Foreflight exports are incompatible with RXP gns530

[Kaellis 2]

I have searched for days and tried everything I can think of or find online. It’s such a rats nest on these forums trying to find a definitive answer to a very simple question.

 I cannot import a Foreflight .fpl file into the RXP GNS 530 in X plane 11. Skyvector is no problem.

Is this because the databases are different between FF and RXP Garmin and non-compatible?

Is it possible to get a simple yes or no answer to this question. If yes, I will discontinue my efforts.

thanks

[fppilot 4,355]

2 hours ago, Kaellis said:

I cannot import a Foreflight .fpl file into the RXP GNS 530 in X plane 11.

User to user comment here.With a lack of other pilots here reporting such an issue, and with a plethora of flight planning options our there, and skyvector being no problem,  perhaps you should contact Foreflight. 
Actually.... it's difficult to imagine any other step to take...  Does not seem to be an RXP issue.

 

Edited July 11, 2020 by fppilot

[Kaellis 2]

I exchanged emails with foreflight for 3 days. Sent them both the skyvector and FF ,fpl files. The support person was very helpful and tried a number of things to see what might be the issue to no avail. After that I told him I would continue to look into what the differences are in the files. He said for me to get back to them if I can discover what might be the issue.

 They are simple UTF-8 text files editable in notepad. The format for the waypoints and the routes are almost identical. Skyvector adds some lines about country codes, FF includes the aircraft information.  If I cut and paste the waypoint and route text out of the Skyvector and replace the text in the FF flie I can import the file.  If on the other hand i cut and paste the Foreflight text into the .fpl file created by .Skyvector...no joy. I tried swapping pieces of the files...removing some lines from the FF file that Skyvector did not have, etc. Played around with the formatting, indentations, tabs, line breaks but nothing has worked. 

Typically I would get the error message in the X plane RXP GNS that it just failed to import. Then I did something different, can’t remember exactly, which caused the GNS 530 to display an error message that the waypoint(s) locked. So that’s where I started to wonder if it is a database incompatibility issue that cannot be resolved. 

In the RW to transfer a flight plan from FF mobile app to a Garmin GPS  one needs a Flight Stream 110, 220 or 510. Seems like a purposeful database difference. And that is why I posted my query here hoping someone from Reality XP could shed light on this, since there is no way to contact anyone from Reality that was actually involved in the coding of their products directly.

i am not sure there are many Foreflight  Mobile users wanting to connect to X plane in this capacity and thus no reports of problems. So far I have not been able to find any forum posts from users who are trying this and are successful or not. 

Edited July 11, 2020 by Kaellis
Adding info

[Kaellis 2]

An update for anyone who cares....

Skyvector and LittleNavMap export .fpl files with a country code line in both the waypoints and route sections. Foreflight .fpl files do not contain a country code line. If I remove the country code line from either the Skyvector or LittleNavMap .fpl file then the import into the RXP GNS 530 fails. Also, and I am not sure this has any effect, the SV and LNM files are encoded as UTF-8 but the Foreflight files are encoded as UTF-8 with BOM. I’ve read up on what the means but it’s kinda Greek to me.

[RXP 2,338]

Hi,

There has been several discussions in this forum about flight plan format. Our latest installers are also installing a copy of the official Garmin schemas to help you out in these cases ("C:\ProgramData\Reality XP\Common\GnsTrainer").

You might have noticed each flight plan is an xml file, with a header specifying the schemas it follows (this is standard XML stuff). The URL is most likely outdated now because Garmin has changed their location, but a quick google search finds them out in a few seconds.

Here is what I've found on the Garmin website:

https://www8.garmin.com/xmlschemas/FlightPlanv1.xsd

https://www8.garmin.com/xmlschemas/FlightPlanv2.xsd

They should just have to make sure their exported flight plan file is respecting the schemas, it might be not the case.

NB: The BOM is a possibility but I doubt.

 

[RXP 2,338]

update: you might want to try:

http://www.utilities-online.info/xsdvalidation/

[Kaellis 2]

All three .fpl files (Skyvector, LittleNavMap and Fore-flight) have the same schema and URL in the header.

In the Garmin documentation you linked it specifically says that the country codes need to have a unique number. So it seems to me that the lack of a country code in the Foreflight export is the problem because the Garmin device is looking for that.

I told the Foreflight support guy via email about the missing country code perhaps being the issue. He said he would discuss this with the developers.

Edited July 11, 2020 by Kaellis
Added info