b-faller
commented
6 years ago I gave your ideas some thoughts and tried to give a quick sketch how this could be implemented. First of all the current implementation is already awesome and it's great to see opensource coming to the flight simulation world. :)
Current Issues
Airspace Boundaries If many airspaces overlap it becomes difficult to sort out the airspace structure which can be seen in the picture above. The usage of filled polygons alter the color of the underlying map and if airspaces overlap colors are no longer an indication to which airspace type is in a particular area.
Standard Airspace Structure Another problem is that in many countries the standard airspace classes are depicted on the map view as well. An example would be Germany where Class E and C (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airspace_class#Germany) is shown everywhere on the map but not required. However I think it is great to have this information under the Airspaces tab if you click on the map.
Altitude of Airspaces Currently Little Navmap does show all non AGL Altitudes as above MSL which is incorrect. Airspace upper and lower limits are often given in Flight Levels which differ from Altitude if the QNH is not 1013.25 hPa.
Some Airspace Properties Are Missing For example the attribute HX is not shown.
Airspace List and Tooltip The airspace list under the Airspaces tab becomes very difficult to read if there are many airspaces. Often airspaces overlap (especially a problem with airspaces from the standard airspace structure of their respective countries). Also airspaces are not sorted after their upper and lower limit which makes it difficult to comprehend the vertical extends. The same applies for the tooltip.
Possible Implementation
Airspace Boundaries In my opinion improving the style of airspaces could improve the clarity a lot already. For example Switzerland has a great depiction of airspaces in their ICAO Charts: https://map.geo.admin.ch/?lang=en&topic=ech&bgLayer=voidLayer&layers=ch.bazl.luftfahrtkarten-icao&E=2694605.87&N=1261014.58&zoom=3&catalogNodes=687,702 Legend: https://api3.geo.admin.ch/static/images/legends/ch.bazl.luftfahrtkarten-icao_en_big.pdf Also on the boundary the airspace type can be clearly seen so that you don't have to look in the legend to find out which airspace it is.
But because that is highly susceptible to user preferences it would be a good idea to have user adjustable airspace styles stored in an XML file for example.
Also this probably depends on #180 because drawPolygon is used to draw the airspaces on the map?
Standard Airspace Structure For this maybe storing the standard classes in a file or database or flagging them in the airspace database would be good, so that they could not only be easily excluded from the map view but also used in the Airspace List (see below).
Altitude of Airspaces Would be solved with #233 because units are stored in OpenAIP data as well.
Some Airspace Properties Are Missing HX could also be solved with #233 by searching the name for HX, other properties might be more difficult.
Airspace List and Tooltip I can imagine something like this (new airspace borders and flight plan elevation profile airspaces not drawn):
Basically you have two ways to get information. The first would be hovering above airspace(s). In the picture this can be seen in the tooltip. Only the vertical limits and the airspace type is displayed. Initially all airspaces that are under the cursor are highlighted which would be shown by a border around the airspace type. Now if the user uses the scroll wheel the airspaces are switched through and only one at the time is highlighted as can be seen in the picture.
The other way would be that the user clicks on the map. Then the Airspaces tab shows a graphical vertical representation at that specific point. Note that overlapping airspaces are shown aside like the FIR-UIR depiction as well as Zurich CTR 1 and Dubendorf CTR because they overlap as well. Also airspaces are integrated into the standard airspace structure to create a "final" depiction.
Hovering or clicking above one of these airspaces displays all information about that specific airspace like the current implementation. This could be also expanded to show meteorological minimums like cloud separation.
Also a similar style could be implemented later on in #219. Because of this it should be a reusable solution, but I haven't looked into how the Flight Plan Elevation Profile is drawn, so I don't have an idea how this could be realized.
What do you think about it? Depending on what needs to be done I could try to contribute, however I am not the most experienced developer. Also a huge thank you for this software! It's a shame I found it only a few days ago.
Regards Benjamin
albar965
smitty97
Several options: