Reading the live map
The map's three lenses and two layers, what a rival's overlay actually tells you, and why the fare-war pulse is the fastest competitive read in the game.
The map is PlaneSim's situational-awareness screen, and it is honest about what it is: presentation only. Everything it draws comes from the same server reports as the rest of the game, so nothing on the map reveals more than the pages do. That includes, deliberately, demand volumes. What the map adds is speed of reading.
Your network, drawn
Scroll to zoom, drag to pan, click an airport to focus (everything not connected to it dims; Esc exits). Your routes render as great-circle arcs. Width scales with weekly frequency and color with load factor: healthy teal, thinning toward amber below roughly two-thirds full. An underperforming route therefore announces itself before you open a single report. Your home airport glows distinctly, served airports light up, and more airports appear as you zoom in.
Three lenses
Network is the default: your own network at full brightness, with any rival overlays you have switched on rendered in their own hue.
Contest is the competitive read. City pairs where multiple carriers overlap draw as dashed amber hazard lines, and the more carriers on a pair, the heavier the line. A pair in a live fare war pulses. Your own network stays visible but ambient. When you want to know where the market is currently fighting, this is the lens.
Demand draws ghost arcs from your airports to markets nobody serves yet. True to the game's fog philosophy, an arc tells you where an unserved market is and nothing more: no passenger count, and no character either. To learn what a market is like you open the airport and read its top O&D table, or take the pair to market analysis. The lens locates opportunity and refuses to size it.
Two layers
Flights puts live aircraft on their arcs, moving on the game clock. Your planes are bright; another carrier's appear only while its overlay is on, in that carrier's hue. Delayed aircraft turn amber, so a bad afternoon is visible from a continent away.
Night sweeps the day/night terminator across the map in real game time, and every curfewed airport wears an amber lock ring while it sleeps. If you are timing a long-haul arrival, a glance at the rings replaces arithmetic.
The rival rail
Every carrier with routes appears in the panel on the left, ordered by relationship: your alliance first, then partners (interline, codeshare or joint venture), then everyone else. Alliance and partner overlays are on by default, the rest off, and your toggles are remembered per world. Each row shows the carrier's hue, its route count and a relationship chip. AI carriers also show their executive's name; hover for the agenda. It is a small thing, but knowing what the rival across your hub says it wants changes how you read its next route.
What a rival's overlay actually tells you
Switch a rival on and you get its routes in its hue and its aircraft moving on the Flights layer. Cross-reference with the Contest lens and you can see where its network overlaps yours and how crowded each contested pair is, plus the pulse when a fare war goes live. What you do not get is its loads or the market's size. Fog applies on the map exactly as it applies everywhere else; the map shows where carriers fly and where the fighting is, and leaves the sizing to the tools that earn it.
Clicking things
Click a route of yours for its weekly frequency and load factor, with one-tap jumps to Scheduling and to the market view for that pair. Click an airport for its card and a link to the full airport page, with its facts, markets and your station footprint.
Every world's map works this way. Pick a world at play.theplanesim.com, switch a rival's overlay on, and watch the Contest lens for a while before your next route decision. The map will not size the opportunity for you, but it is very good at telling you where to look.