Look up and know what you are seeing — live flights, ships, and satellites on a map and in real augmented reality.
Look up and know exactly what you are seeing. Beacon plots the live flights overhead, the ships nearby, and the satellites passing above onto a real-time map and a point-your-phone augmented-reality view — set against the real constellations behind them — then lets you log the sighting and watch for the ones you care about.
What's included
Live air traffic overhead (ADS-B, no key required) plotted on a MapLibre map and in AR
Ships nearby via AIS, and satellites — ISS, Tiangong, and visual passes — computed on-device from live orbital elements
Real WebXR / 3D augmented reality: pan your phone at the sky and label what is actually up there
Sighting log to record what you spotted, and a watchlist for the aircraft, vessels, and satellites you care about
Personal-context and account-for-life — your sightings and watchlist travel with you
About this module
Beacon lives at /me/beacon and turns the sky and sea into something you can read. Aircraft overhead come in live from open ADS-B data with no key or account, plotted on a fast MapLibre map and labelled in augmented reality when you raise your phone. Ships nearby arrive over AIS, and satellites — the ISS, Tiangong, and bright visual passes — are computed right on your device from current orbital elements, so you can see what is above you even when nothing is broadcasting from the ground.
The augmented-reality view is the magic. Pan your phone across the sky and Beacon overlays the real objects up there — this airliner, that satellite pass — anchored to where they actually are, using genuine WebXR and 3D rendering rather than a flat radar screen. Behind the moving signals it draws the constellations themselves: the Big Dipper, Orion, and the rest, resolved from a star catalog to your exact location and time so the fixed night sky frames the live traffic. Switch to the map for the view from above, or scan the list to see everything in range at a glance.
Because it is part of Turtini, what you spot does not evaporate. Keep a sighting log of the aircraft, vessels, and passes you have seen, and build a watchlist for the ones you want to be alerted about. It is personal-context and account-for-life, so your sightings and watchlist travel with you. Beacon is the friendly on-ramp to the signal layer — point it at the sky today, and the same primitive scales to anything that broadcasts a position.
What you can do with it
Raise your phone at a passing plane and see its flight labelled in augmented reality
Catch the ISS or a bright satellite pass, computed on-device from live orbital elements
Find Orion or the Big Dipper in AR, with the constellations pinned to your real sky
Watch ship traffic move through a harbor on a live map
Keep a personal sighting log of the aircraft, vessels, and passes you have spotted
Add a tail number or a satellite to your watchlist and get notified when it is overhead
Get this module
Free for all Turtini organizations.
Who it's for
- Plane-spotters, boat-watchers, and stargazers who want one app for everything overhead
- The space-curious who want to see what is passing above them right now, in AR
- Anyone who looks up and wants to know exactly what they are looking at
Details
- Category
- Community
- Pricing
- Free
- Built by
- Badge
- New