A new app developed by a group of researchers at the University of Minnesota helps you learn about the world along the path of your flight, hike, or road trip with GPS tracking. Offline geologic maps and interactive points of interest reveal the locations of fossils and georeferenced Wikipedia articles visible from your airplane window seat, vehicle, or hiking trail vista.

Flyover Country is a National Science Foundation funded offline mobile app for geoscience outreach and data discovery.

The app exposes interactive geologic maps from Macrostrat.org, fossil localities from Neotomadb.org and Paleobiodb.org, core sample localities from LacCore.org, Wikipedia articles, offline base maps, and the user’s current GPS determined location, altitude, speed, and heading.

It also analyzes a given flight path and caches relevant map data and points of interest (POI) displaying these data during the flight, without in flight wifi.

By downloading only the data relevant to a particular flightpath, cache sizes remain reasonable, allowing for a robust experience without an internet connection.

Flyover Country app is also useful for road trips, hiking, and other outdoor activities such as field trips and geology field work.