Just learned that this wonderful software dopes NOT include traffic patterns for North America. Surprised I have not seen this mentioned anywhere before
Please consider adding this feature soonest there are a few that spend most of their sim time in this part of the world I suspect
Hi! Thanks for creating this topic, it’s much appreciated!
Please note that we use this forum category to gauge user interest based on votes. You are more than welcome to give this topic its first vote, it is allowed!
Kind Regards,
Malte
Rendering is not necessarily the hard part. Sourcing, transforming and including a new dataset into our already large amount of data is the challenge!
I hear that you are missing this right now, and I think that your reason is valid!
We show the information that we get from our source provider, and as already mentioned this means that we have the same data that you would find in ForeFlight. Since Jeppesen and ForeFlight are both US-based companies, I would assume that the lack of traffic patterns is due to the fact that they are not necessary for real operations - perhaps because the information can be found on the sectionals! For some reason, they have decided not to include them in their data, and that is why we don’t have it.If it was easy and worth it for them, they would do it. Likewise, we will attempt to do it if there is shown interest in it! The topic that you have already created in the wishlist is a great way for us to gauge this interest.
I think that this would be really cool to have. However, there are lots of other things that would also be really cool to have, which more users are asking for. I think it makes sense for us to prioritize our efforts based on community feedback!
Also - please note that you are free to share the link to your wishlist topic with any communities/friends you’d like in order to gather votes! Going by the VATSIM integration topic as an example, this seems to be really effective
A bit to unpack in that answer…
Traffic pattern information (left versus right) is absolutely necessary for real world operations. We use it to ensure a) that we follow the same pattern as the other traffic at the airport, and b) because using a left pattern where a right pattern is mandated (or vice versa) is a FAR violation.
Foreflight has that information. If you use the sectionals you of course see it there, if you use their data driven maps you have access to it through the airport information view for each airport.
The data Foreflight uses comes, in order of preference, from a) FAA eNASR, b) Jeppesen. The former is public so if your Jeppesen data really does not have it you could get it from there. But I am surprised you do not get it from Jeppesen…
Where Navigraph falls short compared to real world tools, other than not having sectional charts as an option to the simple data driven charts, is that traffic pattern information needs to be shown under Airport → Information → Runways → the information field for each runway. That is where the data is in Foreflight, whereas Navigraph does not show it.
I know that knowledge of traffic patterns is great for real-world operations. My point was that it does not seem like it was important enough to have in the map data, since it is already available from the FAA and in the sectionals. In retrospect, I am pretty sure that there is a misunderstanding here!
I was not aware that they had traffic circuit information available in a submenu, that is interesting! However, it is quite different from the European data where the patterns are published and rendered on the map directly. This is because here, the data includes more than just L/R traffic information - the patterns can get quite complex to avoid populated areas for example. Pattern vs. circuits is probably a good way to tell them apart conceptually.
As mentioned above, the “traffic circuits” that are mentioned here are not the same thing as the traffic patterns that are found outside of the US. Perhaps we can clarify this feature request slightly?
Do you want metadata about whether or not the traffic circuit around a certain runway is L/R? Or is there more graphical information about these traffic circuits somewhere, like in the image below?
I actually did some digging and it seems like we do have the L/R information in our database! If including this information would be enough to complete this feature request, please do let me know!
While we do have the L/R information, we do not seem to have TPA. That would still require an outside source.
Looks like this topic is very related!
Thanks for looking into that, and for having this discussion, I think it is useful.
I don’t want to hijack the OP’s feature request too much, I don’t know if we are asking for the same thing or not… Although I think we probably are?
I think we are on the same place with what is desired:
I think Foreflight also has a function to depict a procedurally generated traffic pattern based only on TPA, L/R, and AIM standard traffic pattern sizes and altitudes. Maybe that is what the OP is asking for? That function in my humble opinion is nice to have but not operationally necessary; US traffic patterns are simple enough that we can visualize them in our heads if we only know their direction. But, nice to have.
Now for some reason those traffic patterns are showing up! Not sure if this is coo=nnected but when I switched to night mode on a flight they sowed up. Now I can see them in the daylight mode as well. Sea apart from my not seeing them at first they now seem to be working as designed. My flying during this has been on the Canadian West Coast area and now all seems fine. Sorryfor the confusion.
John closer examination I now see that I have holding patterns but I do not have traffic patterns. Sorry for the confusion. (and failing eyesight)
No worries! Do you agree that textual information would be enough?
We have this on the list of potential VFR improvements already, so it will likely come sometime in the future! The textual information would probably be easier as a first step though, and could come earlier.
Not wanting to highjack the thread either but I made a thread that is closely connected to this one. Basically asking for a visual representation of the traffic pattern at your destination and patteren entry procedures for non-towered airports ei. Mid-field over-flight to tear-drop entry on downwind. But for the time being, at least having the traffic direction and altitude on the airport information page would be huge.
I’m not sure if I should create a new wishlist item, this is the closest active wishlist item I could find. I would like to see all of the information from the FAA supplements. I haven’t used Foreflight, but on Skyvector the information can be seen here for example.
https://skyvector.com/airport/N89/Joseph-Y-Resnick-Airport
This depicts the traffic pattern information, calm runway recommendations and other pertinent information which would be nice to have in the Reference section for each airport.
