Flight Path Line Smoothing Issues

Question

Greetings,

I have a data set involving flight paths, but when I get the data into ArcGIS Pro 3.1.0, I can only get really jagged, scrunkly lines due to the various inaccuracies of the sensor.  I have tried various smoothing tools, but I can't get any of them to actually work.  I put in the lines, and it is only giving me the exact same output as the input, without any changes.  Is there any way I can generate lines that give me a more generalized, essentially summarized line?  Ideally, I would be able to just create a spline to smooth the line, but all the spline tools I am able to find are specifically for rasters.

ChristopherRudy · Answer

Yes, I have.  I've looked at pretty much everything that mentions "lines" and "smoothing".  I managed to get it to work, sort of.  I am going from a series of points, to a series of line segments, to a single line, and that single line is able to be smoothed.  However, taking it from the line segments to the single line removes all time data, which is highly important.

I assume that the reason why I can't get the line smoothing to work is because it is trying to smooth each segment individually, rather than all of the segments as a whole.  So now I need a way of smoothing the segments as a whole, or keeping the time data for the single line.  I have also tried the Time Series Smoothing, checking the available pages on it, and I still can't get a smooth line that maintains its time data.

Essentially what I am looking for is a way of taking low quality/fidelity tracking data and approximate the actual path as the object moves through space.  The only thing I know is accurate is the time of the pings, latitude, longitude, and altitude are all mostly accurate, but occasionally it will give bad fidelity, giving what are basically clouds of points in the general area.  As things stand, I can only get straight lines going between each point, giving me extremely jagged paths.

ThomasHoman · Answer

Have you tried https://pro.arcgis.com/en/pro-app/latest/tool-reference/cartography/smooth-line.htm