From: David M. <dav...@gm...> - 2017-07-03 00:44:57
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The airspace system is in the process of changing drastically, and I'm following it this summer by finally biting the bullet and installing an IFR GPS (Garmin GTN 650 <https://buy.garmin.com/en-CA/CA/p/67884>) and ADS-B transponder (Garmin GTX 345 <https://buy.garmin.com/en-CA/CA/p/140949>) in my Piper Warrior II. What this means that for the first time in the 15 years since I started flying in real life, I won't be able to use FlightGear to practice the IFR approaches I'm flying in real life. Note that this isn't just a matter of throwing up a canvas showing some GPS waypoints and a magenta line. Modern navigators are astoundingly-complex devices — probably an order of magnitude more lines of code than FlightGear itself — and even their basic flight planning algorithms and databases (e.g. fly-by waypoints vs fly-over waypoints, open vs closed approach procedures, transitions into RNAV approaches, etc.) are far beyond the scope of anything we've tried, and we'd also need an up-to-date database far more complex than the ones we have now. Once you get to the extra features, like FIS-B weather or TIS-B traffic info over ADS-B, or TAWS (terrain alerting), we're probably in way over our heads trying to emulate even the simplest general-aviation IFR GPS. I don't have an easy solution — even with our amazing team of volunteer developers, I doubt we have the capacity to pull this off — but then I wonder whether that means that the usefulness of FlightGear will also gradually taper off. Maybe we'll be able to connect to external simulators for these units, and just accept not seeing them in the 3D cockpit. Thoughts? Cheers, David p.s. If you have access to an iOS device or Windows PC, you can download the GTN emulators from this links to see how complex even basic devices are: https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/garmin-gtn-trainer/id479670018?mt=8 | http://www8.garmin.com/support/download_details.jsp?id=9256 |