TourMaker: create KML flying tours from GPX tracks

[Garage Guy]

Many GPS units can record tracks of your flights. Then various software tools let you save the tracks, and convert them to .kml format for viewing in Google Earth. But using these tracks as a tour within Google Earth doesn't recreate the flying experience very well, because the current GE touring algorithm essentially assumes that you want to follow a sequence of earthbound waypoints.

So I wrote an tool that tries to do a little better. TourMaker takes tracks in a .gpx (GPS eXchange format) file and writes a .kml file containing tours that fly the tracks. It's not perfect... A GPS track is just a sequence of coarsely and imperfectly sampled 3D positions, and the other 3 degrees of freedom per track point needed to characterize aircraft attitude are synthesized in a simpleminded way (so the tour won't follow your RV through a vertical 8 very well ). Between track points, the tour display relies on GE's spline interpolation, which doesn't even try to model aircraft flight dynamics. GE's model of the surface of the earth will probably disagree a bit with the recorded track points (this is especially noticeable when taxiing.) Etc. But it's still kind of fun.

Downloads and more information at http://kokoro.ucsd.edu/tourmaker.

Enjoy,

--Paul

[Garage Guy]

Some folks told me that they'd like to see an example of a .gpx file and the corresponding .kml file that TourMaker creates, and I've finally got around to it. See Example.gpx and Example.kml for download at http://kokoro.ucsd.edu/tourmaker.

Example.gpx has two tracks that were recorded on a Garmin 496, and downloaded using MapSource. The first one, named "ACTIVE LOG 001", is a flight from Montgomery Field (KMYF) landing at Warner Springs Gliderport (CL35), using the 45-to-left-upwind entry that they prefer. The second one, named "13-FEB-10", is a tower enroute IFR flight from Montgomery to Brown Field (KSDM) terminating in the VOR-A approach, circle to land RWY 8. Example.kml was created from these tracks using the parameters shown in the screenshots.

Let me know if there's anything else you'd like me to add. I may be able to get around to it eventually, too.

Enjoy,

--Paul

[Guy Prevost]

That is so cool! I just converted a tour of Monument Valley. Thanks!

Guy