Taxi help - a suggestion..

[svenks 4]

Hi there

I'm new to this program, but *very* impressed! Just what I need to finally retire my old FSC86...

But there is one thing I miss: Taxi help. In FSC you can highlight the taxiways you'll use and thus get some help on the moving map while taxiing.

Maybe doable?

Of course, it would be even better, if there was a function that did the highlighting for you - a sort of Taxi Planner...

I know, you get a lot of suggestions, but this is an area that has been left untouched for many years, and I have found nothing that will work with P3Dv4.

Again, this is a really great product, and one I should have been using for years already

BRGDS

Sven Sorensen, EKCH

[svenks 4]

Hi again

Having dug deeper into this brilliant program, I can see that it already can do what I want - almost!

First of all, I can place a number of temporary Userpoints along the path I use to taxi. That helps a bit, even if they are not connected.

Then I discovered that I could easily add Position waypoints to the flight plan, thus actually getting a path to follow. But this fails when I have a SID, since these waypoints needs to be after the initial (parking) point, but before the SID. And you cannot place them there, you can only move them down, not up.

Perhaps a simple way would be to have a class of waypoint, that are temporary but CAN be inserted before the SID.

Again, just a suggestion...

BRGDS

Sven Sorensen, EKCH

[Dbarnea 10]

Hi Sven,

Why do you need a taxi planner ? If you zoom in enough in the map you have the entire taxi ways + parking stands + your plane positioned.

Just taxi wherever you want and follow the map ...

 

[albar965 1,043]

Hi Sven,

a taxi planner would be very difficult. Simply because of the taxi network is not usable for that and is a disconnected mess for most airports, if there is a network at all that allows to calculate a path.

Alex

[svenks 4]

Hi Alex

Thanks for your reply. Yes I suspected that. What about my other idea? Special taxi waypoints, that can be inserted before SIDs and after STARs/approach?

The reason I would like this feature is simply because it is easier to follow a path in a different colour. Also, when you zoom in as much as is required, sometimes you can't see where you need to be going, and you might wind up taking a wrong turn.

Brgds

Sven 

[albar965 1,043]

3 hours ago, svenks said:

Thanks for your reply. Yes I suspected that. What about my other idea? Special taxi waypoints, that can be inserted before SIDs and after STARs/approach?

Or maybe an approach which will not cause too much work because flight plan stuff is always touchy:

I offer a polyline for measurement and you abuse this for taxi navigation?
Or another suggestion I got some time ago: Draw an arrow on top as a hint towards the departure runway end.

But don't expect this done until tomorrow.🙃 There is already plenty of work to do: https://github.com/albar965/littlenavmap/issues

Alex

 

[svenks 4]

16 hours ago, albar965 said:

I offer a polyline for measurement and you abuse this for taxi navigation?

Hi Alex

I'm not sure what you mean? I do not hope I have offended you in any way?

Brgds

Sven

[albar965 1,043]

1 minute ago, svenks said:

I'm not sure what you mean? I do not hope I have offended you in any way?

Not in any way. Lemme explain better:

The idea is to have a tool that can measure distance for a polyline like Google maps. You draw several chained/attached lines and LNM shows the total distance for these. That way you can "measure zig-zag or around the corner" which is useful in general.

Now you could use this tool to draw the taxi lines/path as well. That's what I meant with "abuse". 🙃 A bit too strong wording I admit.

Alex

[airernie 263]

All of this seems like a lot more work than zooming in on the map, but hey.  😊.

[albar965 1,043]

1 hour ago, airernie said:

All of this seems like a lot more work than zooming in on the map, but hey.  😊.

Now worry. This won't come soon. As I said: The to-do list is already long.😉

Alex

[svenks 4]

Ah, okay - now I see!

Well, English is not my first language, so I took the word abuse a little serious. Sorry about that.🙄

But a polyline would do the job nicely, and yes, I would (ab)use it that way.

Airernie: You still don't get it. I do zoom.in, so I can see the taxiway names. But at that zoom level you cannot see much of the whole path, and if I zoom out so I can, I may not be able to see where to turn. Especially as I have the map off to the side on a secondary monitor.

The multi line measurement would only take a minute to click into place, and then you can zoom out and still see the path. 

Note, I am not the only one looking for such a tool. Other than using progressive taxi, I haven't found anything that can show the way on the taxiways - except for FSC, and there you can only mark whole taxiways, not just the part you want.

Hth  brgds

Sven 

[albar965 1,043]

3 hours ago, svenks said:

Well, English is not my first language

Neither is mine, living a bit south of your place.🙂

Multi measurement is at least less effort than changing the flight plan logic but I have to see what can be done.

Alex

[airernie 263]

3 hours ago, svenks said:

Airernie: You still don't get it. I do zoom.in, so I can see the taxiway names. But at that zoom level you cannot see much of the whole path, and if I zoom out so I can, I may not be able to see where to turn. Especially as I have the map off to the side on a secondary monitor.

Sven,  Yep, that's exactly how I do it, including the secondary monitor. 

It seems to me that you might have similar issues since using polylines since you would have to zoom the map out to see the entire path and thus lose some of the detail of the taxiways.

I zoom to the level where a number of the taxiways are visible and set the simulator aircraft map movement to 'Do not use box mode...'.  That way the map moves with the aircraft and I can visually track my aircraft taxi using ATC's assigned taxi path.

I do find it helpful to close the Statusbar because that sets a limit on how far I can shrink the map.  I also turn off all of the "floating(?)" windows so that only the map is visible during the taxi.

The map window doesn't need to be full screen because it follows your aircraft.

Ernie

 

 

 

[Gulliver54 1]

On 10/10/2019 at 7:06 PM, airernie said:

All of this seems like a lot more work than zooming in on the map, but hey.  😊.

My idea, Zooming in give you great flexibility and works alright for me.