The Radar Map (ATC Display View)

Summary: A map style that looks like an air traffic controller’s radar display: a black scope, a thin coastline, radar targets with heading lines, bare data blocks, and airspace drawn as coloured outlines.

The Radar map style gives the whole Interactive Map the look of an air traffic control radar display, like the one a controller at Ronaldsway sent us. Pick it with the monitor icon in the basemap switcher, alongside Street, Dark, Satellite and Terrain. Everything else on the map works as usual; only the look changes.

The scope

A black background with a thin grey-blue coastline, dashed national borders, and runways once you zoom in to about county level. There are no roads, land colours or place names, so traffic and airspace stand out. It is drawn from the same map data as Street and Dark.

Aircraft

Aircraft become radar targets instead of plane shapes:

• Amber square — civil aircraft.
• Cyan diamond — military aircraft.
• Orange — a live QRA scramble.
• Red, ringed and blinking — a transponder emergency.
• Grey — on the ground.

A short line ahead of each target shows the direction it is heading, and grows longer the faster it is going. With Labels on, the data blocks become bare yellow-green text with no box, as on a real display. They still follow your choices of what to show, how many lines and above or below: see Customising the Aircraft Data Block.

Airspace and other overlays

Turn on airspace, airways, danger areas or any other overlay as usual. On the Radar map they are drawn as thin outlines in display colours, with almost no fill: reds and oranges become red (danger and military areas), blues become cyan (controlled airspace, sectors), purples become violet, and so on. Switch back to another map style and every overlay gets its own colours back.

Good to know

• Radar has no light or dark version, so it stays until you pick another style, and it is remembered next time.
• It is not the Aircraft Radar View, which is a separate pop-out sweep scope opened from the button stack.
• Aircraft colours on the Radar map mark civil, military, QRA and emergency only; switch to another style to see the usual colour for each type of aircraft.