Visualizing millions of features to make operating drones easier
By: Rob Altenhaus
FlyNex, based in Germany, makes drone operations software to help companies and enthusiasts plan, execute, and analyze their flights. German aviation restrictions change frequently and vary by locality, making it difficult to fully comply with laws. The Flynex platform uses our maps to display all of this real-time aviation data within their mobile and web applications — Map2Fly and Map2Fly_Pro — reducing flight prep times from hours to minutes.
For the tool to be useful, Flynex needed to display a lot of information and control every aspect of how the data was styled, from each zoom level to individual features and layers. Flynex developers Ingrid Rohloff and Nico Lehmann explain:
“From our point of view, Mapbox is the only solution that provides the full stack we needed for map development. Not only can we display all ground-based infrastructure, we can also display all different types of air space data potentially affecting a drone mission. It would be impossible for us to give our customers such a great experience without the flexibility and customization of the Mapbox APIs.”
Map2Fly visualizes entire cities and regions, including specific buildings that have flight restrictions. This is no small feat; FlyNex’s engineering team used Tippecanoe to generate vector tiles from more than 20 million features. The team then used Mapbox Studio to style all of the underlying map data, adding interactivity with GL JS (our web API) and our Maps SDKs for iOS and Android for the mobile experience.
The team is especially excited about what they’ve built with 3D extrusions, Ingrid and Nico tell us:
“Creating a 3D view has been especially powerful because our data is based on 3D space. For our users, the ability to rotate the map and explore all of the layers within the 3D view makes it much easier to plan missions and observe potential obstacles.”
With autonomous navigation on the rise, Flynex plans to incorporate Dynamic hillshading, 3D terrain in Unity, and our HD vector tiles to give their users a hyper-accurate, realistic solution. CFO Michael Petrosjan adds:
“The key will be to provide the drone itself with real time data to enable autonomous flights. The drone has to know where it is, what rules and regulations are on their path, and also be aware of live-updating flight restrictions.”
You can download Map2Fly for free on GooglePlay or the App Store. Learn more about how drone companies are using our maps and location services. Reach out to our sales team with any questions.
Flynex maps real-time drone flight data was originally published in Points of interest on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.