Hi All – wanted to let you know that we just released a new Airport & Nav Database update in the app. This download contains important updates to European airport frequencies and airspace depictions for the U.K. (including corrections to the issues with Belgian airport frequencies). If you notice any additional problems with frequencies or anything else, please let our support team know by emailing [email protected].
Is anyone using Foreflight for serious Eurocontrol route generation?
If it works well, I might give it a go.
Peter wrote:
Is anyone using Foreflight for serious Eurocontrol route generation?
I tried several routes while being in Sweden/Denmark and I got very similar results as with AR. The longest one was EKVD to LDVA and it was almost the same as I got with AR. I’m planning Corsica next week and I got the same routes with FF and AR.
I guess if the aircraft profile is the same in both programs, the routes have to look more or less similar, no ?
Emir wrote:
I tried several routes while being in Sweden/Denmark and I got very similar results as with AR.
But Sweden is dead simple. Almost anything validates. The main restrictions are compulsory approach/departure points for some airports. You could do without autorouting here.
Airborne_Again wrote:
But Sweden is dead simple. Almost anything validates.
I agree but I tried few more complicated (as I wrote) with same result.
Does FF generate a text logfile of the GPS position, say every x seconds or every x metres, and if so, could anyone email me the file?
I use the data for video subtitles, for flying videos.
Currently I use the Oziexplorer track log for this, which is in an obvious textual format, via a converter prog (written in C) into SRT subtitle format.
FF generates .kml, .csv and .gpx files which you can download from the web-based App (essentially, the iPad uploads the data to the FF web server from where you download them and/or generate track logs). I’m not aware of getting that data directly from the iPad.
I guess if the aircraft profile is the same in both programs, the routes have to look more or less similar
I’ve been involved from the start with a couple of autorouting products. For sure they use old-known algorithms for finding an optimal route through a maze, but that’s the easy bit. And some are based on open source code.
But to get a working router for the European system you need to do lots of little optimisations and tweaks. Partly this is because many countries – deliberately – do not supply IFPS with a complete database of restrictions; this is done to preserve national jobs within ATC and whoever is in charge of airspace. They really do not want people to just be able to fly an automatically generated route, with 100% reliability. Some have stated this explicitly. It is also extra work for them to notify restrictions to IFPS in some standard format.
And these tweaks are a moving target; it’s a job for somebody to keep on top of it.
There are also philosophical differences; some products were designed to work really well in the airspace of a particular country while the developers of others refused to implement such a strategy on principle (but had to do something eventually).
And the code is big and complicated… The earliest autorouter was Autoplan, written in C++ by an expert, it worked superbly, and I have just looked at the size and it is a 6MB binary. That’s a lot of code.
Peter wrote:
But to get a working router for the European system you need to do lots of little optimisations and tweaks. Partly this is because many countries – deliberately – do not supply IFPS with a complete database of restrictions; this is done to preserve national jobs within ATC and whoever is in charge of airspace.
Exactly how would this “preserve national jobs within ATC and whoever is in charge of airspace”?
It is also extra work for them to notify restrictions to IFPS in some standard format.
According to your reasoning “extra work” can’t be a reason as extra work would mean extra jobs.
