine. We need to take that back; each of us is a Dream Machine
Now that airplanes have wifi, and EVERYONE brings their own screens with them, the seat back IFE is obsolete. They should just remove them entirely. Just give me a damn charger port, and if you want to sling some crappy entertainment my way, that's fine too, but the screen in the seat back just isn't needed anymore.
If they want to make the screen actually useful, maybe put Android Auto and Apple CarPlay into it, and let it be a second screen for my phone while it charges.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
God I miss the 20th Century
On Middle East Airlines last summer, Larnaca to Beirut. With sound from loudspeakers. That said, to slightly make up for it, MEA had the funniest, tongue-in-cheek safety video I've ever seen.
Pay money, to watch a map on the screen. Oh well, other than the drunks, kids kicking the back of your seat, other than sleeping, not much else to do while you are prisoner on a sealed metal tube.
Out of the last half dozen flights I've been on, the WiFi did not work on 2 of them. And let me say, the pax were grumpy.
On my very last flight, it was delayed 2 hours for them to fix the WiFi, because it's become a "cannot leave without it" item. Probably to avoid violence in the cabin.
I never believed the allegation that the Editors were dead, hung AI, only spoke Ukrainian, etc. Their freedom to inject humour into boring stories is still there.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
The proud bird restaurant in Los Angeles, before they refurbed it, used to have sets of headphones along a window looking out over the LAX runway. You could sit and listen to air traffic chatter there while having a meal. I'm not sure if they survived the refurb, I assume not.