Maps

Cumulus uses the following sets of maps:

• Ground and Terrain Maps with streets, highways, cities, rivers, lakes, ... and terrain data with elevation information. These cover the entire world. The maps are to be found in the KFLog Map Room. Cumulus is able to download all the map files that you need. See Map-Settings for more information.
• Airspace: Cumulus only supports the OpenAir file format for airspace structures. Please search the Internet for files of the region where you fly. Addresses where you can - maybe! - find information:
  • Soaring Services - Airspace
  • Airspace Data Germany published by the DAeC
  • the AIP of the country you are interested in.
• Airports, Airfields and Outlanding Points: These data are read from the Welt2000 data base. See here for more information.

The maps can be installed in two different places:

• In $HOME/Cumulus/maps (Desktop) or in $HOME/MyDocs/Cumulus/maps (Maemo). These are the default locations.
• Anywhere else. On a PDA you should use an MMC card if possible, because the internal file system is often limited in its capacity.

At the first startup on the Nokia Internet Tablet, Cumulus itself tries to discover the best location for storing the map files. The following places are checked for existence in chronological order:

• /media/mmc1/Cumulus
• /media/mmc2/Cumulus
• /home/user/MyDocs/Cumulus

Please note! The map files have to be stored in different subdirectories under the root map path.

• The ground and terrain data files have to be put into a subdirectory called landscape.
• The airfield files have to be put into a subdirectory called airfields.
• The airspace files have to be put into a subdirectory called airspaces.

If you want to install the maps elsewhere than the known locations, you must give the path to the new map root directory in the Map Settings configuration page (Setup->General setup->Map Settings). Use the Maps button to navigate to the appropriate root directory under which the expected maps' subdirectories are to be found.

Only load the airfields and the airspace maps for the area you need. This will make Cumulus faster and save runtime memory. If you experience memory problems running Cumulus, you can choose not to install certain map sets. You could, for instance, skip the terrain maps. This will disable the display of terrain features (the isolines) but it will also save memory and reduce the time used for map loading and drawing. It is advisable to use at least the Ground maps because otherwise you will end up with a blue background, which is not very helpful for navigation.

The maps you install are not projected. This work is done on loading. Because this is a computationally complex operation, the resulting maps are stored again with a .kfc or .txc extension. For many maps, these files are a bit smaller than the original files. The next time Cumulus needs to load the file, it first tries to load this compiled file to improve speed. In the Map Settings page you can modify the behaviour of Cumulus for map projection and map compilation.

OpenAir SUA map files

Cumulus supports the commonly-available OpenAir SUA file format for airspaces. Just put the map files in the subdirectory airspaces and make sure they have the .txt extension written in lower-case letters.

In addition to the OpenAir files themselves, you can add a file to configure the mapping of airspace types from the OpenAir file to the types Cumulus uses. Cumulus recognizes the following types:

• AirA
• AirB
• AirC
• AirD
• AirE
• AirF
• ControlC
• ControlD
• Danger
• Restricted
• LowFlight
• Tmz
• GliderSector
• WaveWindow

Example: Sourcefile=openair.txt, Mappingfile=openair_mappings.conf

The mapping file must be placed in the same directory as the OpenAir file. The syntax used in the file is simple. Lines starting with # or * are ignored and can be used for comments. Empty lines are also ignored. The rest of the lines should contain entries in the form key = value, one entry per line. The key is the airspace type in the OpenAir file you wish to map, and the value is the corresponding Cumulus type you wish to assign. The default mappings are:

• A = AirA
• B = AirB
• C = AirC
• D = AirD
• E = AirE
• F = AirF
• GP = Restricted
• R = Restricted
• TRA = Restricted
• Q = Danger
• CTR = ControlD
• TMZ = Tmz
• GSEC = GliderSector
• W = WaveWindow

You only need to define the values you actually want to change in the file. These instructions will overwrite the default mappings.

Example: CTR=ControlC

This statement changes the assignment ControlD to ControlC.

Remember that the mappings are case-sensitive!

Usage of Welt2000 airfield and outlanding data

For airfields and outlandings, Cumulus uses the Welt2000 data base. These data were originally compiled by Michael Meier (known as Milomei) as one big file WELT2000.TXT found here.

Cumulus can download this file. See under Settings - Airfields for how to do that.

The Welt2000 file is installed in the subdirectory airfields. It must have the name welt2000.txt. Because a Welt2000 file covers the whole world, the amount of data to be read in must be limited to only that required. Cumulus provides for this in two ways:

• Filtering by countries or by a radius around your home position, as defined in the configuration setup for Airfields.
• Filtering by countries defined in a configuration file with the name welt2000.conf. See below for how to do that. This is an old option and should not be used any more. Please rather make your filter definitions in the Cumulus GUI as described above. Note! A filter rule setup in the GUI will overwrite the rules defined in the configuration file.

One disadvantage of Welt2000 is that it recognizes only three types of airfield (Airfield, Glider Field, Ultra Light Field), while Cumulus recognizes a lot more. This lack can be overcome by additional mapping. You can map the short names or ICAO identifiers of the Welt2000 file entries onto other Cumulus map elements in a configuration file, using the simple syntax shown below. The configuration file must have the name welt2000.conf and must be located in the same directory as the source file welt2000.txt. The file uses the following syntax:

• A comment line starts with a # hashmark or a $ dollar sign and ends with a new line.
• FILTER countries=country_1[,...,country_n]
  This line defines a country filter rule. Several countries can be entered after the equal sign in one line as a comma-separated list. The country identifiers have to be coded according to ISO-3166. If such a rule is defined, only the listed countries will be extracted from the Welt2000 source file. As mentioned above, the use of the Cumulus GUI now makes this filter method obsolete. It is possible to define more than one filter rule.
• MAP_SHORT_NAME short-name=map-element-of-cumulus
  This line defines a rule for the mapping of the short name (the first six characters from the left) of a Welt2000 entry onto a special Cumulus map element.
• MAP_ICAO icao-sign=map-element-of-cumulus
  This line defines a rule for the mapping of the ICAO identifier of a Welt2000 entry onto a special Cumulus map element.

• IntAirport
• Airport
• MilAirport
• CivMilAirport
• Airfield
• ClosedAirfield
• CivHeliport
• MilHeliport
• AmbHeliport
• Gliderfield
• UltraLight
• HangGlider

Short example of a welt2000.conf file:

# Example of a welt2000.conf file, starting with a comment line
$ This is also a comment line
#
# Now follows a country filter definition rule
# Only the countries Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic will be extracted from the welt2000.txt source
FILTER countries=de,pl,cz
#
# Now follows an ICAO identifier mapping rule
# The German airport Berlin-Schönefeld is mapped to an international airport element
MAP_ICAO EDDB=IntAirport
#
# Now follows a short name mapping rule
# The German military airport Holzdorf is mapped to a military airport element
MAP_SHORT_NAME HOLZD1=MilAirport

Please note the following! If a new welt2000.txt file has been installed, the first start-up of Cumulus after that will take a longer time (ca. 10-20 seconds) while it extracts the desired data from it. Cumulus generates a compressed file of the extracted data reuseable by its later runs. This file carries the name welt2000.txc and will be reused, as long as none of the following are changed: the original source, the configuration file, the map projection or the home position. This behaviour minimizes the read-in time after a restart.

If you make any necessary corrections to the data of the Welt2000 file, please report all your changes to the guys who maintain the source. Their email address is to be found in the header part of the Welt2000 file or at this page. We all should help to keep the Welt2000 source up-to-date and also remember to thank the guys who do this valuable work.

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