Rwy20 wrote:
OK, then it’ll be the 1 free month for Garmin Pilot. No way I’m paying one year and using two weeks.
You can also get one free month using ForeFlight.
NCYankee wrote:
Sectionals, TACs, IFR Low, and IFR high charts are available in the US and Canada. So is terrain. They can form the base for the vector maps or you can choose to display either by itself.
Excellent! Looking fwd to trying this out.
NCYankee wrote:
You can also get one free month using ForeFlight.
I don’t think I can, as a former paying customer. I had the three month subscription last fall, which suited me well (even though I could have probably done it on the one free month but I wanted to familiarize myself first with the app).
Rwy20 wrote:
I don’t think I can, as a former paying customer. I had the three month subscription last fall, which suited me well (even though I could have probably done it on the one free month but I wanted to familiarize myself first with the app).
It costs about 30 minutes of flight time….
It’s not even too much about the total cost, it’s just the feeling of being forced to pay 95.8 % more than what you will be using and throwing the rest away. And I value 30 min of flight time very high. 
And on the plane which I last flew (you saw the pictures), it’s just about one hour in fact.
Here is a better video link
Wow. I have to say: the vast majority of the advertised new features have been available to European pilots through SkyDemon for years! There’s one aspect where European GA is ahead of North American aviation…
NCYankee wrote:
Sectionals, TACs, IFR Low, and IFR high charts are available in the US and Canada. So is terrain. They can form the base for the vector maps or you can choose to display either by itself. At some point in the future, the FAA will likely shift to just providing the data and various applications will render the maps dynamically. But that is a ways off.
What does “form the base for the vector maps” mean? I actually find it much better when using a GPS if the moving map display is visually identical to the paper chart I use as back-up. I never liked achieving SA on two different maps simultaneously as I once did (for instance) with a Garmin handheld. I’ve always used ‘north up’ on Foreflight, and with that in mind never had an issue with them being non-vector, even while recognizing that vector maps add features that a digitized sectional cannot.
NCYankee wrote:At some point in the future, the FAA will likely shift to just providing the data and various applications will render the maps dynamically. But that is a ways off.
Maybe FAA will still issue paper charts for cockpit back-up and pre-flght planning. If not, it appears to me that in addition to my primary iPad Mini, I’ll be using an iPhone running Foreflight simultaneously as backup, instead of a paper chart as I do now. That has its pluses and minuses – I do have the iPhone running in the cockpit now, usually with whatever Foreflight route planning I’ve done downloaded to both units, but I keep it tucked away and relatively inaccessible in my pocket because charts use no power and can be handled in the cockpit with a lot less respect.
The change I am looking forward to is having Foreflight position, weather and traffic Bluetoothed over from ADS-B, as is already possible. Before biting the bullet for the Garmin GTX 345 that will do that already I’m waiting for similarly capable and Foreflight connected competitors to arise, with the hope that I won’t have to do aviation related business within the Garmin model that hooks you to them forever.
The sectional charts and IFR enroute charts are still generated by the FAA as raster graphics. The FAA recently got out of the business of actually printing the charts, they have turned that over to third parties.They are moving towards generating the sectionals and enroute charts with a data driven model, where all of the existing information is in a vector format and will be provided in a database. That allows for updates on a much faster basis than the current 56 day cycle for IFR enroute charts and a 168 day cycle for sectionals. They have done away with most WAC charts and the rest are slated to be replaced by new Sectional type charts. The original 6 month cycle for updates of Sectional charts has been realigned to match a multiple of the IFR cycle. In the future, changes that are overlapping on charts such as some class B updates won’t result in one chart with the update while the other chart lags do to a later update cycle. My guess, is that the database for the charts will end up getting updated on an AIRAC cycle for all charts, simultaneously. This can only be accomplished if the charts are vector and in a database. Vendors will still print paper charts, but cockpits and electronic flight bags will have updates available on a much more frequent basis.
With layering, the pilot can select what base and what contents to display the data. With ForeFlight, you can continue to use the existing raster charts or use them as a base or use other bases, for example using a terrain base or even a street map base. Today, ForeFlight has an obstacle database as well as a detail terrain database. There is also an aerial base that looks like google earth base and a street map base, but currently these can only be used with the internet, as there isn’t a version available for download. With the aerial base, I can see my house and the swimming pool in the back yard if I zoom to the highest zoom level.
What is the European mapping like?
The general problem with this stuff is that European mapping is all tightly held under copyright.
Vector apps like Jepp FD VFR, PFMS, SD have somebody looking through the national AIPs and they generate their own databases from that.
But almost nobody can run the “national ICAO” charts such as the UK CAA charts. These are tightly controlled and licensed to a few people.
I think the Air Million ones are available electronically via PFMS which is a big change. But Foreflight aren’t using those.
