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Development Suggestion - France ICAO IGN map 1/500000


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dvah
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Tim Dawson - 12/16/2025 11:19:20 AM
We've never been interested in integrating other people's paper charts into SkyDemon. Like you say, there are many products that do offer that.

If there is a specific aeronautical entity on a paper chart that you believe should be included in SkyDemon charts, do feel free to suggest it here.

I get it. The SD map is beautiful and it would change the experience. Why I'm saying this, is that depending where one decides to fly in France, it is not possible to fly only with SD and the paper map has to be ready somewhere for cross check. Some other apps propose the official French ICAO map so that a cross check is possible during planning or during the flight. Anyway, it's a small thing and I'm happy to fly with the paper map next to me as SD brings so much more than ICAO map. 

Another thing that would be actually even better is to be able to link the Restricted and Prohibited airspaces on the map (in France again) with their definitions and details in the document 5.1 (section "enroute" in the Civil AIP database). Sometimes, we need more details and we have to manually look and search in the document for radio frequencies and the activation date and times. You already do it superbly with the SUP-AIP with temporary TRA. 

pgroell
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One may prefer one chart style or the other, I am quite happy with Skydemon Ground Cover.

One information missing on SD charts and that is available exclusively on the France OACI 1/500 000 chart is the minimum overflight height as France is differing from ICAO and SERA.

This has already been brought to the attention of Skydemon (http://forums.skydemon.aero/Topic37060.aspx#37062), unfortunately there is no possibilty to add this information to the SD charts.



KimW
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France is an interesting VFR airspace for sure. I personally like the way SD present the airspace and think the vector map graphic has many advantages to declutter, but resulting in PDF maps not being a feasible option for SD.

For gliding I work with XCSoar an open source product, they give the option to adjust visibility and coloring of each airspaces type in the settings. I'm not in need of this, but if SD were to offer more user customization, this potentially could be a way to go, to ensure the benefits are not diminished.

Just a thought. 

lve0200
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KimW - 1/11/2026 4:22:14 PM
France is an interesting VFR airspace for sure. I personally like the way SD present the airspace and think the vector map graphic has many advantages to declutter, but resulting in PDF maps not being a feasible option for SD.

For gliding I work with XCSoar an open source product, they give the option to adjust visibility and coloring of each airspaces type in the settings. I'm not in need of this, but if SD were to offer more user customization, this potentially could be a way to go, to ensure the benefits are not diminished.

Just a thought. 

I'm not sure, if this discussion gets off track?! I just wanted to suggest, adding the IACO Airspace annotation into SD maps, because these are IMHO easier to spot, than the narrow text inside the boundaries. In almost every answer I get the impression that you believe, I wanted to kill the SD maps.

grahamb
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lve0200 - 1/11/2026 4:28:20 PM
KimW - 1/11/2026 4:22:14 PM
France is an interesting VFR airspace for sure. I personally like the way SD present the airspace and think the vector map graphic has many advantages to declutter, but resulting in PDF maps not being a feasible option for SD.

For gliding I work with XCSoar an open source product, they give the option to adjust visibility and coloring of each airspaces type in the settings. I'm not in need of this, but if SD were to offer more user customization, this potentially could be a way to go, to ensure the benefits are not diminished.

Just a thought. 

I'm not sure, if this discussion gets off track?! I just wanted to suggest, adding the IACO Airspace annotation into SD maps, because these are IMHO easier to spot, than the narrow text inside the boundaries. In almost every answer I get the impression that you believe, I wanted to kill the SD maps.

The original post in this thread was requesting inclusion of the FR ICAO 1:500000 chart. This is not doable as it wouldn't support the vector based SD charting methodology and many feature would be lost.

I think it might have been clearer to us all if your first post had been more specific about suggesting an additional way of labelling airspace, in conformance with ICAO. Some of the narky comments might have been avoided.

Tim Dawson
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The first post in the thread asked for a specific paper chart to be included in SkyDemon, which isn't going to happen. When I asked if there was a specific type of aeronautical information desired, I was thinking we might be missing something, which from the following comments, I don't think we are in this case. If I understand it correctly, it's a request for a specific type of airspace labelling.

The comparison screenshot posted is SkyDemon using the DFS chart style, which is absolutely not a good representation of the clarity of SkyDemon's charts. For that, you should use one of the SkyDemon chart styles.

Having said that, the SkyDemon chart styles will not give you a different type of airspace labelling. There's nothing wrong with asking for that kind of labels, and this thread will serve as a good place for people to debate the merits of us including them. They're large and blocky, and better suited to manual layout by a cartographer - as would happen in a static paper chart - than to automatic layout by a computer, as is necessary in the dynamic SkyDemon environment. SkyDemon's charts are designed to be visually assimilated with a combination of the main main, virtual radar and What's Here inspection.

Personally I don't like the blocky ICAO labels; I was initially confused trying to interpret the posted screenshot as I thought there were two conflicting labels about one piece of airspace, until I spotted a line connecting one of them to the actual piece of airspace it was labelling.

dvah
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Tim Dawson - 1/12/2026 10:49:53 AM
The first post in the thread asked for a specific paper chart to be included in SkyDemon, which isn't going to happen. When I asked if there was a specific type of aeronautical information desired, I was thinking we might be missing something, which from the following comments, I don't think we are in this case. If I understand it correctly, it's a request for a specific type of airspace labelling.

The comparison screenshot posted is SkyDemon using the DFS chart style, which is absolutely not a good representation of the clarity of SkyDemon's charts. For that, you should use one of the SkyDemon chart styles.

Having said that, the SkyDemon chart styles will not give you a different type of airspace labelling. There's nothing wrong with asking for that kind of labels, and this thread will serve as a good place for people to debate the merits of us including them. They're large and blocky, and better suited to manual layout by a cartographer - as would happen in a static paper chart - than to automatic layout by a computer, as is necessary in the dynamic SkyDemon environment. SkyDemon's charts are designed to be visually assimilated with a combination of the main main, virtual radar and What's Here inspection.

Personally I don't like the blocky ICAO labels; I was initially confused trying to interpret the posted screenshot as I thought there were two conflicting labels about one piece of airspace, until I spotted a line connecting one of them to the actual piece of airspace it was labelling.

Clear. No IGN map in order to keep the clarity of the vector map. 

--> We'll just continue to report any discrepency with the IGN map in the "Charts and Aeronautical Data" discussion which should result in an SD map being as close as possible from the official IGN map. 

Thanks for your answer and taking the time on this recurring topic. 

Tony N
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One suggestion for making SD charts better, for when flying in France, is a way to depict different sizes of settlements and towns. In France there are various altitude restrictions for when flying over towns of different sizes. These settlements/towns are marked/colour coded differently on French printed charts depending on their size and population density.
I have no idea of the technicalities involved, but it would be good if SD could replicate that style of settlement/town depiction.

Tim Dawson
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I agree - that's a long-standing discrepancy and is (I believe) because there is no data, digital or otherwise, on which towns/cities have which restrictions.
GO

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