Aviation, terrain and weather display system

A method of displaying terrain, weather and aviation information related to an aircraft in response to a user's input, comprising the steps of:

• receiving the user's input including location information;
• identifying a location of the aircraft;
• retrieving terrain data from a terrain database;
• retrieving map data from an aviation map database;
• retrieving weather data from a weather database;
• retrieving airplane specific data from an airplane specific database;
• retrieving route data from a route database;
• and
• receiving real-time information from a plurality of sources to update the weather database and the air traffic database;
• based on the user's input, determining a position and heading of an airplane over the terrain based on the route database;
• computing terrain information, weather information and aviation map information relative to the airplane and computing and displaying flight parameters associated with the airplane using the airplane specific database;
• and
• displaying flight information in a three-dimensional format including iconic representations of terrain information, weather information and air traffic information.

A method of translating air traffic information from a first database having a first format and converting the air traffic information to a second database having a second format, said method comprising the steps of:

• receiving air traffic information from the first database in the first format;
• associating keywords in the first format with keywords in the second format;
• identifying locations, speeds, and directions in the first format and converting the locations to latitude and longitude, speeds to knots, directions into degrees of azimuth, planned routes into vectors;
• and
• storing the keywords in the second format and locations, speeds, directions and planned routes in the second database in the second format.