Ok... here's where things will continue to degrade: Approach course.

 

Here's why: The mag variation that's used for an approach course may or may not be updated and current. It is this way in the real world. Knowing what mag var is being used for a specific approach is requiring one to dig especially deep into the ARINC data. Navigraph doesn't do it... Aerosoft doesn't do it... they've not had a need to, to be honest.

Jeppesen has the up to date magnetic variation of all airports in the world. So I am sure a company could get it from them.

 

 

What I'm saying that even with Herve Sors' sort-of-update, nothing is done to the airport facilities themselves, so that ILS/Loc frequencies aren't updated, runway configurations remain the same, and so forth. It is at best an incomplete bandaid solution

 

True for North America and many other parts of the world. False for European countries where ILSs, runway ids, approach lighting systems, ILSs & airport magnetic variations, etc are corrected. Agree that performing such updates on a worldwide basis is a titanic work and can only be aimed for from LM (Microsoft never considered it) 

 

 

Microsoft never considered it)

 

Was Microsoft's thinking to update it with each new release of their product?   e.g. did they update it from FS9 to FSX?  Truly, I don't think it needs to be done very often...things change very slowly.

Yes, they were just getting into the swing of it and had several tools developed.

The customers, or course. Certainly if I were a commercial entity purchasing P3D licenses for training purposes, I wouldn't want my students flying with 2004 era alignments.

Those customers who needed who needed such level of navdata would buy from 3rd party suppliers. Also, many would not want to buy global data but only for their area of interest.

 

Bill. Is the default navdata copywrite protected?

it is.

 

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) will go

forward with its previously announced proposal to remove its Flight

Information Publications (FLIP) and Digital Aeronautical Flight Information

File (DAFIFTM) from public access.

 

NGA is taking this action due to the increased numbers of international

source providers claiming intellectual property rights of their data. Many

of these sources forewarned NGA they intended to copyright their

aeronautical data. NGA's public release of data produced by others violated

claimed copyright, forcing NGA to discontinue the release of this data to

the general public. Government agencies and authorized government

contractors are not affected by this action.

 

Jeppesen has the up to date magnetic variation of all airports in the world. So I am sure a company could get it from them.

It's not about the mag var for an airport. The course for a given ILS may be based off the mag var assigned to a specific VOR nearby... and it will not necessarily be the same value as the current actual mag var in the area, nor is it assured to be accurate/correct. They don't always get updated at the navaid level.

 

Like I've already said... it's complicated, really, really complicated.

 

 

It's not about the mag var for an airport. The course for a given ILS may be based off the mag var assigned to a specific VOR nearby... and it will not necessarily be the same value as the current actual mag var in the area, nor is it assured to be accurate/correct. They don't always get updated at the navaid level.

Like I've already said... it's complicated, really, really complicated

 

But the problem of conversion was solved by MS a long time ago, even before FSX, and the needed data format is created.  They don't have to reinvent that wheel do they?  Not to oversimplify this matter, but, they just need to get data in a similar format that MS did years ago and convert it to the format that the sim needs.  Aren't the big problems:

• Are the tools that Microsoft used to convert data available to LM?
• Can LM get the data in a form that Microsoft used?
• How many exceptions had to be fixed after processing?  E.g. how much work is it?
• How much does the data cost and is it worth it?

The follow-on is, if LM doesn't want to do this work...how do we get the data and get it into P3D?  Clearly X-plane has a similar problem.  They solved it.  The crappy alternative is that we all revert to 2006 data...charts, approach plates, etc.

Well, we don't have this problem in a training environment. We ensure we have current navigational data for the GPS/FMS interfaces. We ensure the airports that they will use for training are current and up to date. We essentially go through and clean up the differences on a per-customer basis... which takes a ton less time and resources.

 

Since Prepar3D is targeting people like me more than they are targeting people like you... don't expect them to touch it quickly. Though based on their track record of interacting with the general FS community... I suspect sooner or later they'll do something. Question is... what?

It's not about the mag var for an airport. The course for a given ILS may be based off the mag var assigned to a specific VOR nearby... and it will not necessarily be the same value as the current actual mag var in the area, nor is it assured to be accurate/correct. They don't always get updated at the navaid level.

 

Like I've already said... it's complicated, really, really complicated.

 

Yes it is but not so much regarding the way FS defines and uses it, in my experience

 

1) "Global" FS magnetic variation (the one that is set by the magdec.bgl file) only affects the correspondance between aircraft true vs magnetic heading (the one that can be read on compass or heading indicator)

2) Airport specific magnetic variation seems to be only used for AI traffic rwy assignments

3) Navaid (VOR/NDB) specific magnetic variation fields will have an effect for correct radial following (to/from) correspondance on dedicated instruments between FS and aeronautical publications 

4) Localizer magnetic variation is mainly used for ILS magnetic course map display. It has no importance for effective rwy alignment (if not offset) that is defined on true ILS heading as compared to true rwy heading. Regarding what is displayed on heading indicator while LOC is centered, there could indeed be some discrepancies when "global" magnetic variation is very different from the ILS specific calibration value but it is not so frequent unless values used are 2005 or even older  

In FSX the runways are assigned true headings and so are the ILSs. So if you are going straight down an ILS it should be aligned perfectly with the runway most of the time. So in that instance magnetic declination doesn't matter too much.

 

EDIT: Oops, hervesors said basically the same thing above.

 

Well... I can assure you there are quite a few ILS approaches that have different courses because of mag var changes. We get complaints on that from the training world all the time.

 

My point is that while everyone thinks updating all of this data should be a piece of cake, just get the raw info and run some software. I can assure you that it's not even close to being easy or simple in order to get it all correct.

 

 

Well... I can assure you there are quite a few ILS approaches that have different courses because of mag var changes. We get complaints on that from the training world all the time

 

Could be but it seems important to me we understand them. Often it has to do with some unrecognized offset approaches, from time to time it is due to some errors in the way it is coded in the default files (yes there are..), in some other cases it is the result of using outdated charts or even erroneous charts (some countries lack reliability regarding aeronautical publications - Personnaly I had a lot of problems with some data issued by some Eastern European countries). I let you imagine some other possible reasons..not sure MV data are the only culprit. Whatever the reason is, it can (must) be investigated on a case to case basis so as to sort it out. That's the only way   

Whatever the technical aspects, the information is generally available world-wide. Typically, the UK CAA states:

 

The copyright in these publications is owned by the Civil Aviation Authority. You may reproduce copies of these publications within your company or organisation or for your own personal use but you may not otherwise reproduce them for publication. All rights reserved.

 

If you wish to use or reference CAA Publications for other purposes e.g. within training material for students, then you must contact the CAA for formal agreement.

I don't see Lockheed Martin paying for a licence.

No one goes to the CAA for navigation data.