43. Load Scenery Library Load Scenery Library

This dialog allows loading of the scenery library data from all supported flight simulators into the Little Navmap internal database. The scenery library to load can be selected in the Simulator: drop down box.

The dialog shows information about the currently selected database including the number of loaded airports, database version and more.

FSX and Prepar3D: The base path and the scenery.cfg path will be shown in two text edit fields for the currently selected simulator. These fields are populated automatically, but can be changed to any other valid location. All values are saved individually for each flight simulator type.

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020: The base path of the MSFS installation and its directories Community and Official is detected automatically. You can change the path manually if needed.

X-Plane: The base path of the first X-Plane installation is added. Select the base path manually if you like to read the scenery library of another X-Plane installation. On Windows that can be a path like C:\Simulators\X-Plane 11, the executable being C:\Simulators\X-Plane 11\X-Plane.exe.

Loading a scenery library can take from 2 to 10 minutes depending on your setup and amount of scenery add-ons. You can speed this up by excluding directories containing neither airport nor navigation data in the Options dialog on the Scenery Library Database tab.

For FSX and Prepar3D, all airports that are not located in the default Scenery directory of FSX/P3D are considered to be add-on airports.

For X-Plane, all airports located in the Custom Scenery directory of X-Plane are considered to be add-on airports. An exception is ...\X-Plane 11\Custom Scenery\Global Airports\Earth nav data\apt.dat

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020: All airports located in the Community directory and the Official\OneStore or Official\Steam are considered to be add-on airports. Exceptions are fs-base and fs-base-nav.

Add-on airports are highlighted on the map with a yellow ring which can be disabled in the options dialog on page Map Display.

Using emphasized (bold and underlined) text highlights add-on airports in the search result table, flight plan table, information windows and map tooltips.

If an add-on only corrects airport elevations or navigation data, it might be undesirable to display the updated airports as add-on airports on the map. You can exclude directories populated by this add-on from the add-on recognition in the Options dialog on the page Scenery Library Database.

If you cancel the loading process or if the loading process fails, the previous scenery library database is restored immediately.

The menu Scenery Library -> Flight Simulators is synchronized with the simulator selection in the dialog. Once a database is successfully loaded, the display, flight plan and search switch instantaneously to the newly loaded simulator data.

Note

The final number of airports, navaids and other objects shown in the Load Scenery Library dialog are lower than the counts shown in the progress dialog. After the data has been loaded, a separate process removes duplicates and deletes stock airports that were replaced by add-ons.

FSX or P3D only: The program tries to find the base paths and Scenery.cfg files automatically. The typical locations of the Scenery.cfg for Windows 7/8/10 are:

  • Flight Simulator X: C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\FSX\Scenery.cfg
  • Flight Simulator - Steam Edition: C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\FSX-SE\Scenery.cfg
  • Prepar3D v2: C:\Users\YOUR_ACCOUNT_NAME\AppData\Roaming\Lockheed Martin\Prepar3D v2\Scenery.cfg
  • Prepar3D v3: C:\ProgramData\Lockheed Martin\Prepar3D v3\Scenery.cfg
  • Prepar3D v4: C:\ProgramData\Lockheed Martin\Prepar3D v4\Scenery.cfg

An error dialog is shown after loading, if any files could not be read or directories were not found. In this case you should check if the airports of the affected sceneries display correctly and show the correct information. The error dialog allows copy and paste of formatted text which is useful for error reporting.

The Load Scenery Library dialog shows the last time of loading (Last Update:), the program and the database version. Major database version differences indicate incompatible databases. The program will ask if the incompatible databases can be erased on startup before the scenery database can be reloaded. Minor database differences indicate compatible changes where a reload is recommended but not required.

Warning

Close Little Navmap when updating, copying or replacing its databases manually or using other programs. Little Navmap might crash or show wrong data otherwise.

