Map of airports with buildings in terrasync

[KL-666]

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New: Generated map (complete)
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Here is a map generated out of shape files from the mapserver. This map should contain all airports with buildings in terrasync. The image in an airport's popup is the random object that caused the airport to be included. I took an effort to eliminate airports with only non-building objects. I.e Airports with only lamp posts and airports with only a static aircraft planted there.

http://iveze.nl/fgmap

About the navaid grouping logic:

Diamond = ILS
Square = VOR
Star = NDB
Circle = no navaid

The indication is for the highest available type of navaid. You may also find a VOR on an airport when ILS is indicated.

Navaids must be on the airports itself to count. It can happen that an airport is a circle (no navaid). But on mpmap you can find a VOR or NDB nearby.

Some airports have a localizer but no glide slope. These airports are marked as VOR, because there is practically only directional (and possibly DME) information available.

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Old: Manual map (incomplete)
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Lately i started working on a map of airports with buildings in terrasync. I overfly every airport, and if there are buildings, i land there and add it to the map. First objective was to get all builtup airports in Iberia mapped for the event: The Festival of Flightgear-1&2 Nov, 2014 http://forum.flightgear.org/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=22345.

In the mean time i did also surrounding countries: like France and Italy, to facilitate people who want to fly to Iberia with interesting airports underway.

I use colours to indicate reasonable size of aircraft, and shape for navaids available.

Colours:
- Green: Large jets (747)
- Yellow: Medium jets (737)
- Red: General Aviation

Shapes:
- Diamond: ILS (VOR, NDB)
- Square: VOR (NDB)
- Star: NDB
- Circle: No navaids on the airport

The criteria for aircraft size are:
- rw length
- taxiway width
- apron size

Often one can land rw-wise a size bigger than i indicate, but then narrow taxiways or apron size will get you in trouble.

Thus far the countries covered are:

Europe: Map at https://mapsengine.google.com/map/edit?mid=zdb13E5Je0VM.kNJ48lGf7QMw
- Iberia 47 airports
- France 35 airports
- Germany 30 airports
- Italy 12 airports
- Netherlands 7 airports
- Switzerland 2 airports
- Austria 1 airport
- Luxemburg 1 airport
- Belgium 0 airports

America: Map at https://mapsengine.google.com/map/edit?mid=zdb13E5Je0VM.kBoOp_aF1DXs
- Brazil 23 airports

If anyone pushes new airports into terrasync in the covered countries, please let me know (PM), so i can add the airport to the map.

Kind regards, Vincent

[Johan G]

Nicely done. With an image of each airport as well.

[Tiico]

Hey! What a wonderful map, thanks:) By the way, is it any possible to have terrasyncs buildings in downloaded scenery? My computer is very slow when i use terrasync, so i have to use downloaded world scenery but it would be great to have the buildings too:/

[Johan G]

...is it any possible to have terrasyncs buildings in downloaded scenery?

Not out of the box, unless you are a coding wizard.

My computer is very slow when i use terrasync, so i have to use downloaded world scenery but it would be great to have the buildings too:/

You could use a scenery manager like TerraMaster and turn off TerraSync while flying. I have to do that myself due to performance issues.

[Tiico]

All right, i`ll try and thanks u bro:)!

[KL-666]

Glad to hear that someone besides me finds the map handy

Outside terrasync i do not know how to get scenery (except custom), so i can not be of much help there and hope the terramaster solution works.

In the mean time I have covered Switzerland and Austria too. That resulted in just 3 extra airports. I have added these countries to the list in the first post.

Kind regards, Vincent

[KL-666]

Covered Germany and the Benelux countries now. If i missed anything or there is a new airport, let me know

Kind regards, Vincent

[Hooray]

I am wondering if anybody has considered looking at the base package side of things to create such a map procedurally ? Once we know what to look for, we could probably create such a map procedurally using ~30 lines of Nasal in a MapStructure layer - without people having to actually fly to each airport and manually maintain such a list

[elgaton]

Also, I wonder if the Maps MediaWiki extension could be added to the wiki? That, combined with a procedural map creation, could enable us to keep the Developed Airports wiki page constantly updated. A bit of human work would still be needed to add some comments to each airfield, though.

@KL-666: thanks for the wonderful job!

[statto]

Also, I wonder if the Maps MediaWiki extension could be added to the wiki? That, combined with a procedural map creation, could enable us to keep the Developed Airports wiki page constantly updated. A bit of human work would still be needed to add some comments to each airfield, though.

@KL-666: thanks for the wonderful job!

Easy.

Loose way is to figure out if there are any static models placed within "x" meters of the centroid of the airport, which is just one somewhat giant join.

Slightly more expensive way is to generate a buffer of "x" meters around the runway and taxiway layers and if a static module intersects the buffer for an airport, then you have a hit.

Could set this as a cron job on a server to run once a day or week to refresh a layer for OpenLayers

Also, must be static and not shared to ignore ILSes and navaids, so airports populated with shared models only would be missed unless the navaids are flagged or manually removed from the data set.

[f-ojac]

ILS and navaids normally have a special tag in PostGIS to mark them as navaid, so it's possible to select all shared and static objects for a given radius around the position of an airport.

[KL-666]

Hooray wrote:
I am wondering if anybody has considered looking at the base package side of things to create such a map procedurally ?

Yes sure i have considered that. Tell me how to contact that database, and i can take it from there. But does anyone say you can contact that database via some webinterface, or you must download the the database from some place? No, only the typical cryptolanguage of fg devs occurs: Statto: "Easy... bla... bla...", F-ojac: "In the PostGis data is the info...". Great, but i think no-one will actually get to the database, unless there is a clear statement about how to get at it. I for sure will not scower the internet for days for something someone can tell me in a minute.

I am sorry to use you guys as example, it is not meant personally. But i think generally there should be worked on more effective communication for fg guys, so that the info that is given matches the the knowledge of the asker. Else the asker comes back for more detail over and over again. Which is unnecessary extra work.

Kind regards, Vincent

[statto]

Except the database is free

Visit here:
http://mapserver.flightgear.org/shpdl/

You're looking to download some of the apt_ files and also the fgs_object file from the drop down box on the left panel.

Unzip them and load them up in QGIS. From here you need basic GIS knowledge, which is where I think I lost you last time.

You should be able to join the layers by distance - though I would personally run a few hundred meter buffer on the airport file first and then intersect the object layer to the airport layer (not technically necessary). Then, you figure out for each airport polygon whether or not there's an object within its boundaries... These are all vector layers, so these functions would be under the vector menu. You're running functions on your data set.

If you do this worldwide, it's likely to take some time.

[f-ojac]

And all the objects we have in FG, static, shared, etc are stored in a PostGIS database which is accessible right here: http://scenemodels.flightgear.org/objects.php
(wait a few hours, as a maintenance is making it offline right now).
When it'll be back online, you can also browse directly http://mapserver.flightgear.org/loc.php?icao=LFRB for instance and you'll be able to see all the scenery objects located around, whether shared, static or navaids.

[KL-666]

Hi Guys,

Thanks for the good info for the shape files. I looked at them, and i think i can get them into a database to do some some calculations and put the airports on a map.

My only worry is that the owner of the the database does not like huge downloads. He allows 12x12 degrees downloads at one time. So if i hit him with many calls for some five layers in 12x12, he might get mad at me. Well, we'll see....

In the mean time i overflew Brazil and modified the first post accordingly. It is btw not a punishment to discover unknown airports and land there. This game is about flying, is it not?

Kind regards, Vincent