Also possible but I want to show that we have data, just that it’s outdated.
Then just write “Outdated”?
achimha wrote:
I’ve implemented the suggestion, putting METARs older than 3h and TAFs older than 25h in italic and inside parentheses.
Why does autorouter need so much time to generate the plates files?
I mean when I have my flight planned and I click on Airport plates.. → choose an airport → View as shown on the screenshot.
It sometimes takes > 5 minutes for one airport and sometimes I even have the feeling that is has frozen. And then again, at other times, it is pretty fast, just several seconds.
The plates come as individual PDF files, an airport like Zurich has a hundred files or more. Our software combines these individual files into one large PDF file with a table of contents. Unfortunately that is a very costly operation. It is also not 100% reliable because there is no PDF manipulation software out there that really works reliably. We use Ghostscript in its latest version which is the best one according to our tests.
One improvement we’ve had in mind is to cache these generated files and only recreate them if one or more of the plates have changed. For an airport like Zurich that means the file would change several times per month.
Other software generate a zip file with the individual plates which is a very quick and trivial operation but I don’t think that is terribly useful. Always open to good suggestions here…
achimha wrote:
The plates come as individual PDF files
I thought so.
achimha wrote:
One improvement we’ve had in mind is to cache these generated files and only recreate them if one or more of the plates have changed.
That would probably improve the response time.
achimha wrote:
For an airport like Zurich that means the file would change several times per month.
Interesting. Jeppesen update the plates twice a month and I rarely see changes in Zurich. But as I am flying only a limited number of procedures, changes might not affect me.
Vladimir wrote:
Jeppesen update the plates twice a month and I rarely see changes in Zurich.
Zurich changes in > 80% of the Jepp cycles… However, Jeppesen use the same input data as we do — the official AIP data created by Skyguide and submitted to Eurocontrol EAD. Before Jepp get something, it has to be submitted to EAD which we retrieve the same time Jepp do. Jeppesen then incorporate the information and prepare it for the next AIRAC. The authorities themselves often use AIRAC dates for validity of changes but they publish documents on a daily basis.
The whole caching approach has quite a few subtle issues. What should be included? We often get plates with validity dates starting 2 months in the future. Include them (they will be marked) or not? What if the validity is 1 week in the future? 1 day in the future? This is why our AIP Plate Browser has a date input field but if you want to pre-create those combined plates, validity becomes an issue because it makes the caching less effective.
achimha wrote:
the official AIP data created by Skyguide and submitted to Eurocontrol EAD
Do you get all the data from a central place (EAD), or do you have to contact each country’s authority separately?
achimha wrote:
The whole caching approach has quite a few subtle issues. What should be included? We often get plates with validity dates starting 2 months in the future. Include them (they will be marked) or not? What if the validity is 1 week in the future? 1 day in the future? This is why our AIP Plate Browser has a date input field but if you want to pre-create those combined plates, validity becomes an issue because it makes the caching less effective.
Sounds more complex than I expected.
Vladimir wrote:
Do you get all the data from a central place (EAD), or do you have to contact each country’s authority separately?
Luckily it’s a central system called Eurocontrol EAD PAMS (Published AIP Management System). Interestingly, it seems to gradually establish itself as the world AIP database with lots and lots of countries outside Europe joining it. Recently half of Africa joined so the list of countries is now rather impressive:
And do they an open and free interface to get the data or did you have to contact them / pay them for the access?
