VLC airstrips

[gojozoom]

Hi guys,

Is there any way to make small VLC airstrips appear on the map/GPS in FSX? I know that it's a landclass definition and there aren't separate BGL files for them, but I thought I'd ask anyway. It would be most useful.

Thanks

[Timmo]

Hmm maybe...it would require some processing of the data into airport XML but I think it could be possible I can't guarantee anything but I'll have a look

[Adamski]

QUOTE (Timmo @ Feb 8 2012,3:57 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Hmm maybe...it would require some processing of the data into airport XML but I think it could be possible I can't guarantee anything but I'll have a look

If you're using any aircraft that use any of the AIRAC nav data, you could manually add them to the airports.txt <?> file. I think there's a runways file as well. It's possible that the AIRAC data already has them in. You'd need to remember to re-apply the fixes if you subscribe/update your AIRAC data though. I've done that in the past for Great Barrier airports.

EDIT: Please ignore this useless info (above) ... it will only work for airfields with existing ICAO codes, I think

[Timmo]

Does anyone know if those small strips have any kind of standardized/formal naming convention? Obviously they aren't ICAO but does Airways track/list them in any way?

Edit- I've successfully created the script in Python which will read my file (a point file containing 3D centroids of each airstrip polygon in VLC) and spit out the correct XML for compilation. This can then be placed in a active scenery directory and will show in the GPS and Map

The issue i have is that the identification of each airstrip is limited to 4 characters but I have around 3500 airstrips. This means I can't prefix with the usual 'NZxx' as I won't have enough combinations.....so just need to figure that out, clean the data a bit and then test a bit more.

[Rotordude]

Tim the information is already there, some how FSWidgets Gmap server for android pulls all the locations of strips and cabins in VLC or NZSI and displays them as a green box with a white plane, so far this info has been bang on. So there must be a way of extracting that info some how..

[Timmo]

What is each strip called though? I have all the location information I need, it's just according to the SDK docs I can't give an identification (which is a mandatory piece of information) string longer than 4 characters (although I just actually tested this assumption and can get 5 characters in there, that helps) So, I need to come up with a naming system for them.

The other 'proper' airports in NZ can all fit into this ICAO scheme (i.e. NZWK, NZAA) because there aren't too many of them and the 2 remaining letters after 'NZ' have enough combinations (325 of them).

However, given that I probably want to keep 'NZ' as the first two letters, this means, at best I have a combination of 3 remaining letters from the 26 letters of the alphabet which is 2600 combinations.....about half of what I need to name them all.

Edit: I'm tired! No idea why I thought I could only use letters of the alphabet...I can use numbers as well! So 39 combinations from 3 remaining letters = 7140 combinations

[Timmo]

Ok I've done the naming convention so each strip will be prefixed with a NZ and then 2 alphas and a number i.e. NZAA0, NZAA1......NZAB0, NZAB1 etc

Apart from some cleaning to remove duplicates with proper airfields and some tweaking (below), this is ready for testing.





Some further questions to help me make it more useful: The default airports don't have their 'Region' set (i.e. Rotorua can't be found by going to 'Bay of Plenty' but it can be found by choosing the city) but I can do this with these airstrips- Would it be useful? (i.e. would you start from these strips or slew/fly to them?) It could mean you could choose from a list of airstrips in your local district (I would use NZ districts rather than regions to narrow the number of strips for each menu choice)

Since there are a number of them (~3500) they will be included on the Airport list in the Free Flight dialogue box...which could make choosing a 'normal' airport a bit daunting. Would giving them a 'City' tag of 'Rural' make it easier to narrow the list?

???

[dart15]

Has this advanced any further?

I think adding a "Rural" tag would be of help!

[Timmo]

There was a bit of delay as I had sent the files to GoJoZoom but they didn't get to him for some reason- They were resent and he is testing them now

[Ian Warren]

Go Gojo , Dan the man , nah its good , one question , what happens when NZNI turns up on the door Tim ?

[Timmo]

I've split the files into the two main islands Ian so it should be pretty easy to disable one or both if you use ORBX

[gojozoom]

Hi guys,

I'm in front of a major career change, so it's is all about interviews, ties and smiles for me nowadays, hence I didn't have much time to test it yet. However, I'll come back to you with the results and some screenshots around this weekend.

Dan

[Timmo]

Just an update to this:

The strips have been named with a 'Z' prefix- This is to sort the list better when you are setting up a flight as the (multitude!) of ag strips will be at the end of the list and the 'real' airports will be at the start. They will appear on the list as "Z AgStrip JM1"

There was also an issue with my code which has no been fixed and GoJoZoom is now testing again

[scaber]

QUOTE (Timmo @ Feb 27 2012,2:20 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Just an update to this:

The strips have been named with a 'Z' prefix- This is to sort the list better when you are setting up a flight as the (multitude!) of ag strips will be at the end of the list and the 'real' airports will be at the start. They will appear on the list as "Z AgStrip JM1"

There was also an issue with my code which has no been fixed and GoJoZoom is now testing again

Good new, I'm looking forward to this release.

[gojozoom]

FYI - I'll be uploading a post with screenshots later this afternoon, covering flights between these strips using Tim's VLC GPS data.

EDIT: Flight uploaded here.