Version: We have seen this from mid last year just haven’t been able to prove it - currently reproduced on SU6 and SU7 builds.
Frequency: Consistently
Severity: High
Context: When Navigraph releases new AIRAC updates or the user changes sceneries in their community folder, the sim will often return corrupt navdata on the next use of the sim. This includes waypoints with 0,0 lat / lon, missing procedures, missing legs, potentially corrupt runway data for an airport.
This corrupt data prevents BeyondATC from working correctly as we rely fully on the facilties API.
Bug description: After a Navigraph AIRAC update the user starts a flight with Beyond ATC. In the example given in the attachments.zip, flying into LFPG.
We generate a json file for the airport using the facilities api. This json shows all of the corrupt data (LFPG - before.json).
If the user then:
- closes down the sim
- remove the AIRAC
- restarts the sim to the menu
- closes the sim again
- installs the exact same AIRAC package
- restarts the sim
The data now delivered from the same facilites API call will be completely correct (LFPG - after.json)
We believe there is some aspect of data caching or similar that is not updating until a forced update somehow makes that happen.
Repro steps:
Follow the steps above…
Use the facilities API data request in the attached request.txt file. to generate the data.
Attachments:
Attachmemts.zip (608.3 KB)
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Hello @whakamolenz
Some additional questions:
- Is the sim running when you update the AIRAC?
- Is the data incorrect only through the Facilities API? Or do you also see those issues in the EFB or avionics?
Regards,
Sylvain
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Hi Sylvain,
- Sim was closed during AIRAC update - both the initial update - and the reinstal that fixed the issue.
- The issue does appear to only be the facilites API, the user who gave us this particular example was flying the Ini A380 and could see all the correct data. We know however that FBW who do use the facilities api for some of their components have reported the same kind of issues in their aircraft.
We appreciate you picking this up!
Thanks!
WhakamoleNZ - BeyondATC
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Hello!
We are also interested in figuring out what’s causing this. Let us know if we can be of assistance! We’ve done a lot of digging ourselves, but have yet to find the culprit.
Just to clarify: The iniBuilds A380 can operate in two different modes when it comes to navigation data (see their forum, which I am not allowed to link to for some reason but just google “inibuilds a380 navigraph data”):
If the user was using the Navigraph mode, they would be 100% isolated from the simulator data. If that were the case, the observation could not be considered proof that only the Facilities API was affected. On the other hand, if the user was using the Sim Default mode, that’s another story!
We usually try to verify issues like these using default avionics, preferably the G1000.
Best Regards,
Malte
Hello @Skysail @whakamolenz
Do you think this is 100%?
I had the AIRAC 2610 update pending and dumped all approach legs fix latitude and longitude before and after installing it but didn’t receive any invalid coordinates.
Regards,
Sylvain
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Let me clarify my ‘always’ comment in the original post. Everytime there is an AIRAC update we see this happen to a group of our users. Its probably in the 1% of users (which is still a significant number). It isn’t the same user set every AIRAC update.
We will start seeing the impacts of this reported heavily over the weekend as people fly with this months update. (we are starting to see the reports already)
Is there anything you can give us to provide to user with the issue that would give you more information about the problem? I have a user with this currently broken in their setup - so we are able to reproduce it at this time.
I don’t believe so - in my initial post the airport that had the issue in this incident is default, streamed from the sim.
FlyByWire support sees a similar picture as BeyondATC. A small subset of users seem to lose a lot of enroute and terminal waypoints or navaids. It was one or two users a year ago which was put down to general weirdness, but it’s grown a bit in the last few months.
The airport sceneries deleting terminal waypoints and/or procedures is a separate issue. It is hopefully improved by moving the navdata deletion flags to a different section in the dev mode UI, but still needs addressed by the scenery developers for many existing projects.
2 Likes
Hello @here
I think I have a repro.
If I create a DevMode project that edits the coordinates of a waypoint and build it, the JS doesn’t appear to be impacted but the Facilities API returns 0 for latitude and longitude.
Although the process to replicate the issue differs, I hope the underlying cause is identical.
We’ll investigate this further.
Regards,
Sylvain
3 Likes
Awesome Sylvain,
that is great news - hopefully it does lead to a solution for the overall issue! For BeyondATC it will be a huge win for this to work reliably all the time.
Thanks for reviewing so quickly!
1 Like