ARINC 424

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Path Terminators

DO236 (for RNP RNAV) uses not only 3/23 (IF,TF and RF) arinc 424 P/T but exactly 9/23: TF, RF, IF, HM, HA, HF, FA, DF and CF.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1pI8bIOxYA

Motivation

Is it possible to import an ARINC 424-19 data within FG navigation data? is there any compliancy?

Example: I'm going to design an approach procedure (LPV one let's say); I have, as a result, an arinc 424-19 file that codes the procedure;

  1. Could I get it inside FG and make a flight test?
  2. What is the FG possibility to import such a procedure (again with arinc 424-19 file) to a FMS?

Status

FlightGear has no "out-of-the-box-support" for ARINC 424 data. We use mainly plain-text or xml formatted files for airport and navigation data, communication is carried out via documented and open interfaces.

So, to answer your questions: 1) Yes, with a data-converter (to be developed) 2) Yes, once the data has been converted

Unlike other commercial simulators, FlightGear is under active development. You have direct access to the developers either on this forum or at the mailing-list. If you need a solution for a specific problem, there is no better choice than an open system.

It might be a bit more work than just "right-click->import into FMS->Run" and will definitely require some coding.

this is not currently supported diretctly. So it would require some modifications or at least some enhancements.

In the long run, I think it would be really great if this could be supported by the core C++ source code. Simply because this is an existing aviation standard and it makes sense to support (and actually use it internally) in FlightGear, re-inventing things is a bad thing. FlightGear would certainly benefit from supporting such important standards.

For the time being, the easiest thing to do would be writing a Nasal script (FlightGear's built in scripting language) that parses the ARCINC 424 file and which converts the data to the format that is internally used by the "route manager". This should already be possible now without any C++ modifications.

Background

Cquote1.png I'm currently in contact with some one who is developing an ARINC 429 compatible interface card for flight simmers. Til now he only mentioned that it works with x-plane and fs-x, but let's see if it can be used with flightgear as well. http://l1011project.blogspot.ch/.
— crashdog (Nov 24th, 2012). Re: MD80 simulator based on Flightgear.
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Cquote1.png The website looks really interesting. There seem to be a couple of relevant articles, such as for example: http://l1011project.blogspot.ch/2012/11/avionics-bending-x-plane-float-to-bcd.html This sort of thing would definitely be possible in FG. Either by extending its generic protocol system, or by coming up with an entirely new ARINC 429-based I/O system, which could hopefully be generalied later on to support other ARINC standards.
— Hooray (Nov 24th, 2012). Re: MD80 simulator based on Flightgear.
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Cquote1.png ARINC is just about protocols and data exchange formats: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARINC_429
  • http://www.freeinfosociety.com/pdfs/technology/ARINC-429.pdf
  • http://www.davi.ws/avionics/TheAvionicsHandbook_Cap_2.pdf
  • http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~ngunton/afdx_detailed.pdf

  • — Hooray (Nov 23rd, 2012).  429.
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    Implementation

    Cquote1.png the simplest option for FG might be to add a "PropertyConverter" that transparently converts between FlightGear properties and ARINC 429 labels automatically.

    This could be largely based on C++ templates, similar to how the XDR encoding/decoding routines work for multiplayer purposes- but directly added to the property system. That should make it REALLY easy to directly get an ARINC 429 label for any property in the tree and use it later on. Now, regarding I/O - Unlike FSX and X-Plane, we also don't need to use shared memory in FG, because we have really powerful and open networking support.

    Regarding USB/RS232 interfacing, we do have a related feature request pending: https://code.google.com/p/flightgear-bugs/issues/detail?id=619

    Basically, we would only need to modify our SGPropertyNode class a little to make it possible to register "converters" for custom representations, such as BCD, BNR, ARINC 429 labels etc - this could even make our XDR wrappers obsolete.
    — Hooray (Dec 3rd, 2012). Re: MD80 simulator based on Flightgear.
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