Announcing rfgfs, a flight planner R package

[thlytras]

Hello everyone,

I am pleased to announce rfgfs, a package for R that allows planning a flight between two airports, using the airport, airway, navaid and navfix data that ship with FlightGear. It also calculates magnetic declination using the same formula that FlightGear uses, and can plot the created flight plan in a kml file for viewing with Google Earth.

Creating this as an R package will raise a few eyebrows, I guess, but R is what I I am most familiar and spend most of my time with (I'm an epidemiologist). I wanted an easy solution to fly around in my Tu-154B, so R was the natural choice for me. Hopefully it can be useful to other people as well -not just the statisticians among us- since there are few flight planning solutions for FlightGear.

Please find it at GitHub: https://github.com/thlytras/rfgfs. Testing and feedback is very, very welcome, as are suggestions for new features to be included. Please create an issue at the GitHub repo, or post a forum message in this thread. Happy flight planning!

[Kabuki]

I was doing similar stuff using the Google Earth plugin and API, but put things on hold in favor of different interests. Now I've just learned that Google will no longer make its API available, so all that work goes in the trash. The most promising alternative is called "Cesium", and it's open source.

Just wondering if anybody has any experience with Cesium.

Much of my interest in flight overlaps with my interest in geography. Flying over terrain reveals things that are not as obvious on a map, and vice versa. One of the more trivial things I implemented was to give me Google Earth views of where I was flying, and it's pretty impressive to find yourself EXACTLY in the same place on a runway, in both flightgear, and on the GE view. It's also a snap to create flight director plans from a map.

[Hooray]

the OP should consider adding this to the wiki, maybe with a few screen shots or even a youtube video - the newsletter would be a good place for something like this (see my signature).

[Johan G]

The most promising alternative is called "Cesium", and it's open source.

Just wondering if anybody has any experience with Cesium.

While I have not tried it, I noticed I had an old bookmark to http://cesiumjs.org/. Apparently it is was started and is mainly developed by Analytical Graphics, Inc. (AGI), a giant in analysis and visualization of satellite operations etc.

[Kabuki]

I've only glanced at the site, but I downloaded a starter kit which includes a node.js server (node is awesome!) and a simple earth viewer page. One thing I like already is there is a larger variety of map types. It was a bit hard to get the lay of the land from up high in Google Earth, but the Cesium demo includes shaded relief and watercolor overlays -- along with more common map info such as names of rivers (GE was always frustrating me by not having labels for rivers).

What I would like to be able to do is overlay aviation charts. And it looks like I found it http://cesiumjs.org/demos/CloudAhoy.html <--- CHECK THIS OUT. AMAZING!

[Johan G]

That looks rather impressive.

[Mickhead23]

Greetings,
Tested this for a flight UKKK to UUDD. Is there an example of how the generated route can be adjusted? Such as dropping an NDB that may or may not exist today. I see there's a fixes parameter for planRoute but I'm not sure how to use it.
Also, is the arrival fork calculated?
Thanks

[thlytras]

Greetings,
Tested this for a flight UKKK to UUDD. Is there an example of how the generated route can be adjusted? Such as dropping an NDB that may or may not exist today. I see there's a fixes parameter for planRoute but I'm not sure how to use it.
Also, is the arrival fork calculated?
Thanks

Hi there,

I've just added a few examples in the help pages of the package, check it out from github, it should be much clearer now. Also I've added a new function updateRoute() (been thinking about it for some time, but your message gave me the final push to write it); now you can manipulate the data.frame created by planRoute(), for example by adding or removing rows. Then you pass it through updateRoute() and you get your updated flight plan.

The arrival fork is not directly shown, but it should be trivial to calculate it based on the output of planRoute() and planNVU(). If I understand correctly (anyone feel free to correct me), it is magnetic declination at arrival minus magnetic declination at departure minus azimuth change. Therefore if you run planNVU() with init.mag=TRUE then your fork (at ANY point, not just at arrival) should be column Da minus column magdecl.

(Personally I don't use the fork, just before final approach I switch off NVU, adjust the HSI to magnetic and fly the STAR based on the available navaids).

Best,
Theodore

[Mickhead23]

Thank you, this is quite helpful for constructing an optimal route for the Tupolev 154. With the new function added, I'll use the tools for other models, as well. Cheers.