[Flightgear-devel] New scenery and implications for apt.dat/ airport xml files/ nav.dat

[Christian S. <ch...@il...>]

Hi,

with the new scenery out of the door we have to think about which path 
to take for the data "backends". I am talking about the apt.dat file we 
ship in fgdata, which is terribly outdated as soon as the new scenery 
is used.

We also have the airport xml files that come with the scenery, but 
those are not sufficient right now. It is impossible to use them to add 
new runways or rename existing ones. Only changes to runway positions 
are possible. This leads to some nasty effects for at least EDDF (and 
surely more airports) where runways have been added.

Two possible solutions we can come up with:

1. Update apt.dat in fgdata to version 2013.10 and accept breakages 
(wrong startup position, missing scenery airports) for people that 
still use the 1.x scenery.
The apt.dat 850 and 1000 format is fully supported by FG and I ironed 
out remaining problems in recent months.

2. Extend and improve the xml file support that comes with a scenery 
distribution so that we could probably even get rid of apt.dat files in 
fgdata.
Main point here would be making the xml airport parameters overwrite 
the entries that come from apt.dat completely.


I know it's a difficult situation with many ifs to consider. I just 
want to get a discussion started now. James and I had a brainstorming 
on FSWeekend already but we didn't come up with a final solution.

Chris