Navigraph

[OlaHaldor]

OK, this is very unlike me. I've spent hundreds of dollars on simulators and add-ons, but I've never really been into flying by charts, until now. The Dash has changed me somehow.  

I've downloaded charts for any norwegian airport I could find on Navigraph, all just for €10!

Thrilled and happy, I can't sit still. I just need to.. get up.. in the air..

[Nova]

Then hopefully you downloaded the PSS_nativ.zip too, or you won't have fun with them.

The nav database is totaly outdated that ships with X-Plane.

Sadly, i haven't been successfull to update he VOR/NDBs etc. because of the strange

format that is used with seperate GS, ILS and VOR parts with all different stats.

Only the fixes are up to date, and nav frequencies are being edited when i find wrong ones.

[OlaHaldor]

PSS_nativ? What's that?

When I updated from Navigraph I have to buy a special token for the AirTrack app, so I didn't really download a file - I got kind of a serial number I put in a "Airac update" field and it installed the new Airac for me.

[Nova]

Nice. Didn't know that your iPad app stores the data.

Normaly you have to convert the data to get it into X-Plane.

While the fix format is simple, the others are just painfull.

I really don't know, why they still have no X-Plane data...

And they won't even create one this year...  >

[skyfox]

Hi,

Just to add some lines to the conversation

Navigraph produces high quality up-to-date FMS data for different flight sim add-ons and plane formats, but they  are all for MS FS 2004 / X. They release an AIRAC cycle every 28 days much like in the real world where you can get them from Jeppesen or another company and they try to incorporate as many updates as possible.

But in general you don't really need the latest of latest AIRACs all the time for simulation unless you are seriously flying online at VATSIM or IVAO and you want to have an up-to-date database every day of the month so that if a controller tells you to go direct to a waypoint you can follow it. A reasonably recent AIRAC is generally enough for me with an update once in a while, but this is a matter of personal choice.

X-Plane comes with the excellent data compiled by Robin Peel and freely available at http://data.x-plane.com/

It is really good considering it covers the whole world, is totally free and is all maintained on a voluntary basis based on feedback given by users. So truth be told, Robin and his contributors deserve all the credit!

The only drawback with it is when flying outside of the US, especially in Europe, where the X-Plane's data is not so up-to-date, simply because it is very difficult for someone by themselves to keep up with all the updates that happen in each and every country and that are published by each country's authorities. This is where Navigraph comes into being by providing this as a paid service.

PSS_Native is one of the formats in which you can get Navigraph data for the set of PSS MS aircrafts I believe. The good thing about it is the "native" bit which means that instead of coming in an EXE it comes in raw text files which you can process, and potentially convert to X-Plane format.

There are many formats in their page. Also, as far as I know, but I'm not absolutely sure and this might have changed since I last tried, once you purchase one AIRAC cycle which costs you 20 credits, you can download the other formats of the same cycle for free. So if you purchased AirTrack's I believe you can download the PSS set for free.

On getting X-Plane data:

Javier's UFMC used to come with a set of scripts to convert PSS_Native text files to X-Plane format. Not sure how well it works as I never tested it.

Apparently the new CRJ-200 will come with the possibility of loading Navigraph data too, although I don't know it it will provide a script to produce X-Plane format data or have its own format. We'll soon discover

And AirTrack, the iPad App, which I develop  ;D, comes with X-Plane's data and a free demo dataset of the Navigraph's data (1006) and you can then decide to upgrade or not on a 28 day cycle basis. In this case we get the raw data from Navigraph and process it into AirTrack's own binary format which is then downloaded to the app once you enter the code, which is verified against the Navigraph's website.

This format would however hardly be useful for X-Plane as it is a highly compact non-text / binary based format since we need to compact it as much as possible in order to make it run on 128MB RAM old iPhones and iPods.

---

Creating the VOR, NDB, LOC, GS, .... and FIX files for X-Plane (earth_nav.dat and earth_fix.dat) might be difficult from the PSS as this format doesn't always include all bits of information required by X-Plane (just looking at it, VOR elevation for instance). But I just realized that I could produce these files easily as I already process them for AirTrack, so I'll ask the Navigraph folk if they're interested in them.

AFAICS, creating the Airport data however would be almost impossible as the X-Plane's airport data file contains all the runways and taxiways which the Navigraph's doesn't, and it gets overwritten by custom sceneries.

