Taxi Signs

Starting with X-Plane 850 (not quite beta yet), the apt.dat file will allow you to build taxiway signs into airport layouts. We’re using a simplified version of the sign-specification language from FlightGear (which shares apt.dat data) – you can read the on-going spec/discussion here.

The syntax isn’t final, but here’s a rough idea of what it will look like:

20 42.363178 -71.012238 110.0 {@R}22R-4L{@@}4L-22R
and here’s an example sign (not the same as the apt.dat example listed above):

The basic idea is: a sign has a latitude and logitude location and a heading (in this case 110, so the front of the sign is visible when parked to the east). The text of the sign is plain text – special characters are put in braces {} and special formatting starts with a @ character. @R turns the sign red, @Y yellow, etc. and @@ changes to the back side of the sign. Arrows are specified with a ^ followed by the direction, so a left-downward arrow is ^ld.

About Ben Supnik

Ben is a software engineer who works on X-Plane; he spends most of his days drinking coffee and swearing at the computer -- sometimes at the same time.

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