Setting star in FMC causes weird display issues in Xplane

[cessna729]

Cessna, you're a hero.

Give yourself a pat on the back because I couldn't have figured it out if you hadn't spotted "BIG" being "bogus".

this may also explain why I've been having problems writing the "Missing Aspen (KASE) approaches, as I'd just been using other existing Navigraph approaches as templates (just checked 1 of the template approaches I used.....you guessed it "multiple same name waypoints"!!!).

Thanks for your & joaga's help.

Update: Just done a quick check of the EGLL.xml Navigraph Cycle 1202 file and have found possible "multiple same name AppTr_Waypoint in App_Transition's". The ILS27R possible error in the BIG App_Transition's, same as found in ILS27L!!

I suspect they can get away with "same name" but not "same name, same type". So the BIG App_Transition will need the AppTr_Waypoint's re-named. I wonder how many more "ERRORS" like this are out there?

cessna729.

Edited May 17, 2012 by cessna729

[Emalice]

So the BIG App_Transition will need the AppTr_Waypoint's re-named. I wonder how many more "ERRORS" like this are out there?

cessna729.

Well, that is probably a very good point, and that's when input from the CRJ staff will be appreciated :

1) either the nav_data is wrong, all points should have clearly distinct names, and there is nothing to do but rename them, or ask for a corrected nav_data

2) or identical names is perfectly acceptable, and the FMC should be able to read them properly.

In the latter case, then I guess we should wait for Philipp to tell us if the FMC can be modified to become robust to identical names (i suppose it should check for waypoint name AND waypoint ID). If the modifications is easy, then it is probably better to wait for it than to start renaming waypoints in the whole nav database.

T.

[cessna729]

If the modifications is easy, then it is probably better to wait for it than to start renaming waypoints in the whole nav database.

I think you right, re-naming a few is no problem, but I've a feeling this may be more wide-spread , and as soon as you update the Navigraph data "our quick fixes will be gone". Any who... Just flew the ILS 27L with the (non radar vectored BIG Transition, yes the one we fixed!!) and it went quite well, even maintaining the published approach speeds the CRJ-200 turns much tighter with it puting in the max 25 deg bank on the first go, but it did not too bad for a 1st attempt (shown on the left). 2nd attempt is next with 1/2 bank set and compare that with the published Transition, not bad for the Birthday girl (The CRJ-200 that is!).

Note I switched from the Autopilot NAV source from FMS to NAV1 at ILL10 as the FMS wanted to take me to land on the main terminal buildings for some strange reason??

cessna729.

Edited May 17, 2012 by cessna729

[philipp]

What I don't understand here is how people have been able to fly our birthday child for one year now with this navdata, and now all of a sudden you discover it doesn't work any more. Last time I checked, software didn't rust on your harddrive. I have been unable to produce "stutters" by renaming waypoints on any of my Windows, Mac and Linux test machines. With several thousands of people flying the CRJ in and out of airports all over the world now I wonder what possible configuration causes you experiencing the stutters, and even more weird, make them go away by renaming waypoints.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not implying I don't believe you experience a problem. I only wonder what configuration causes you to have problems right now and a few thousand other people not during the last year.

I agree that relying on the stripped down navdata format like the Level-D-XML-Format we use is not optimal, as it doesn't give us all the data available for real-world systems. However, the choice was reasonable when initially designing the CRJ Avionics two years ago. Right now I am working with a partner from real world aviation to make it possible to use aviation industry-grade data for home users. It's not an easy task, not only because of technical problems, but because of huge legal concerns. I can't promise anything right now, but I am in negotiations with partners at Navigraph, Aerosoft and Lufthansa Systems to find a solution for getting industry-grade data that is affordable to home users. I don't promise we will succeed, nor do I give a timeframe for that. If we do, the CRJ will become the first aircraft ever to confuse users by having changed its navdata format three times during its lifetime

Philipp

Edited May 18, 2012 by philipp

[cessna729]

What I don't understand here is how people have been able to fly our birthday child for one year now with this navdata, and now all of a sudden you discover it doesn't work any more.

Never said that! though she still does have a few problems with Holding

I have been unable to produce "stutters" by renaming waypoints on any of my Windows, Mac and Linux test machines. .With several thousands of people flying the CRJ in and out of airports all over the world now I wonder what possible configuration causes you experiencing the stutters, and even more weird, make them go away by renaming waypoints.