Still, having the navigation part for the FMC is what it is all about, so it could be at least possible. I'll ask them

just my two cents, sorry for the long post,

joao 

[Nova]

Do you know, if those elevation data is found in any of these airacs?

I wrote a php function, that reads the fix.dat and converts it into the X-Plane format.

For nearly 190k fixes, it doesn't even need a minute.

I found a script that uses perl to get the fix and nav data right, but i wasn't able to get

perl to work. It wasn't a problem on the mac, back when i had one. However, the script

was ridiculously slow. Took me more than an hour to get this done. But that was with

airac 0902.

Haven't been flying a year or more until 3 weeks ago.

When i had to reinstall XP after i upgraded the hardware (just moving the folder fucked

something up, x738 A/P wasn't working, no matter what) i had the standard data.

So i gave the Robin Peels' data a try. Out of 7 waypoints, only 2 existed (flying mostly

in germany on VATSIM) on a short 90NM flight. Not to mention what happend when i loaded

an old flightplan that used about 40 waypoints. Even my old airac was now way too old,

3 missing waypoints and wrong ils frequencies.

Since i don't have a fmc that uses airways, i don't care about them. The other function

i wrote, searches and changes the ils, vor,... frequencies. Although their positions may

be wrong (but they rarely change anyways, if ever) i have the right frequencies again.

But having REAL data for everthing would be great! So hopefully your request/assistance

on that matter will be successful.

[skyfox]

Do you know, if those elevation data is found in any of these airacs?

...

But having REAL data for everthing would be great! So hopefully your request/assistance

on that matter will be successful.

I don't know if the extra information like elevation, navaid type (which determines the range), etc ... is available in any of the other formats but it is a matter or checking one by one

But it is definitely  available in the source from which they are processed (which is ARINC424-18) because I'm processing them for AirTrack. What happens is that each plane format requires only certain data so they ignore the other fields when generating the files.

Anyway, I've asked them if they were interested in having the files formatted for X-Plane, will keep you posted when I have some news

[dpny]

PSS_nativ? What's that?

When I updated from Navigraph I have to buy a special token for the AirTrack app, so I didn't really download a file - I got kind of a serial number I put in a "Airac update" field and it installed the new Airac for me.

PSS Native (and FS Navigator) are the formats the UFMC uses.

[crs]

But it is definitely  available in the source from which they are processed (which is ARINC424-18) because I'm processing them for AirTrack. What happens is that each plane format requires only certain data so they ignore the other fields when generating the files.

Hi,

Is that source data available for regular subscribers? If so, writing a parser should not be difficult. Even as you said - you already have a 'reader' part done. It is just output format being different. As I said, it should be fairly easy - the most time would have to be put into investigating file formats unless they are documented somewhere (source and XP's format).

EDIT:

1105 airac data will come with native 'jrollon format' as it was stated by Javier in other post.

So CRJ200 will be able to utilize newest data.

At the moment another of the utils that uses airac is UFMC which is shipped with converter - as stated above - which works just fine.

But, I am not sure whether it updates that what can be seen on XP map and what XP uses. All what I can see it allows you to do is to update both earth_awy.dat and earth_fix.dat. Program that does it is closed source but just by comparing input and output files coding little converter should not be difficult. Would anyone be interested in that?

Kamil

[Nova]

The file format for XP8/9 are available at http://data.x-plane.com/designers.html#Formats

[skyfox]

I'm afraid we are out of luck.

Navigraph are not too keen on having their data processed by others so no can do

The source is not available to regular subscribers either.

We'll have to wait for them to officially support X-Plane one day.

The best shot one has would be to buy/download one of the existing native formats and try to reprocess them. However, doing so breaks the license agreement so I wouldn't recommend doing it either. In the cycle_info file that comes with a PSS cycle it says:

...

This data may not be used, recompiled, interpreted or distributed for any purpose without the written consent of Navigraph.

...

So we would need to look for another source of data, perhaps country by country in Europe, in order to get a more up-to-date database for X-Plane in these countries.

[crs]

I'm afraid we are out of luck.

Navigraph are not too keen on having their data processed by others so no can do

The source is not available to regular subscribers either.

We'll have to wait for them to officially support X-Plane one day.

And how does this look? Are there any chances of having XP format included in releases any time soon? If not, (if you know) what is the problem with delivering XP format as well?

Thanks for an update anyway!

Kind regards,

Kamil

[skyfox]

I have no idea...

I just asked them if I could parse the data in X-Plane format for them to distribute it and they said no

I don't know if they are thinking of releasing it on their own soon or not...