What tool would you use to directly visualize the paths taken by airplanes over time in ArcGIS?

The Tracking Layer from the Tracking Analyst extension is specifically designed to handle dynamic data, such as the movements of airplanes over time. This tool allows users to visualize, analyze, and interactively examine the paths taken by moving objects, leveraging tracking data that changes over time. The Tracking Analyst extension provides functionalities that enable the visualization of this type of temporal data, facilitating a clear representation of movement paths, speed variations, and other temporal dynamics in an intuitive manner.

The other choices offer alternative visualization methods, but they do not directly provide the capabilities needed for real-time or dynamic tracking. For instance, a time-enabled feature layer with a Time Slider can visualize changes over time but lacks the specific tracking functionalities available through the Tracking Analyst. Creating an animated film of airplane paths might provide a visual representation, but it would be a static depiction rather than an interactive visualization. Finally, data frame animation techniques are also less suited for real-time tracking as they primarily focus on presenting visualizations in a chronological manner without the interactivity or analytical tools tailored for tracking moving objects.

In summary, the Tracking Layer from the Tracking Analyst is the most appropriate tool for directly visualizing the paths taken by airplanes over time, as it is designed to manage and represent the complexities of dynamic geographical phenomena