The dips in fps that I have recorded, (are IMHO caused by the FMS's calculation of "conditional waypoints and dealing with "suss Navigraph data at the same time), have never given me problems on my Windows 7 64bit machine, but I suspect that other users on less spec'd hardware or much more likely who are running other programs/background proceses are experencing "stutters", which detract from their enjoyment of flying such a fantastic aircraft.

I agree that relying on the stripped down navdata format like the Level-D-XML-Format we use is not optimal, as it doesn't give us all the data available for real-world systems. However, the choice was reasonable when initially designing the CRJ Avionics two years ago. Right now I am working with a partner from real world aviation to make it possible to use aviation industry-grade data for home users. ..... that is affordable to home users.

Sign me up, I'd go for it!!

I don't promise we will succeed, nor do I give a timeframe for that.

Come off it. Given what you and Javiar have achieved with the CJR-200 in the last year, I'd put money on it.

Any who.. thanks for the best X-plane, Plane going..

cessna729.

[joga]

and surprise, surprise, the LJLJ issue is because of the same problem... waypoint LBL exists twice in SID BERT1W (renaming them to LBL1 & LBL2 did the trick)

heres the SID

<Sid Name="BERT1W" Runways="30">

<Sid_Waypoint ID="1">

<Name>LBL</Name>

<Type>DmeIntc</Type>

<Latitude>46.238500</Latitude>

<Longitude>14.428553</Longitude>

<Speed>0</Speed>

<Altitude>1673</Altitude>

<AltitudeCons>0</AltitudeCons>

<AltitudeRestriction>above</AltitudeRestriction>

<Hdg_Crs>0</Hdg_Crs>

<Hdg_Crs_value>304</Hdg_Crs_value>

<Flytype>Fly-by</Flytype>

<BankLimit>25</BankLimit>

<DMEtoIntercept>0.5</DMEtoIntercept>

<Sp_Turn>Auto</Sp_Turn>

</Sid_Waypoint>

<Sid_Waypoint ID="2">

<Name>(1800)</Name>

<Type>ConstHdgtoAlt</Type>

<Latitude>0.000000</Latitude>

<Longitude>0.000000</Longitude>

<Speed>0</Speed>

<Altitude>1800</Altitude>

<AltitudeCons>0</AltitudeCons>

<AltitudeRestriction>above</AltitudeRestriction>

<Hdg_Crs>0</Hdg_Crs>

<Hdg_Crs_value>304</Hdg_Crs_value>

<Flytype>Fly-by</Flytype>

<BankLimit>25</BankLimit>

<Sp_Turn>Auto</Sp_Turn>

</Sid_Waypoint>

<Sid_Waypoint ID="3">

<Name>(INTC)</Name>

<Type>Intc</Type>

<Latitude>46.238500</Latitude>

<Longitude>14.428553</Longitude>

<Speed>210</Speed>

<Altitude>0</Altitude>

<AltitudeCons>0</AltitudeCons>

<AltitudeRestriction>at</AltitudeRestriction>

<Hdg_Crs>1</Hdg_Crs>

<Hdg_Crs_value>161</Hdg_Crs_value>

<Flytype>Fly-by</Flytype>

<BankLimit>25</BankLimit>

<RadialtoIntercept>191</RadialtoIntercept>

<Sp_Turn>Left</Sp_Turn>

</Sid_Waypoint>

<Sid_Waypoint ID="4">

<Name>LBL</Name>

<Type>DmeIntc</Type>

<Latitude>46.238500</Latitude>

<Longitude>14.428553</Longitude>

<Speed>0</Speed>

<Altitude>6000</Altitude>

<AltitudeCons>0</AltitudeCons>

<AltitudeRestriction>above</AltitudeRestriction>

<Hdg_Crs>0</Hdg_Crs>

<Hdg_Crs_value>191</Hdg_Crs_value>

<Flytype>Fly-by</Flytype>

<BankLimit>25</BankLimit>

<DMEtoIntercept>11.0</DMEtoIntercept>

<Sp_Turn>Auto</Sp_Turn>

</Sid_Waypoint>

<Sid_Waypoint ID="5">

<Name>D250C</Name>

<Type>Normal</Type>

<Latitude>46.071442</Latitude>

<Longitude>14.719011</Longitude>

<Speed>0</Speed>

<Altitude>9500</Altitude>

<AltitudeCons>0</AltitudeCons>

<AltitudeRestriction>above</AltitudeRestriction>

<Flytype>Fly-by</Flytype>

<BankLimit>25</BankLimit>

<Sp_Turn>Left</Sp_Turn>

</Sid_Waypoint>

<Sid_Waypoint ID="6">

<Name>BERTA</Name>

<Type>Normal</Type>

<Latitude>46.449708</Latitude>

<Longitude>14.625236</Longitude>

<Speed>0</Speed>

<Altitude>0</Altitude>

<AltitudeCons>0</AltitudeCons>

<AltitudeRestriction>at</AltitudeRestriction>

<Flytype>Fly-by</Flytype>

<BankLimit>25</BankLimit>

<Sp_Turn>Auto</Sp_Turn>

</Sid_Waypoint>

</Sid>

and here is the shot of the working departure...

cessna729 thank you very much for your support!

so the solution is not by renaming waypoints, its making their names "unique" which makes the difference... philipp, maybe you should take a closer look on this issue

please note i've changed nothing with my configuration except the two waypoint-names.

