Licences & Attribution

XPGuard is freeware, built on other people's work. This page names that work, the licence each part is used under, and — where a licence requires it — carries the notices and licence texts that must travel with the data we serve.

1. Airport geometry — X-Plane Scenery Gateway

XPGuard's airport layouts come from apt.dat, the airport database shipped with X-Plane 12 as Global Scenery / Global Airports. That pack is an extract of the X-Plane Scenery Gateway, where volunteer scenery artists model the world's airports. The pack's own README states that the airport scenery packs in it, and all packs uploaded to the Gateway, are licensed under the GNU General Public License, version 2.

"…licensed under the terms of the GPL 2.0" — X-Plane 12, Global Scenery / Global Airports / README

What we take from it, and where it surfaces

• Airport surface geometry — pavement, painted lines, runways and taxiways. Served as-is (re-encoded as JSON, same coordinates) by GET /api/airport/:icao, and drawn as the base diagram in the map editor.
• Automatically extracted stop bars — at airports nobody has mapped yet, we derive candidate hold-short bars from apt.dat's taxi-routing rows (row 1202) and name each one after its taxi edge. These are served to the sim plugins by GET /api/nearest.
• Runway and threshold data — used to compute Takeoff Hold Light positions and to decide which runway a stop bar protects.

Attribution

The airports you fly with XPGuard were surveyed and modelled by the X-Plane Scenery Gateway contributors. The geometry is theirs; XPGuard adds only the lighting layer on top. Airport data © the respective Gateway authors, licensed GPL-2.0. XPGuard is not affiliated with or endorsed by Laminar Research.

Warranty disclaimer

The GPL-licensed material described above is distributed WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See sections 11 and 12 of the licence for the full terms. XPGuard is a simulation aid for VATSIM. It is not for real-world navigation.

2. Contributor-drawn maps

Most published XPGuard maps are drawn by hand by volunteer contributors in our web editor, then reviewed by a moderator before publication. Where a contributor drew on top of the apt.dat diagram, the result builds on the Gateway work above. Where a map was captured from a third-party add-on scenery (Microsoft Flight Simulator sceneries in particular), the underlying airport is the scenery publisher's work and XPGuard stores only the light positions our contributor placed.

Contributors submit maps on the understanding that they may only trace sources they are permitted to trace. If you believe a published map was derived from material you own, write to [email protected] and we will take it down while we look into it.

3. Map imagery

OpenStreetMap and Google layers are shown as a backdrop for orientation. No OpenStreetMap geometry is ingested into XPGuard maps, and the Google layers are available only to the map review team, for checking a submission against imagery.

4. Open-source components

5. Trademarks

X-Plane is a trademark of Laminar Research. Microsoft Flight Simulator is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation. VATSIM is a trademark of the VATSIM Network. EuroScope and vatSys are the property of their respective authors. XPGuard is an independent community project and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by any of them.

6. Questions and takedowns

If something on this page is wrong, incomplete, or if you hold rights in material we serve and want it removed, contact [email protected]. We would rather fix an attribution than argue about one.