Moving Map

Moving Map

The moving map shows where you are over terrain, water, roads, airports, navaids and the flight plan. On the bench panel it fills the Map tab of the right-hand tab column. The instrument type is moving_map.

Reading it

Element	What it shows
Status chip (top left)	The range and orientation: 10 NM NORTH UP or 10 NM TRK UP. NO POS is added when the position is stale.
Ownship	An arrow pointing along your ground track, yellow by default. It turns grey when the position is stale.
Range rings	Rings at half and full range by default, labelled with their distance in nm.
Terrain	Shaded relief coloured by elevation, from green at sea level to white at 14,000 ft, lit from the north-west. Water is blue.
Roads	Grey, wider and bolder for bigger roads.
Rivers	Thin blue lines.
Airports	Magenta. A hard-surface airport is a circle with its runways drawn inside at their real orientation. A field with a runway over 8,069 ft shows the runways alone, and a soft field is a plain circle. Zoomed in far enough, runways draw to true size.
Navaids	A VOR is a hexagon with a centre dot, an NDB a stippled disc. The label is the ident, with the frequency at 40 nm and below.
Waypoints	Open triangles with idents, at 20 nm and below, when the layer is on.
Airways	Blue lines, with each airway's ident at 80 nm and below, when the layer is on.

Towered and untowered airports look the same today; there is no airspace or obstacle layer on the map.

The flight plan

Drawn as	Means
Magenta line	The active leg. The waypoint you are flying to is ringed in magenta.
White line	Legs ahead.
Grey line	Legs already flown.
Dashed line	Missed-approach legs.
Dotted line	Vector legs.
Racetrack	A hold or procedure turn, drawn as its pattern.
Magenta line from where you were	An off-route Direct-To.
Dashed magenta line past the runway	The extended final course, 5 nm, while the plan is suspended at the missed approach point.

Waypoint symbols follow their type: hexagon for a VOR, stippled disc for an NDB, triangle for a fix, circle for an airport, filled diamond for a user waypoint and filled square for a point made on the map. Labels carry IAF, FAF, MAP or MAHP where the procedure says so, and altitude constraints are drawn with chart-style bars: a bar above for at-or-below, below for at-or-above, both for at. Where the airport, navaid or waypoint layer already shows the place, the plan keeps that layer's symbol and ident and adds only the ring and the role.

What hides as you zoom out

Item	Shown at or below
Waypoints	20 nm
Airport idents, navaid frequencies	40 nm
Airport symbols, airway labels, flight-plan labels and constraints	80 nm
Navaids, airways, flight-plan symbols	160 nm
Roads	5 nm for secondary roads up to 80 nm for motorways

Where airports crowd together, the two with the longest runways in each patch of the map are kept.

ND mode: EXPANDED MAP

With nd_mode: expanded the map is drawn as a navigation display. It is always track up, whatever orientation says, and ownship sits 82% of the way down, whatever ownship_position says. The selected range reaches the compass arc instead of the top edge.

Element	What it shows
Compass arc	At the selected range, ticks every 5°, a numeral every 30° in tens (6 is 060).
TRK box	TRK, the magnetic track and MAG over the top of the arc, with a pointer under it. Grey when TRACKM is stale.
Top left	GS and TAS, then the wind as direction°/speed with an arrow pointing the way it blows.
Top right	The active waypoint in magenta, its ETA in UTC (HHMM.Mz, now plus WPETE) and its distance in NM. Only while a plan is active (FPLSTATE not 0); ETA and distance are left out in the VECTORS phase.
Bottom left	The map layers that are on, in cyan: ARPT (airports), WPT (waypoints), STA (navaids).
Vertical deviation scale	Right edge, from GSI, with a magenta diamond pointer. Hidden when GSV is published and below 0.5 (no glidepath). A red GS flag shows when GSV says a glidepath is present and GSI is bad or failed.

A failed value in a data block reads red XXX; an old or bad one is grey. A key fix-gateway does not define is left out.

CTR MAP

With nd_mode: ctr the map shows the same elements around a full compass rose, with ownship at the centre of the panel. The rose is at the selected range, so the range reaches the same distance ahead and behind. It is sized to fit the panel under the TRK box, clear of the deviation scale.