43.1. Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 Airports and Navdata

Little Navmap has the following limitations due to MSFS BGL restrictions and lack of documentation at time of writing:

  • Little Navmap cannot read SID and STAR from MSFS.
  • MSFS seems to have no clear concept of scenery order (Content.xml is unreliable). Add-ons are loaded by alphabetical order by Little Navmap. To put an add-on to the end of the loading list prefix the folder name with a z_, for example.
  • Country names are missing in MSFS translation tables and are not available in Little Navmap, therefore.
  • Add-ons using the .fsarchive encrypted format are not supported. Little Navmap will show only the stock airport instead of the add-on.
  • Some airports files like LEMG.bgl cannot be read due to unknown format. Little Navmap reports Error: readInt for file "...OMITTED.../LEMG.bgl" failed. Reason 1. Exclude the airport file from reading in options on page Scenery Library Database or simply ignore the message. The stock LEMG and all other airports are not affected by this.

43.2. X-Plane Airports and Navdata

Little Navmap reads airport and navaid data from X-Plane’s *.dat files. To check a version of a file you can open it in a text editor that is capable of dealing with large files. The first lines of the file will look like:

A
1100 Generated by WorldEditor 1.6.0r1

1   1549 0 0 0A4 Johnson City STOLport
...

Little Navmap can read the following X-Plane scenery files:

  • Airports ( apt.dat ): Version 850 up to 1100. This covers X-Plane 10 airports and older add-on scenery. Newer files than 1100 might work but are not tested.
  • Navdata ( earth_awy.dat , earth_fix.dat and earth_nav.dat ): Version 850 up to 1100. This excludes X-Plane 10 navdata files. Newer files than 1100 might work but are not tested.
  • Procedures ( ICAO.dat in the CIFP directory): All procedures from X-Plane 11.
  • Airspaces ( *.txt ): The included usa.txt and all files in OpenAir format. See next chapter for more information.

Additionally the files user_fix.dat and user_nav.dat in the X-Plane directory Custom Data are read.

43.2.1. FSX, Prepar3D and MSFS Airspaces

Little Navmap reads all airspaces from the scenery library of FSX based simulators. These airspaces are added in the airspace source Simulator.

43.2.2. OpenAir Airspaces

Little Navmap can read OpenAir airspaces (OpenAir airspace format) from X-Plane or an user defined directory.

Note that the publicly available airspace files can contain errors which may prevent the loading of an airspace file. These hard errors are reported after loading the scenery library. Other errors only affecting single airspaces or the geometry are reported in the log file only.

Additional airspace files can be downloaded from the OpenAirspace Directory, Soaring Services, openAIP or Luftraumdaten Deutschland, for example.

Airspace files must have a .txt extension and are loaded from the following directories by Little Navmap:

The files can be encoded in any UTF format but must have a BOM to be recognized properly. Otherwise Windows ANSI coding (Windows-1252) is used. Special characters like umlauts or accents are not displayed correctly in names if the encoding is not correct. All other functionality is unaffected.

You can convert the files using any advanced editor like Notepad++ for example.

Airspaces will appear as duplicates in the map if an airspace file is found in more than one of these directories or sources.

See Airspace Libraries for more information on airspace sources.

43.2.2.1. X-Plane Airspaces

X-Plane 11 comes with a single airspace file that can be found in YOUR_XPLANE_DIRECTORY/Resources/default data/airspaces/usa.txt.

Little Navmap reads X-Plane airspaces from the following locations:

  • YOUR_XPLANE_DIRECTORY/Resources/default data/airspaces
  • YOUR_XPLANE_DIRECTORY/Custom Data/Airspaces

These airspaces are added to airspace source Simulator.

43.2.2.2. User Airspaces

These airspaces are added in the airspace source User. You can load them by selecting Scenery Library -> Load User Airspaces ( Load User Airspaces).

A directory selection dialog will show up when running this function the first time. Select a directory containing OpenAir airspace files with file ending .txt. All files in the directory will be read recursively.

Airspaces read with this function will be added to the airspace source User and are stored in a database independent of flight simulator databases.

You can change the directory and file extensions to read in the options dialog: User Airspaces.

43.2.2.3. Online Airspaces

Online centers are displayed as circular airspaces in Little Navmap per default and provide the same functionality as the other airspaces (tooltips, information and more). They are loaded with the online data when connected and are only stored in a temporary database which is deleted on exit.

Little Navmap can use real center boundaries instead of the circular airspaces. First you have to enable one or both options in Map Display Online under Online Center Boundary Lookup in User Airspaces. These are enabled per default.

There are two options:

  1. Create an OpenAir airspace file which contains a single boundary for a center. Give the file the same name as the callsign for the center, i.e. name the file EDDB_TWR.txt for the center with the callsign EDDB_TWR.
  2. Create an OpenAir airspace containing the boundaries for all the centers you need. Give the file any name but name the boundaries according to the callsign of the centers. You need a line in the file containing AN EDDF_TWR (AN = airspace name) to use the boundary for a center with the callsign EDDB_TWR.

Now place the file or files into you user airspace directory and reload the user airspaces. See above User Airspaces how to do this.

Once done the center should show the correct boundary.

43.3. Load Scenery Library Options

  • Simulator: Select the simulator to load, show database statistics in the label above.
  • Reset Paths: Reset all paths back to default values.
  • Flight Simulator Base Path and Select ...: The path to the base directory of the selected flight simulator. This usually the directory containing the FSX.exe or Prepar3D.exe. This is the base for all relative paths found in the scenery.cfg file.
  • Scenery Configuration File and Select ... (only FSX and P3D): The file scenery.cfg of the simulator. You can also create copies of the original file, modify them by removing or adding sceneries and select them here for loading.
  • Read inactive Scenery Entries: This will read all scenery entries, also the inactive/disabled ones. This is helpful if you use a tool to disable scenery before flying but still want to see all add-on sceneries in Little Navmap without reloading. This applies to the FSX/P3D scenery.cfg as well as X-Plane’s scenery_packs.ini which both allow to disable scenery entries.
  • Read Prepar3D add-on.xml packages (only P3D v3 and v4): If enabled, reads P3D v4 or v3 add-on.xml packages. These are read from sub directories of C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\Documents\Prepar3D v4 Files\Add-ons and C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\Documents\Prepar3D v4 Add-ons.
  • Load: Starts the database loading process. You can stop the loading process at any time and the previous database is restored. The dialog is closed and the program will switch to show the loaded database once it is successfully loaded.
  • Close: Keep all settings and changes in the dialog and close it without loading anything.

Note

Note regarding Read inactive Scenery Entries and X-Plane: You either have to enable this option or start X-Plane after adding an airport. X-Plane will update the scenery_packs.ini when starting. Otherwise your new scenery will not appear in Little Navmap.

_images/loadscenery.jpg

Load Scenery Dialog. Scenery data is already loaded for FSX.

_images/loadsceneryprogress.jpg

Progress dialog shown while loading the scenery library into Little Navmap’s internal database.

43.4. Magnetic Declination

Little Navmap reads the magnetic declination from different sources or calculates it using the world magnetic model (WMM) depending on simulator and navaid.

The data is updated when loading the scenery library and is also stored in the scenery library database for each simulator.

See chapter Magnetic Declination for information how this impacts flight plans.

43.4.1. FSX, Prepar3D and Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020

The magnetic declination (or variation) used to calculate the magnetic course is taken from the magdec.bgl file in the scenery database of FSX or Prepar3D.

Updates for this file are available here: FSX/P3D Navaids update.

Little Navmap falls back to the world magnetic model if the file magdec.bgl is not available for some reason.

43.4.2. X-Plane

The magnetic declination values for X-Plane (airports and all navaids except VORs) are calculated using the world magnetic model based on the real current year and month. This is calculated while loading the scenery library and saved in X-Plane scenery library database.

VOR stations come with their own declination values which might differ from the calculated declination values in their environment as mentioned above.