Airport Navigator

Plugin for X-Plane Flight Simulator, version 8.x and 9.x

Plugin version 1.0.2The current version of the Airport Navigator plugin shows the following information overlayed on the X-Plane screen:

• ICAO of the selected airport (and it's altitude)• Runway layout, Heli-pads (gray)• Taxiway, Aprons (yellow outline)• Ramp start positions (green)• and most importantly: your aircraft and it's heading relative to the airport (red)

The picture shows an airport with format 850 apt.dat. It also loads and shows layouts in the older 810 format but they look not so nice because taxiways/aprons are constructed off many small rectangles.

Installationto install, put the Airport-nav_xyz.xpl in to the "plugins" folder of your X-Plane installation.

UsageThe plugin gets initialized during the start of X-Plane. You will see a message like below for some time on screen while the plugin scans the X-Plane apt.dat and all custom sceneries to get a list of all available airports. This can take from a couple of seconds to a minute, it depends on the number of custom sceneries and probably even more on the speed of your hard drive. X-Plane might appear to be not responding during that time, please be patient.

During the load the plugin will write some progress information into the file Log.txt.

Once X-Plane has started you find an entry in the "Plugins" menu, more on that later.

The plugin features some different modes of operation. It can show the map of the nearest airport or of the target destination entered in a GPS unit or the FMS flight plan. In the nearest Airport mode it can also set to continually track the aircraft position and show new maps as new airports come into range (closer that the last one).

Plugin controlThe main control method are hotkeys. But some functions, mainly switches, are available via the plugins menu only.

The hotkeysCTRL + SHIFT + M Toggle map display on/off

CTRL + SHIFT + PageUp Zoom inCTRL + SHIFT + PageDn Zoom outCTRL + SHIFT + End Reset zoomCTRL + SHIFT + Home Re-center map

CTRL + SHIFT + Left Move the map aroundCTRL + SHIFT + Right "CTRL + SHIFT + Up "CTRL + SHIFT + Down "

For the running X-plane session you can remap hotkeys via the Plugin-Admin Hotkey Settings screen:

The plugins menuRight after X-Plane starts the Plugin menu looks like this:

Map is hidden, mode is "nearest airport", tracking is off.

Use this menu to show or hide the map (same as the hotkey).

Use this menu to switch the map to the GPS/FMS destination or back to the nearest airport.

Track plane is a toggle that turns tracking on or of. If set to on and mode is "nearest" then the map will continuously update to show a new airport if it comes in range (closer than the last one).

As of version 1.0.2 there is an additional menu entry to toggle the background behind the map display off (transparent).

AuthorJens Ansorg (x-plane at ansorg-web.de)

Many thanks toThe SDK developers. Sandy and Jonathan for coding help and tips. The people from x-plane.de for continuous beta testing.

Source codeThe plugin code is GPL and available at http://svn2.assembla.com/svn/x-plane-apt-nav

Plugin downloadhttp://www.assembla.com/spaces/files/x-plane-apt-nav

History1.0.2 - fixed ICAO position

- added menu toggle for transparent background

1.0.1 - initial public release