ilankrt wrote:Vantskruv wrote:J.A.Romanov wrote:Yep, but I am still have not idea where I can get list of european "centers" as example.
Arrival/Departure - yes - a future task
I think it is quite complicated, as countries my have different rules. Let me give you an example (notice I am not a real pilot, but this is my understanding).
The demand to map and implement "centers" into XL ATC is nonsense.
Such a "project" in the real is "Eurocontrol". Its complexity is far beyond any idea to simulate such a net, not to speak about implementing it in a software like XL.
What can be done is to take for example the division of european air space into 'CENTER' zones. and for each zone to set a specific FL... not more. Sim pilots under XL can then get advices after changing zones to dial the corresponding zones frequencies.
I do not think it is impossible, if you get help from the community, and develop tools for this, it will work.
First step is to have a major system for centers, which you can build and fragment on. It is up to Romanov which level to start on. Let us say he starts from a state of 1 (which in this example is number 1), and the other states may be filled in by users, almost in the same way as airports are updated at the current state:
State 1. One center for whole of the world with a default frequency, stretching from GND to UNLIMITED altitude.
State 2. One center for every country, defined by a polygon, and with a custom lower and upper limit.
State 3. Segments of centers in a country, with custom lower and upper limits.
(State 4. TMA <- approach, departure, radar)
(State 5. CTR <- tower)
NOTE: airspaces may overlap in a a 2D view, but they should not overlap in 3D space (i.e. airspaces may have the same polygon and position, but at different lower and upper limits, not intersecting each other; TWR below TMA, TMA below CENTER, CENTER below another CENTER and so on).
If there is no state 5 airspace at the position of aircraft, use state 4 airspace, if there is no state 4 airspace, use state 3 airspace, and so on until default state 1 airspace. Of course we could simulate uncontrolled airspace, so we need to be able to setup rules if an aircraft is i.e. below the altitude/flightlevel of a state 2, 3, 4 or 5 airspace. This is only possible if any of this airspaces is defined.
State 2 and 3 airspaces (centers in this case, needs to manually made my the community). The state 4 and 5 airspaces (TMA and CTR) can be retrieved from www.openaip.net, and covers most of Europe and North America.
The requirements for everything to work is to:
1. Make the plugin able to read the data from openaip format (which is open and easy to parse I think). Also the plugin needs to combine this data with user set of frequencies for TMA and CTR:s.
Because it seems openaip does not support frequencies (I guess), X-Life may modify the openaip data for its own best by just adding a slot for frequency, or pair an openaip file with its own frequency file.
2. A tool for the community which can load and save openaip data, where users may
* read TMA, CTR and CENTER airspaces graphically
* edit TMA and CTR airspace frequencies
* edit/create CENTER airspaces as polygons, and set its frequencies and lower and upper limits.
* maybe able to also create TMA and CTR airspaces with polygons if the area is not covered by openaip
As an alternative to option 1, is to make everything out from scratch and X-Life using its own format.
An important note here, some manually action is required here to align the borders of centers between FIR:s, i.e. let us say user A creates a CENTER airspace for Sweden FIR, while user B is using creates a CENTER airspace for Norway, the border between these two FIR:s needs to be aligned with each other.