Using it

• Zoom: pinch, or the mouse wheel on a desktop. Zoom is continuous between the smallest and largest range on the range ladder. Buttons or a knob bound to the map step through the ladder's ranges instead.
• Pan and rotate: drag to pan; twist two fingers to rotate. Shift- or Ctrl-drag rotates with a mouse.
• Back to your position: double-tap, or tap the amber CTR chip in the top right. The map re-centres by itself 30 seconds after the last gesture.
• Orientation is track up or north up. It is set in the configurator, or switched by a key bound to the map.

Tap something

Tap a symbol and the map puts a pointer on it and opens a banner along the bottom: the ident and type, then the bearing and distance from you, the terrain elevation and any frequency. Tap where several symbols overlap and you get a list to choose from; tap open ground and you get a MAP POINT at that position.

Key	What it does
DIRECT TO	Fly direct to it. A toast says DIRECT TO <ident>, or REJECTED: and the reason.
INSERT	Insert it into the flight plan, in the nearest leg.
CREATE WPT	Make a user waypoint here, on the Flight Plan tab.
INFO	Open its details on the Flight Plan tab.
X	Close the banner.

DIRECT TO and INSERT need fix-gateway's flight-plan engine; without it they are greyed. CREATE WPT and INFO bring the Flight Plan tab forward. See Flight Plan.

When data is missing

• NO POS and a grey ownship: LAT or LONG is stale. The map stays at the last position it had.
• A layer is empty: its navdata pack is not installed, or its path is not set. The map does not say which; check Data Status.

Customizing

In the configurator

Select the map in the Panel Editor; its options are in Properties. The most used, with defaults and the bench panel's value where it differs:

Option	Default	Bench	What it does
Range (range_nm)	10 nm		Distance from the ownship to the top edge at start; to the compass arc in ND mode.
Range ladder (range_ladder)	2,5,10,20,40,80,160	2,10,50,200,500,2000	The ranges the buttons step through; also the zoom limits.
Range control key (range_key)			A FIX key that steps the range.
Zoom rail (zoom_rail)	off		A one-finger zoom strip down one edge.
Orientation (orientation)	track_up	north_up
Orientation control key (orientation_key)			A FIX key: 0 track up, 1 north up.
ND mode (nd_mode)	off		expanded draws the ND EXPANDED MAP; ctr draws CTR MAP.
ND mode control key (nd_mode_key)			A FIX key: 0 off, 1 expanded, 2 ctr.
Touch gestures (touch_gestures)	on		Off ignores every touch and the wheel.
Gesture auto-revert (gesture_timeout)	30 s		0 stays where you leave it.
Ownship position (ownship_position)	50		Percent up from the bottom; 30 shows more ahead.
Map style (map_style)	standard		nav_only drops the relief for a black background.
Terrain mode (terrain_mode)	relief		caution colours terrain amber within 1,000 ft below you and red within 100 ft or above.
Layer: terrain / roads / rivers / airports / navaids / flight plan / range rings	on
Layer: waypoints (layer_fixes)	off	on
Layer: airways (layer_airways)	off	on
Range ring fractions (range_ring_fractions)	0.5,1
Terrain tile path, Airport db path, Navaid db path, Roads db path, Water db path		the installed packs	Where each navdata pack is installed.

Ring colour, width and label position, road and river colours, the water rendering options and the gesture thresholds are in the same Properties list.

In YAML

Trimmed from the bench panel:

- type: moving_map
  options:
    orientation: north_up
    range_ladder: 2,10,50,200,500,2000
    layer_airways: true
    layer_fixes: true
    terrain_mode: relief
    tile_path: /data/makerplane-data/terrain/tiles
    nasr_db_path: /data/makerplane-data/navdata/current/airports.sqlite
    navaid_db_path: /data/makerplane-data/navaids/current/navaids.sqlite
    water_db_path: /data/makerplane-data/water/current/water.sqlite
    highway_db_path: /data/makerplane-data/highways/current/highways.sqlite

Feeding it

The map reads LAT, LONG, TRACKM, ALT and MAGVAR, and the flight-plan keys fix-gateway's flight-plan engine publishes. ND mode also reads GS, TAS, WINDDIR, WINDSPD, WPDIS, WPETE, GSI and GSV. It writes DTOID, DTOLAT, DTOLON, DTOTYPE and FPLCMD for a Direct-To, the route block for an insert, and the range index to range_key when one is set. See FIX Database Keys.

See also

• Flight Plan
• The HSI
• Flight Plan Engine (fix-gateway wiki)