Nav Display

Map, descent profile, tabs, taxi guide

The Nav Display is the in-plugin map and traffic board. It shows your route, your position, the taxi guide, traffic, airport departures and arrivals, and weather context.

Opening it#

Two ways:

Plugins -> NextATC -> Nav Display.
NextATC/nav_display command (bindable).

The tabs at the top#

Flight Plan — the map. Shows runway lines, SID, route, STAR, approximation fixes, ILS final, your aircraft, the taxi guide, and traffic.
Flight Info — text panel with your current flight state.
Altitude — vertical profile chart for TOD planning, descent gradient, altitude targets, flown altitude history, and cruise altitude change requests when available.
Airport — departures/arrivals board for the airport you are at or flying to. It has separate Departures and Arrivals sub-tabs.

Within the Flight Plan tab three "fit" buttons frame the map on the phase you want to see: Departure (departure runway, SID, initial fixes), Route (full enroute view), and Arrival (STAR, approximation fixes, ILS/final, arrival runway). Each fit mode keeps its own zoom and pan state — switch away and back and you come back to the same view.

What you can see#

Departure and arrival runway lines.
SID, FPL waypoints, STAR, approximation fixes, ILS final.
Your aircraft as an icon.
The taxi guide while on the ground.
TCAS traffic when a publisher is active, plus synthetic traffic when NextATC Traffic is running.
Weather radar returns when X-Plane exposes the native radar texture and there is weather to show.
SID/STAR overlays during runway/procedure selection (preview mode).
Airport board rows with flight, simulator-local time, origin or destination, parking, runway, and status.

3D wireframe view#

Use the single 2D/3D button below the zoom controls. 3D turns the same map into a spatial operational view: airport, runway and apron geometry remains the horizontal reference, while controlled aircraft and their routes are placed vertically relative to airport elevation. An airborne aircraft begins at its observed current altitude. The route then uses published SID/STAR constraints, assigned initial and cruise altitudes, and the arrival runway elevation wherever those values exist. Missing altitudes are filled only as display estimates, using aircraft-category climb/descent performance and the available distance, including a stabilized final approach; the display distinguishes estimated portions from known altitude references.

The scene represents the route's expected vertical shape, not an extra clearance and not a prediction of an exact future trajectory. It does not change the flight plan, ATC state, aircraft movement, or autopilot. External TCAS targets remain neutral observed positions without an invented model, route, procedure, or intent.

During a conflict, both involved aircraft pulse red; the concise label remains only on the aircraft told to stop. Other transient radio events retain the same addressed-aircraft pulse, action color, and five-second lifetime as in 2D.

The view is a schematic map, not a terrain or scenery render. Use left-drag to pan, right-drag to orbit, the wheel to zoom, and click an owned aircraft or service vehicle to select it and focus its camera. Synthetic taxi guides and car/tug routes retain the same operational timing and descriptions as the 2D map.

Controls#

Mouse wheel — zoom in/out on the map.
Mouse drag — pan.
User or synthetic aircraft marker — click either one to select that aircraft's camera. Only the user aircraft can be repositioned: hold its marker for about half a second, then drag it to the new position.
Tab buttons at the top — switch tabs (Flight Plan / Flight Info / Altitude / Airport).
Departure / Route / Arrival fit buttons inside the Flight Plan tab — re-frame the map.
Airport board rows — click an active synthetic or TCAS aircraft to move the camera to that aircraft's cockpit view.

The window position is saved across sessions.

Altitude tab#

The Altitude tab is a vertical-profile planning view. It shows where the plugin expects Top of Descent (TOD), how much altitude remains to lose, the target/intercept altitude, terrain margins, ATC cleared altitude, and the aircraft's flown altitude trace.

