For Plane Spotters - KML Import
Keyhole Markup Language (KML)
Sky Dolly supports KML import from flightaware.com already since v0.8.5. A detailed description about how to download free KML tracks from flightaware.com can be found earlier in this thread.
In fact, in the meantime Sky Dolly gained the ability to import the following KML flavours:
- flightaware.com
- flightradar24.com
- Generic KML
In fact, the later allows to import any KML file that has a “track” in it. However keep in mind that KML is actually not meant to be a GPS track exchange format: it is mainly designed for visualisation purposes only (most famously in Google Earth). Other formats such as GPX or IGC (popular for flight recorders in gliders mostly) are more suited to exchange GPS tracks between applications (both can be imported into Sky Dolly).
Visualising Commercial Traffic
However KML is still a very popular format among flight tracker services such as the aforementioned flightaware.com and flightradar24.com. Here is how to import those KML files into Sky Dolly:
- Choose File | Import | KML
- Choose the format, one of
- FlightAware
- FlightRadar24
- Generic KML with track data
- Confirm with OK
That’s it!
The flight becomes immeditatelly ready for replay in the Flight Simulator (because why would you expect otherwise?). It is also automatically persisted in the logbook.
But Sky Dolly does more: it automatically calculates pitch, bank and heading angles (based on the imported track data), adds “flight events” such as gear/flaps up/down (“flight augmentation”) and also lets you import the track (aircraft) to an existing (“formation”) flight.
Happy flying!