FlippityBoard · Airspace
See the Plane FlyingOver You
FlippityBoard's Airspace scene turns FlightRadar24 flight data into a retro departure board: the airline, flight number, aircraft, and altitude of whatever is passing overhead.
You look up, catch a contrail, and wonder: what plane is that? Airspace is a FlippityBoard scene that answers it on a split-flap board. Powered by FlightRadar24, it reads the flight data for the aircraft passing over your location and flips the details onto a retro departure board you can leave running on any screen: airline, flight number, aircraft type, altitude, and how far the plane is from straight overhead.
The board above is a static sample running the real Classic Departure preset, but it behaves like the scene does in the editor: it rotates between the aircraft overhead and your local weather, so one board doubles as a flight tracker and a small weather station. Park it on a wall display, a second monitor, or a tablet by the window.
What plane is flying over me — on the board
Airspace uses the Classic Departure preset by default: the black board with crisp white flaps you would recognize from an airport terminal. Each refresh picks the best aircraft overhead and lays it out as clean label rows.
When nothing qualifies overhead, the board reads CLEAR SKIES ABOVE instead of inventing a flight.
How to turn on Airspace
Airspace is in the editor. Open Content, then Special Content, then Airspace:
Once it is saved to a board, it refreshes on its own and rotates with any other scenes you have added, like the weather scene in the demo.
Airspace is on the paid plans (and you get more than Airspace)
Airspace pulls FlightRadar24 data on every refresh, so it sits on the paid FlippityBoard plans: Personal, a one-time $5, and the recurring Business plan. That plan is worth it for more than Airspace. It also unlocks scene sequencing to rotate several boards in a loop, Premium Rendering for richer flap depth and lighting, branding control so you can turn the corner watermark off, a jump from 10 to 50 saved scenes, and bigger, longer exports including transparent WebM and Alpha APNG. Free accounts can still build, customize, save, and export boards. See the plans page or the Airspace feature page.
The honest part: data limits
Real talk: FlightRadar24 lookups cost money on every refresh, and right now FlippityBoard runs on a modest API budget. So the refresh interval has a floor — boards check every few minutes, not every few seconds — and if a lot of people open Airspace at once, you might occasionally see a board fall back to CLEAR SKIES ABOVE or a brief unavailable message. I would rather be upfront about that than pretend it is unlimited. As more people use it, I will keep raising the data budget so it stays smooth. I am actively working on it, so if you ever hit a wall, give it a few minutes and it will come back.