The top boxes mean:

Distance to TOD — distance from your current position to the Top of Descent point. This is the distance you still fly before starting descent.
TOD to target — descent segment distance from the TOD point to the managed approach or intercept altitude using the selected profile. It is shown on the planned descent line with the descent gradient.
toLose — altitude still to lose.
Route / Direct — remaining route distance compared with direct distance to the destination.
Profile — selected descent profile and vertical speed, in feet per minute (fpm). Presets are aircraft-category profiles such as LIGHT, MEDIUM, HEAVY, and SUPER. Use < and > to switch preset profiles; use - and + to change the vertical speed in 50 fpm steps. A non-preset value is shown as CUSTOM; if the value matches a preset again, the preset name returns. The controls are disabled after TOD is reached or passed. The default preset rates are LIGHT 800 fpm, MEDIUM 1500 fpm, HEAVY 1800 fpm, and SUPER 2000 fpm.
Phase — current descent phase, for example before TOD or approach descent.

Descent gradient is not another descent speed. It is the vertical path steepness, measured in feet per nautical mile (ft/NM):

descent gradient = altitude to lose / distance available

It relates to vertical speed and ground speed as:

vertical speed fpm ~= descent gradient ft/NM * ground speed kt / 60

So Profile 1800 fpm is the selected vertical speed used for the TOD calculation, while Descent gradient 559 ft/NM is the resulting path steepness for the available distance and current speed assumptions.

On the chart, the planned descent line shows the computed vertical path. Horizontal labels show important references such as cruise altitude, cleared altitude, transition/intercept altitude, safe floor, and maximum terrain. The thin flown-altitude trace records your aircraft's altitude history from liftoff, even if the Nav Display was closed at the time.

If the arrival path is still pending, Distance to TOD and TOD to target are shown as estimates. They are recalculated when the arrival path becomes available or when you change the descent profile before TOD.

Preview overlays#

When you open the departure or arrival runway dialog with On Screen Preview enabled, hovering a SID or STAR draws it on the Nav Display temporarily. Click to commit the selection and the preview becomes the active route.

FMS#

Choose Program NextATC route into X-Plane FMS in the flight plan dialog to write the filed route into X-Plane's FMS where the aircraft supports it. The same row also offers reading the existing FMS route or leaving it untouched; see Flight Plan. If Insert Approximation points in FMS is also enabled, generated approach helper fixes are included in the programmed route.

Taxi guide#

The green line on the ground is the active taxi route. It updates as the flow advances (gate to holding point, crossing to runway, runway exit to parking).

If you do not see the taxi guide on the ground:

Draw taxi guide on ground is on in Options.
The airport has usable taxi-network data.
You are actually taxiing (not parked with engines off, not airborne).

"The Nav Display does not show"#

The plugin is started.
You opened the right window — there are multiple plugin windows.
It may be on a different monitor. See Options -> NextATC Windows Monitor.

"Zoom and pan keep resetting"#

Zoom and pan state is kept per fit mode (Departure / Route / Arrival) inside the Flight Plan tab. Switching to a different fit mode and back restores the last view of that fit mode. Use the fit controls to reframe the map. For a window outside the visible monitor area, check the Windows Monitor setting in Options; closing the window is not a documented reset of map state.

"I see no weather radar"#

Weather radar depends on X-Plane's native radar datarefs and weather state. With clear weather, unsupported weather sources, or aircraft/sim states that expose no radar texture, there is nothing to draw.

Flow tab#

The Flow tab shows the runway configuration in use: the selected flow, the source of the departure and arrival choice, the observed wind, the departure and arrival runways in use, and each runway marked DEP IN USE, ARR IN USE or NOT IN USE. When you filed a different runway with Override departure runway, the tab shows Operating mode: filed departure override, marks your runway OWN FILED DEP OVERRIDE and lists the base X-Plane flow separately.

Airport board: "boarding", "gate closing", "delayed"#

A parked synthetic departure shows boarding, gate closing when it is within 10 minutes of its scheduled departure time, or delayed. These are traffic statuses, not instructions to your aircraft.

Cleared altitude and the radio#

The Altitude tab shows your aircraft altitude next to the cleared altitude. The radio transmission is authoritative: follow the altitude that ATC transmits and you read back.