Flight3DS

Real-time flight tracker for the Nintendo 3DS. Displays live aircraft positions on a world map using data from the OpenSky Network.

Features

• Live flight map on the top screen with world coastlines, grid lines, and altitude-colored aircraft
• Airport markers — 150+ major world airports rendered as diamonds/squares with ICAO labels at high zoom
• Airline identification — decodes callsigns to airline names (130+ airlines)
• Flight list on the bottom screen with callsign, airline, altitude, and speed
• Detail view with full flight info, airline name, and nearest airport
• Offline data packs — save named flight snapshots to SD card, load anytime without WiFi
• Auto-cache — last flight state cached automatically, restores on boot
• Cursor selection — circle pad to aim, A to select nearest flight
• Zoom & pan — explore any region of the world
• Color-coded altitude — yellow (high), orange (mid), red (low), gray (ground)
• Heading indicators — small ticks showing flight direction

Controls

Button	Action
D-Pad	Pan map
L / R	Zoom out / in
L + R	Open data pack browser
Circle Pad	Move cursor
A	Select nearest / detail / next flight
B	Back / deselect
X	Toggle cursor crosshair
Y	Save current view as data pack
START	Help screen
SELECT	Quit

Data Pack Browser

Button	Action
D-Pad	Browse packs
A	Load selected pack
X	Delete selected pack
Y	Save new pack
B	Back to map

Offline Data Packs

Data packs are named snapshots of flight state saved to the SD card at sdmc:/3ds/flight3ds/packs/. Each pack stores:

• All tracked flights with position, altitude, speed, heading
• The map view (center coordinates and zoom level)
• Auto-detected region name
• Timestamp

Packs are saved in a compact binary format (.f3d) and load instantly. Use them to:

• Record interesting traffic patterns
• Share flight snapshots with friends
• Browse flight data offline on the go

Building

Requires devkitPro with devkitARM and libctru.

export DEVKITPRO=/opt/devkitpro
export DEVKITARM=$DEVKITPRO/devkitARM
make

Output: flight3ds.3dsx — copy to your 3DS SD card under /3ds/flight3ds/.

Data Source

Flight data from OpenSky Network REST API (free, no authentication required for basic access). Updates every 15 seconds when connected.

Embedded Databases

Database	Entries	Purpose
Airports	150+	Major world airports (ICAO, name, coords)
Airlines	130+	ICAO callsign prefix to airline name
Coastlines	~500 pts	World map outlines for all continents
Regions	19	Auto-detect region from coordinates

Architecture

┌─────────────────────────┐
│    Top Screen (400x240) │
│  Map + airports + flights│
└─────────────────────────┘
┌─────────────────────────┐
│  Bottom Screen (320x240)│
│  List / detail / packs  │
└─────────────────────────┘
         │
    ┌────┴─────┐
    │ WiFi     │──→ OpenSky API (HTTPS)
    │          │←── JSON flight data
    └────┬─────┘
         │
    ┌────┴─────┐
    │ SD Card  │ ← Cache + data packs (.f3d)
    └──────────┘

• Equirectangular projection for fast lat/lon to pixel conversion
• Embedded coastline data (~500 points covering all continents)
• Custom JSON parser optimized for the OpenSky response format
• Direct framebuffer rendering — no console/printf, all pixel-level
• Column-major BGR8 framebuffer layout (3DS native format)
• Binary data pack format for instant save/load

License

MIT