Data Packs

The E3X’s navigation and chart data ships as a data pack — one archive, installed once, updated when a new data cycle is published. The Windows installer can download and install it during setup; on Linux you pass it to install.sh --data-pack, or install it on either OS any time with:

g3x-core datapack install g3x-data-<region>-<cycle>.tar.zst

Download the current pack from your account page, alongside the installer.

What’s inside

A pack carries the data that makes the E3X a navigator rather than a demo:

• Airports, runways, navaids, fixes, and airways (FAA NASR)
• Airspace boundaries and ATC/comm frequencies
• Approach procedures (FAA CIFP) and current-cycle approach plates and airport diagrams (FAA d-TPP)
• Chart Supplement pages and the Digital Obstacle File
• Georeferenced VFR sectional and IFR enroute chart tiles
• Basemap detail — towns, roads, water, and land use (OpenStreetMap) — plus a worldwide airport directory and timezone boundaries

Chart tiles and basemap detail are what make a pack big — about 3.5 GB for the initial pack. See the coverage table for what’s available by region.

Not in the pack: terrain and live weather. Terrain is fetched worldwide in the background as you fly and cached permanently in your data directory; weather comes from live real-world feeds. Both work with or without a pack installed.

Without a pack

The E3X starts, terrain and weather work, but navigation data falls back to a tiny bundled sample dataset — every airport or waypoint lookup outside the sample area comes back empty. If the map seems blank or nothing can be found, check g3x-core doctor: it reports no data pack when the pack is missing.

Data cycles

The FAA publishes its data on 28-day cycles (56 days for some chart products), and each product in a pack carries its own effective and expiration dates. The pack as a whole is labeled by its navigation-data cycle — 2608 is the 8th cycle of 2026.

Check what you have at any time:

g3x-core datapack status

data root: C:\Users\you\AppData\Local\EmreliaE3X\data
pack: home cycle 2608 (built 2026-08-06T ...)
  nasr         cycle 2608     effective 2026-08-06  expires 2026-09-03 (12d)
  cifp         cycle 2607     ...
  dtpp         cycle 2608     ...

g3x-core doctor shows the same table, and flags any product past its date as EXPIRED. Expired data still displays — the E3X won’t refuse to run — but plates, frequencies, and procedures may no longer match the real world, which matters if you fly with live-weather realism or shared online traffic.

Updating to a new cycle

When a new cycle’s pack is published, download it and install it over the top:

g3x-core datapack install g3x-data-<region>-<newcycle>.tar.zst

The install replaces the navigation and chart data and touches nothing else: your settings, license activation, flight plans, and the terrain cache all stay put. There’s no separate uninstall step for the old cycle.