Australian database

[BBGLASAIR]

If there are any Aussie pilots with Skyview v.4.0 flying east of Brisbane,
please check your position when flying over North Stradbroke Is. I noticed the other day, northbound in VFR, that I was obviously over the northern part of the island, and easily confirmed with my Skymap IIIC, but Skyview depicted the island as lying approx 5 nm west of me, putting my position as well east, over water. Might be a database error??

 

[Jamie]

Hello Brian B, what database are you using, Jepp or Pocket FMS ?
If I get time, I might fly that way this weekend. Im based at YCAB. I will let you know what I find.
Where are you based ?

 

[dynonsupport]

This would have nothing to do with Jeppesen, PocketFMS, or version 4.0 of the firmware. This is in our terrain database, which is provided by Dynon and has been unchanged since we shipped SkyView software v1.0. It's just the first time anyone has noticed and/or told us.

I panned over to North Stanbroke Island, and I can confirm that it's totally missing. It's not moved as far as I can tell, it's that the main mass of land that makes it up is just not shown for some reason. Everything around it looks right to me, so I don't think it's a location error, it's an omission error.

No idea how it's possible for our system to throw away one body of land like that. All we know is the altitude at lat X, long Y is Z meters. We don't break anything down into bodies of land.

We'll look into it.

 

[dynonsupport]

So, the backstory here is that very low-lying terrain that is subject to flooding is currently treated as water, not land. That's not ideal, as this case shows.

So accordingly, terrain / water border information isn't perfect everywhere. We do want to get them as good as we can, and so we are looking into improvements to the base terrain/water database (sorry, no timeframe on that, but it's getting some engineering attention).

I should also mention that given the nature of the terrain database, we aren't abit to make piecemeal changes or "patch" discrepancies such as this one as a one-off change.

 

[BBGLASAIR]

I'm using Jepp database.  This has uncovered some very interesting aspects !!   Beware of BN CTA nearby. Thanks for the interest. Jamie, I'm based at YMUR. PM me anytime.  BB

 

[Jamie]

Hi Brian, Im still on 3.3, I was over North Stradbroke Is, for Breakfast at Dunwich on Saturday. It must be a 4.0 problem as my 3.3 showed correct data, confirmed by my Ipad with Ozrunways.
@ Dynon, any update on a fix for 4.0 ?

 

[BBGLASAIR]

Thanks Jamie. I must check out Fraser Island ...similar elevations.

 

[dynonsupport]

As far as we know, there's nothing that changed in 4.0. The database that contains water and land data is unchanged since 2009, so there's no way we can see how the software could work differently. We were able to re-create the original problem. Are you sure your system is showing North Stanbook Island fine? You can just pan over there with the cursor, you don't have to be flying over it to check.

 

[Jamie]

@ Dynon, would you have a system with 3.3 you could test with please, as I have now updated to 4.0 and have the same fault.

Im sorry I forgot to re-test before I did the upgrade to 4.0

I did test a few other local airport with lat/longs all seem to be ok so far, just North Stradbroke Is, Dunwich, seem to be wrong.

 

[dynonsupport]

Again, nothing has changed with the terrain database in years. Now, from your last post, it sounds like you're actually saying that an airport isn't in the correct geographic location?

To be perfectly clear: Because of the imperfect water/land database, it is possible that the water and land contours aren't perfectly correct in some places in the world, especially at water/land border, around islands, and similar areas. You may think that the world looks "shifted", but really, what you're likely seeing is the depiction of the area if it were in a flooded state. Now, airport locations are in a different database, so whether or not a particular place looks like it's covered in water or land has nothing to do with whether the airport appears at the correct lat/long. Are you saying there's an airport that's in the wrong place? Or are we still just talking about the water/land depiction?

In summary: Airports should be in the right place (lat/long), period, regardless of whether SkyView thinks there's water or land there.

 

[Jamie]

I hope to be at Dunwich this Saturday the 20th Oct. I will report , with photos what I find.

 

[Jamie]

Over the weekend I was able to return to YDUN. We had a smoke haze all weekend, so these photos are not so good, sorry for that 

Here im over Moreton Is, heading south for North Stradbroke.

Now im just a few NM north of Dunwich, YDUN, you can see the town out the right hand side. The airfield is blocked by my Mag compass     
Its hard to fly and take pictures by yourself  :-/

Here im on the ground at YDUN, looking East.

You can see that bottom of Moreton Is. and all the small Is around, however all of North Stradbroke is missing.

Skyview Sw Ver 4.0, Jepp database.
Note that im on the purple airfield dot from Jepp database, it seems that the landmass is missing. Maybe a basemap fault ?

 

[dynonsupport]

It's non-optimal terrain data, not the basemap or Jepp data, and we are looking into it. Our replies 3, 7, and 9 in this thread basically explain the issue (mostly post 3).

 

[Jamie]

@ Dynon, Im heading back over to Dunich in the next 24hrs, would you like me to test anything while im at YDUN ?

I hope that you might have a fix for this in the next release.

 

[dynonsupport]

This unfortunately will not be fixed in the next software release. This is an error in the terrain database and will require us to re-work these databases, which is a large task. We can't fix it in the main executable code.

We appreciate the offer for help, but we do know what the issue is so there isn't any more data we need.