Many people know the Flightradar application, which shows the movement of all planes in the sky in real time. MarineTraffic, on the other hand, is a similar ship program that can contain information on all ships at sea. And judging by customer reviews, it is the best in this area.
Let's see what this marine radar is capable of …
MarineTraffic is a real-time, up-to-date sea map showing cargo and transport vessels and private yachts.
The program is connected to an international automatic identification system that collects and broadcasts information about sea vessels: type, affiliation, class, course, and so on.
In addition to the basic information, the Marine Traffic program contains the technical characteristics of the ship: year of construction, carrying capacity, displacement and dimensions.
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The application uses the mapping service Google Maps, which is overlaid with ship information from AIS. As a result, on the screen of your iPhone you will see a map with the symbols of sea vessels of various classes and displacement (from small tugs to the largest container ships).
In addition to information about vessels, in MarineTraffic you can track the movement of a single vessel or several in a separate category 'My Fleet' (this function is available after creating an account). There is also an interactive search for nearby ships or ports.
I would especially like to note the work of the Marine Traffic application with additional reality (for an additional fee):
Point your iPhone's camera at a visible vessel and MarineTraffic will display all the information that is freely available about it.
Every day more than 120 thousand ships broadcast information about themselves through MarineTraffic AIS. Imagine that among so many, you need to find one, it's like looking for a needle in a haystack. To simplify the search, the developers have implemented the ability to enable or disable the display of vessels by class: passenger, cargo, tanker, high-speed or fishing vessel, yacht, and so on. Each type is indicated by a corresponding color.
Until the Russian language becomes international, which is unlikely to ever happen, programs like MarineTraffic will only be available in English. People who read English with a dictionary will find it difficult to understand the program interface and the information provided. It will not be difficult for people of specialized professions.
I’m not a sailor and I don’t understand marine terminology at all, but even I liked MarineTraffic for the completeness of information, interface, convenience and quality of performance. I would not give 299 rubles for a specialized application, but I recommend it to all sailors.