Updating navigation data (*.dat files)

[Johan G]

Split off from the topic Swiss001 YouTube video about FlightGear.

The only problems that i see with flight gear is advance and easy to install navigation database and graphic eye candy (this is not a big problem)

That i have early say in this topic one of the current problems in flight gear is that we have not a good method to update for updating navigation data (VOR,NDB,ILS,Waypoint,airways,sid,star,etc).
This is not a big problem for academic research.
The best way that i think as a first step is that we gift the user the option to add 3th party navigation data to $FG_HOME/navdata
After that we can look in to a new format for advance navigation database that include things on route atc, holdings and MORA as an example.

[WoodSTokk]

That i have early say in this topic one of the current problems in flight gear is that we have not a good method to update for updating navigation data (VOR,NDB,ILS,Waypoint,airways,sid,star,etc).

We have that allready.
NDB, VOR, DME, LOC and GS goes to:

Code: Select all

$YourLocalScenery/NavData/nav/your-nav.dat

Fixes goes to:

Code: Select all

$YourLocalScenery/NavData/fix/your-fixes.dat

SIDs and STARs goes to:

Code: Select all

$YourLocalScenery/Airports/I/C/A/ICAO.procedures.xml

[www2]

We have that allready.
NDB, VOR, DME, LOC and GS goes to:

Code: Select all

$YourLocalScenery/NavData/nav/your-nav.dat

Fixes goes to:

Code: Select all

$YourLocalScenery/NavData/fix/your-fixes.dat

I can nothing see in the code about other locations for fixes.dat and nav.dat than $FG_ROOT/Navaids/*.dat.gz

[wkitty42]

I can nothing see in the code about other locations for fixes.dat and nav.dat than $FG_ROOT/Navaids/*.dat.gz

because they can be named anything when they are placed in NavData in the proper sub-directory... they also need the proper format for the file type they are...

the only thing not possible, that i'm aware of, is deleting something... we can add and override but we cannot delete using the NavData method...

[V12]

We have that allready.
NDB, VOR, DME, LOC and GS goes to:

Code: Select all

$YourLocalScenery/NavData/nav/your-nav.dat

Fixes goes to:

Code: Select all

$YourLocalScenery/NavData/fix/your-fixes.dat

SIDs and STARs goes to:

Code: Select all

$YourLocalScenery/Airports/I/C/A/ICAO.procedures.xml

It is not universal solution, because doesn't work for airways
I always rewrote files in $FG_ROOT/Navaids/

[wkitty42]

I always rewrote files in $FG_ROOT/Navaids/

and that pollutes your install... those mods could be lost during an update because of this... if you place them in a custom directory outside the install, you won't lose them...

[WoodSTokk]

wkitty is right. And yes, it does not work with awy.dat in custom scenery directory.
I think we have allready a discussion about that. It has to do with the nav.dat or fix.dat.
If the awy.dat uses navaids or fixes that are not in the files, it comes to problems.
IMHO the user should be aware of that and if the user use a newer awy.dat file, he/she should also make sure that the nav.dat and fix.dat is compatible.

Thats a drawback of big files that include all items around the world.
It is also possible to make files for every airport that includes only navaids related to this field.
The advantage will be, that if someone update a airport, the dev make sure that the corresponding ICAO.nav.dat and ICAO.fix.dat are also updated.
This way, we can also delete some navaids or fixes (what we can not do actually as wkitty pointed out).
But this has the disadvantage of thousands of small files.