cheers, jo

EDIT: may i ask how the xml is parsed? maybe some microsoft-xml-component responsible? ms-patchdays/windows-updates are coming and going...

Edited May 18, 2012 by joga

[cessna729]

and surprise, surprise, the LJLJ issue is because of the same problem... waypoint LBL exists twice in SID BERT1W (renaming them to LBL1 & LBL2 did the trick)

Hi joga, Yes it appears that if the Navigraph data has 2 or more Waypoint's of the same type within the same sub-section of the SID, STAR, Transition or Approach you "may" encounter a problem. As you noticed the names need to be "unique".

I just modified all the offending BIG's in the Bigin Hill Transition to be "unique" and meaningful. eg BIG_R279 for "cross the 279deg radial of the BIG VOR", BIG_R295 for "crossing the 295deg radial" ect. but they could probably be almost anything as long as they are "unique".

Now I'll leave you all in peace, and return to trying to get my missing (banned/Special) KASE approaches working. 8-)

cessna729

Edited May 18, 2012 by cessna729

[Emalice]

What I don't understand here is how people have been able to fly our birthday child for one year now with this navdata, and now all of a sudden you discover it doesn't work any more...

Philipp

Hi Philipp.

Well, it's a matter of statistics I suppose. Take a population of CRJ users, remove all those that use computers that can handle the "identical waypoint names error" without visible adverse effects, then remove all those that never fly to London or Berlin, or any other place where that problem may arise, then remove all those that fly to those destinations not using the incriminated procedures, or no procedures at all, that leaves you with a fairly small sample, right ? And still, from those who encounter the bug, you can only count on an even smaller sample that will recognize it as a bug and report it to support. And even after that, it took some thought process, and help from several people, to locate the probable cause of the malfunction.

But that is not the most relevant question here, I guess. The fact is, we identified a malfunction in the CRJ, so the question is : what will the CRJ team answer to that problem be ?

I really like the idea of being able to use industry grade nav_data at some point, and I totally support the incentive, but this is very long term.

On the short term, I have the feeling that correcting the current problem is only a matter of a few extra lines of code to have the FMC double-check waypoint identity by using the ID number contained in one of the tags (but again, I never coded in C, so I may be very wrong here).

I am not being passive-aggressive here, I just really want to know if the problem can be solved easily enough so that you can release a small patch, at some point in the near future, or if I will have to go through thousands of lines of XML to manually edit all procedures with identical waypoint names.

I really appreciate flying the CRJ, please help me enjoy it even more.

Thank you.

Tristan.

[philipp]

what will the CRJ team answer to that problem be ?

I have a small fix for that on my list of things to include in the 64-bit version, that will be released when the development kits for 64bit X-Plane are available.

The 64bit version will be a free update for all CRJ customers.

Philipp

Edited May 21, 2012 by philipp

[Emalice]

I have a small fix for that on my list of things to include in the 64-bit version, that will be released when the development kits for 64bit X-Plane are available.

Ok, wonderful. Now I'll go over to xplane.org and bug Austin about the release date for that kit .

Cheers,

Tristan.

[philipp]

Good luck with that

[Emalice]

I have a small fix for that on my list of things to include in the 64-bit version, that will be released when the development kits for 64bit X-Plane are available.

The 64bit version will be a free update for all CRJ customers.

Philipp

 

Hi Philipp.

 

So, I am currently patiently waiting for the release of CRJ200 64bit from x-pilot. I'm just wondering if that fix you mentionned for the problem discused in this thread will be incorporated in the upcoming version ?

 

Thank you,

Tristan.