Hi,
two A359 (VATSIM live traffic over the atlantic right now) are shown with different icon sizes:
Why?
Desktop charts app 8.39.0 (93de7fe), same on iOS.
Best regards,
Daniel
And just that I have posted this, it has fixed itself… both aircraft icons same size. Then I restarted the desktop charts app, and now the discrepancy is there again, but the trailing aircraft now shown bigger. Some 20 seconds later, suddenly both aircraft in same size again.
Something’s broken…
Hello! Thank you for your feedback!
This is expected, if I understand you correctly. The correct aircraft symbol is not always immediately shown due to technical reasons (network limitations). It should always be shown within 30 seconds.
Are you observing a different behavior, such as a longer duration with the default symbol, for example?
Kind Regards,
Malte
Network limitation? Charts obviously has the correct aircraft type information, as shown in my screenshots. There’s no reason why Charts couldn’t display the appropriate icon at this moment - unless I’m missing something.
I’ve just tried again, started Charts, saw both aircraft same sized, and a bit later (didn’t time it exactly - perhaps half a minute?) the SIA shrunk in size:
So it’s not even consistent. Charts is running now for a couple of minutes again and no equalization of icon size happens. Both mouse-over tags show A359 as ATYP.
The situation is a bit more technically advanced than it looks. The information that you see while hovering is not available at all times - only when you hover. It is based on your flightplan. You can tell that this is the case by looking at it while the information is loading - the aircraft ICAO type is not available until our servers have responded with your full flightplan.
The “network limitation” I am referring to is that these aircraft types are not included in every update (once per second), as that would be a waste of bandwidth. They are retrieved at a certain interval, and I believe that duration is roughly 30 seconds.
I have asked internally what the exact timeframe is, but it is sort of besides the point. There is an interval at which this information is being fetched.
I hope this provides more insight into the situation! Let me know if you want me to elaborate more on something!
Thanks, that explains a lot indeed.
Still, Chart shows both aircraft with different icons after >30 minutes of runtime. Both mouse-overs show A359 ATYP.
Aaaand just after I verified the mouse-overs, the SIA suddenly became as big as the DLH again. So maybe full aircraft info is being lost ?!
Restarted Charts, DLH small, SIA big. Checked mouse-overs, no immediate change. 15s later: DLH pops up big. So indeed, the issue seems indeed related to availability of the detail data - but still with a non-obvious delay between “having the data” and “acting upon it”.
Gave it another try. Restarted Charts. Both aircraft displayed with default icons. After ~19s, both popping up big - without me checking mouse-overs.
Perhaps it would make sense to have a very simple symbol as default, so one can clearly distinguish “there is no type information” vs. “this is really a narrowbody”. E.g. having only a very simple slim arrow (so you can see position+heading) instead of an aircraft depiction. Allows the user to trust in what (s)he sees - if you spot a narrowbody, you know it is in fact a narrowbody, also minutes later. 
Currently, aircraft are changing appearance around for no obvious (user-transparent) reasons. This is irritating.
Anyway, congrats to fixing the big problems with aircrafts disappearing in the desktop app. This is a huge improvement that enables me to really use this feature in the first place.
If you now could bring back proper icon scaling (at least as an option) so the display is really useful also in a zoomed-in airport overview… but that’s a topic in another thread somewhere. 