Not following RAD

Hi,

Simbrief is not following the RAD document for Dutch airports.
I’ve got a few examples:
OEJN - EHAM, given route: MIGD1V MIGDA L677 CVO NOZ ANTAR UN133 KPC UN137 SKP UL617 MAKED LONTA UL608 DOLEV OBISA VBA GBG LAMSI L604 RELBI L602 RKN RKN2A
But RKN is only valid for flights cruising below FL195 or is on ATC descretion. This pilot had his final leg at FL380…

LICA - EHAM, given route: ARBU7R ARBUM M620 SOR PRU UNIMI L12 MOGTI P66 KPT L608 RIDSU T881 ROLIS OBOKA RKN RKN2A
Same thing as above, RKN is invalid

It seems to struggle with the REKKEN DME (RKN)…

From the RAD:

Also from RAD, which seems to be colliding with the earlier restriction, as this tells RKN is one of the mandatory FIXES for traffic arriving EHAM:

Could this be solved (RKN not given to flights from east that should use NORKU)? RKN is allowed for example EDDK and EDDL, but not OEJN if above FL195…

Given routes are all first suggestion!

Hi,
nice to see you here too :slightly_smiling_face:

If nobody created the IFPS route, there’s only a small chance Simbrief will give you a valid route (even more if other users take the routes you listed above). The RAD is quite complicated to implement.

Simbrief told everyone they did implement it a while ago

Hi @olafie ,

From the RAD support blog post:

To summarize, SimBrief currently supports RAD in terms of appendixes 2, 3, and 4. While the remaining RAD appendices are a bit more challenging to parse accurately, we are continuing to investigate ways of improving SimBrief’s route suggestions, including by parsing and adhering to more RAD appendices.

Appendices 2, 3, and 4 have been renamed since then to Annex 1, Annex 2A, and Annex 3B. These are currently the only ones that SimBrief parses. It’s extremely difficult to program a parser for the other Annexes, since they appear to be human-written (the way they are written varies widely, they often contain typos, and they generally have many more restrictions in them).

Another factor is that Eurocontrol does not allow access to their flight planning APIs for flight simulation tools like SimBrief. Real world airlines and tools use these APIs when flight planning, but we have no such luxury. Even with these APIs, airline dispatchers still need to manually intervene to find a valid route in many cases. To expect that SimBrief will get this right 100% of the time, fully automatically, without access to Eurocontrol’s APIs is basically impossible unfortunately.

The best we can do is continue to fine tune things. Historically, controllers on VATSIM like to blame SimBrief for basically every “bad” route, but the reality is most flights on VATSIM use SimBrief these days. Even if SimBrief plans a good route 90% of the time, everyone focuses on the bad ones of course. Over time we’ve gradually improved things, and will continue to do so, but as I said it’s never going to be perfect.

There is a system in place now for authorized users (people with knowledge of the RAD restrictions, VATSIM controllers, etc) to submit routes to the SimBrief database. If you are interested in contributing, let me know and I will send you the required info.

Best regards,

3 Likes

Hi,

Thank you for your long and detailed answer. Could you send me the info to participate?

A very nicely detailed post, maybe it could/should be added to a FAQ somewhere?

Regards,

Tim

Very good idea, i would like to participate.