By 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.
|
By 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.
|
By lve0200 - 1/11/2026 4:28:20 PM
+xFrance 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. |
By grahamb - 1/11/2026 6:05:25 PM
+x+xFrance 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.
|
By 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.
|
By dvah - 1/12/2026 4:23:46 PM
+xThe 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.
|
By tnowak - 1/13/2026 7:35:21 AM
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.
|
By Tim Dawson - 1/13/2026 10:19:34 AM
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.
|
By dvah - 12/14/2025 6:14:52 PM
According to the latest newsletter I've read, SkyDemon dev team is happy with the product and no feature is missing. I agree with that and I find it fantastic to fly with.
However, I can say that French pilots are missing one feature that is available in other softwares which is the official VFR ICAO IGN map 1/500000 (eg. VFR Next / Garmin Pilot).
I'm not sure it's feasible to add it in the software, but I mention it as SD competitors usually offer it. Quite sure as well that SD dev team thought about it.
|
By lve0200 - 1/8/2026 3:12:12 PM
+xWe'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. Hi, please refer to the 2 attached pictures. I find the SD way of indicating airspace extremely difficult to read, especially during flight. The IACO way is much better!
|
By erchegyia - 1/8/2026 3:30:21 PM
+xI find the SD way of indicating airspace extremely difficult to read, especially during flight. The IACO way is much better!
You might be the only person on this planet |
By lve0200 - 1/8/2026 6:32:26 PM
+x+xI find the SD way of indicating airspace extremely difficult to read, especially during flight. The IACO way is much better!
You might be the only person on this planet YOU should probably gather a bit more intl. experience, before writing such comments. IACO is an international body and its airspace annotation are not a local flavor. You can refer to here: |
By erchegyia - 1/8/2026 8:48:52 PM
+x+x+xI find the SD way of indicating airspace extremely difficult to read, especially during flight. The IACO way is much better!
You might be the only person on this planet YOU should probably gather a bit more intl. experience, before writing such comments. IACO is an international body and its airspace annotation are not a local flavor. You can refer to here: Even the latest version is more than a decade old. It was made for paper charts and is obsolete. |
By grahamb - 1/8/2026 11:17:44 PM
Tim and team do not promote their charts as ICAO compliant, so they have no need to follow those guidelines. They can concentrate on clarity, which they do admirably when one takes into account the other tools available in the product, such as filtering, the virtual radar and the What’s Here pop-up.
|
By grahamb - 1/9/2026 3:45:12 AM
A genuine question to Ive0200 - have you tried any of the other SD chart styles? You might find that one of them suits you better.
|
By lve0200 - 1/9/2026 11:40:24 AM
+xA genuine question to Ive0200 - have you tried any of the other SD chart styles? You might find that one of them suits you better. Dear grahamb, I'm using SD since several years and I agree "It's a great tool" and I selected it over SDVFR and others. So far so good. I have sometimes the impression, as soon as one suggests a new feature/change, a crowd of "defenders" stands up, crying that SD is the most beautiful tool of the world, as if the author wanted to badmouth the tool. I'm using the DFS map style of SD. But! I REALLY liked the IACO airspace annotation. May be you guys in UK don't need it, because in your country you don't have such a crazy stacking of restricted airspaces, as many European countries have. Take a look at Belgium or France for example. Tim was suggesting that people could use this thread suggesting things they miss from IACO charts, rather than reproducing them. That's what I did, nothing else! What's bad adding this annotation (since its recommended by EuroControl) into the e.g. DFS map style, which is too me the closest to IACO standards.
|
By dvah - 1/9/2026 3:57:20 PM
+xWe'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.
|
By pgroell - 1/9/2026 4:48:49 PM
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.
|
|