Atlas

Map view of the San Francisco bay area

"Atlas aims to produce and display high quality charts of the World for users of FlightGear" - Atlas website

Introduction

The Atlas program lets FlightGear users display a real-time "moving-map" of their flight. Atlas is an independent software project, distributed under the same free (GPL) software license as FlightGear.

Installing on Windows

To install Atlas on Windows, download the "installer" version of Atlas from the Download Page

For example, download "atlas-0.3.0-win32-setup.exe", and run it. The installer will prompt you for the FlightGear directory. If you installed FlightGear in the default directory, "C:\Program Files\FlightGear", accept the default setting. If you don't know your FlightGear directory, you can right-click your FlightGear icon, click properties then look at the "target". Your root FlightGear directory is the part of the target before the text "\bin\win32\fgrun.exe")

After finishing the install wizard, but before running Atlas, the next step is to create the actual maps used by Atlas.

Creating the Maps

Atlas puts together the whole map display from smaller pieces of the map, called "tiles". Before running Atlas for the first time, all of the map tiles used by Atlas must be created from the scenery data installed in FlightGear. The program used to create the tiles is called "map", and it is installed automatically as part of the Atlas installation.

Depending on the amount of scenery involved, and the level of detail requested, running the "map" process can be relatively fast or slow, anywhere from a few seconds to a few hours. Fortunately, this process does not need to be done often, only right after Atlas is installed, or whenever new scenery is added to FlightGear.

Here is an example of how to run "map" on Windows:

This example uses the default FlightGear directory for Windows, C:\Program Files\FlightGear. If you have FlightGear installed somewhere else, substitute your directory in the instructions below.

Start the Command Prompt...to do this click start>Run ...type cmd and hit enter. Type...

  cd C:\Program Files\FlightGear\bin\win32

This is the default directory. If you changed it during installation then enter your directory . Now Type...

  set FG_ROOT=C:\Program Files\FlightGear\data

Now type...

  set FG_SCENERY=C:\Program Files\FlightGear\Data\Scenery;C:\Program Files\FlightGear\Scenery

Notice that the scenery directories are separated with a semi-colon (";"). Now type

  map --size=256 --atlas=C:\Program Files\FlightGear\data\Atlas

This puts the files in C:\Program Files\FlightGear\data\Atlas. If you want the files in a different location just replace C:\Program Files\FlightGear\data\Atlas with the location you want.

The --size=256 gives a certain resolution in Atlas, meaning that each map generated will be 256x256 pixels. For higher resolutions you would use =512 or =1024 or =2048, for lower resolutions you would use =64 or =128.

Therefore, to create low resolution maps type...

  map --size=64 --atlas=C:\Program Files\FlightGear\data\Atlas\lowres

The map program has a lot commands-line options. To see them type...

  map --help

MAP - FlightGear mapping utility

Usage:

 --lat=xx.xx             Start at latitude xx.xx (deg., south is neg.)
 --lon=xx.xx             Start at longitude xx.xx (deg., west is neg.)
 --size=pixels           Create map of size pixels*pixels (default 256)
 --scale=x               Kilometers from top to bottom of map (default 100)
 --autoscale             Automatically set scale to 1x1 degree tile
 --light=x, y, z         Set light vector for shading
 --airport-filter=string Display only airports with id beginning 'string'
 --output=name           Write output to given file name (default 'map.png')
 --fg-root=path          Overrides FG_ROOT environment variable
 --fg-scenery=path       Overrides FG_SCENERY environment variable
 --enable-airports       Show airports
 --enable-navaids        Show navaids
 --flat-shading          Don't do nice shading of the terrain
 --atlas=path            Create maps of all scenery, and store them in path
 --verbose               Display information during processing
 --singlebuffer          Use single buffered display
 --headless              Don't display output (render into an off-screen buffer)
 --glutfonts             Use GLUT built-in fonts
 --palette=path          Set the palette file to use
 --smooth-color          Make smooth color heights
 --jpeg                  Create JPEG images with default quality (75)
 --jpeg=integer          Create JPEG images with specified quality
 --aafactor=integer      Do antialiasing on image (factor must be a power of two)

Note 1: The map process can be much faster on some PC's using --headless option, which does not display the maps as they are being created. However, on other PC's, this causes an error, and the process will not run. Remove the --headless option if you get such an error.

Note 2: Some PC's get errors when they write program files. If you are getting this error, try Progra~1 instead of Program Files.

Run Atlas

Atlas can be run by clicking on the shortcut set up by the install wizard, or from the command line. From the command prompt in Windows, enter:

  "C:\Program Files\FlightGear\bin\win32\atlas.exe" "--fg-root=C:\Program Files\FlightGear\Data" "--path=C:\Program Files\FlightGear\data\Atlas" --udp=5500

In the FlightGear Wizard where you select settings before starting FlightGear, on the page after selecting your airport there is a check box option for Atlas, check it. In the "port" box enter 5500. If Atlas is running on the same computer as FlightGear, you can use the IP address 127.0.0.1 If Atlas is running on another computer, enter the IP address of that computer. (To look up the IP address of a computer, open the command prompt, and enter "ipconfig" as a command to display the IP address).

Once you have Atlas and FlightGear set to use the same port number (5500 by default), run FlightGear. As you fly around in FlightGear, Atlas will update your position on the map several times per second.

Keys

You can control the Atlas Map display with the following keys:

+	Zoom in
-	Zoom out
a/A	Show/hide Airports
C	Toggle auto-centering
c	Center map on Aircraft
d/D	Hide/show the info interface and the graphs window
f/F	Select next (f) or previous (F) flight track
j/J	Toggle search interface
L	Show the next downloading tile
l	Schedule/de-schedule tile at current lat/lon
n/N	Show/hide navaids
o/O	Open flight file
s/S	Save flight file
t/T	Toggle showing the bitmap overlay (yes, that's the maps!)
w/W	Close the current track (Warning, this terminates live aircraft tracking over network for good!)
u/U	Unattach current flight trac, ie start a new track
v/V	Show/hide names of airports/navaids
Space	Show/hide main interface

Enjoy Playing!!!

External links

• The Atlas website