Map and layers

The Layers panel

WhereLayers button in the toolbar. A dot on the button means something is filtered or switched on.

The panel is compact enough to fit a 1080p screen and stays open while you change things.

• Airports: chips for land airports, seaplane bases and heliports, and for paved, unpaved, water and other runway surfaces. You cannot switch off the last type or surface. A country picker lists each country once. Custom scenery shows only airports from add-on scenery.
• Around airport (50 nm): navaids (VOR, NDB, DME), ILS, and airspaces, with a count of each near the selected airport.
• Overlays: Weather radar, Satellite clouds, Sun-lit sky, City lights, Ground weather, Airfield lights, Flight trail, North Atlantic tracks, Sim traffic, VATSIM, IVAO.
• Range rings: sweep out from the selected airport with compass ticks. Pick the hours they cover; they resize in 15 minute steps.

Overlays explained

• Weather: live precipitation radar, with previous and next frame buttons to step back through the last hour.
• Satellite clouds: infrared cloud imagery from NASA GIBS, with Meteosat coverage over Europe. They fade out as you zoom in so the airport view stays clear.
• Sun-lit sky and City lights: the globe is lit by the sun, with city lights on the night side. Both follow X-Plane time while connected, otherwise your clock.
• Ground weather and Airfield lights: rain, snow, fog and wind over the selected airport, and its runway, taxiway and approach lights.
• Flight trail: the recorded track behind your aircraft, coloured by altitude.
• North Atlantic tracks: today's tracks. Click one in the planner to route through it.
• Sim traffic: X-Plane AI and TCAS targets while X-Plane runs.
• VATSIM and IVAO: online pilots and staffed airports, with the same pilot and ATC cards for both networks. With VATSIM on, the staffed centre and approach sectors are drawn as areas on the map, so you can see whose airspace you are about to enter.

The clock

WhereTop left of the toolbar.

The clock shows Zulu or local time; click it to switch. The badge next to it says where the time comes from: SIM while X-Plane is connected, RT for your system clock. Click the badge to switch sources. The sun, the lighting on the globe and the airfield lights follow whichever clock is active, so with SIM selected a night flight in X-Plane is night on the map too.

Basemaps and terrain

WhereSettings > Graphics.

• Map style: Dark, Light + 3D, Light, or Satellite. Dark and Light come from OpenFreeMap. Paste a MapLibre style.json URL or a raster tile pattern with {z}/{x}/{y} to add your own.
• 3D terrain raises mountains when the map is zoomed in. Terrain shading adds shading and contour lines on the vector styles; it is off on satellite because the imagery already shows the relief.
• Satellite and other image basemaps show borders, place names, road names and points of interest in the app language.
• Country, region and large water names follow the app language. Town names keep their local spelling.
• Map tiles stay sharp on scaled displays and on large 4K windows, and fade in instead of popping.

Labels over imagery

WhereSettings > Graphics > Map labels, shown for image basemaps only.

On satellite and other image basemaps, place names are white with a dark halo, countries and states in bold, water in light blue. The Map labels block lets you hide label categories (borders, countries, states, cities, towns, water, roads) and set their brightness and size. Changes apply live.

The right-click menu

WhereRight-click anywhere on the map.

• The header shows the coordinates of the point, in the format from Settings > Units, and the terrain elevation.
• Start anywhere here: begin a flight at that point. See Flight setup.
• Copy coordinates: to the clipboard, in your chosen format.
• Measure from here and Clear measurement: the measure tool, below.
• Center map here.
• Scenery, plugin and aircraft entries in the add-on manager have right-click menus too.

Measure distance and course

WhereRight-click > Measure from here.

1. 01

   Right-click the starting point and choose Measure from here.

2. 02

   Click as many points as you like. Each leg shows its distance and course, and the total is written at the end.

3. 03

   Drag a point to move it. Right-click a point > Remove point takes it out. Right-click > Clear measurement removes the whole line.

4. 04

   Start on a VOR or NDB to read the radial from that station.

Navaids and waypoints

WhereClick any navaid or plan waypoint.

The popup shows the frequency, identifier and station elevation, and the bearing and distance from your aircraft. On a plan waypoint it also shows the planned altitude. Switch on the Navaids layer to see them around the selected airport.

Units and courses

WhereSettings > Units.

• Distance (nm, km, mi), altitude (ft, m), speed (kts, km/h, mph), vertical speed (fpm, m/s) and weight (lbs, kg), each with a live example. They apply across the planner, SimBrief, airport info, logbook, flight setup and map. Wind stays in knots.
• Coordinates: decimal degrees, degrees minutes seconds, or degrees and decimal minutes.
• Course: magnetic, true or both, using the current world magnetic model. This covers ILS headings, gate headings and bearings on the map.

If the map is slow

• Turn off the approach light animation and airport effects under Settings > Graphics.
• Turn off 3D terrain on older graphics cards.
• X-Dispatch uses less CPU while it sits behind X-Plane: the map stops following your aircraft while the window is hidden and catches up when you bring it back.
• Map tiles use the system cache. The old tile-cache folder in the app data directory is no longer used and can be deleted.