8flight EFB - what am I missing here?

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DaveInPA

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Dave
Was intrigued by this new EFB and claims of some sort of magical weather prediction and data consolidation magic. Downloaded the trial and playing around with it and it just seems like a very crappy version of FF with much less features and intuitive UI. I like to have an open mind and wondering if others have found it useful and differentiated from FF?
 
Eight Flight was launched by Youtube "influencer" Matt Guthmiller, who is (IMHO) one of the least responsible pilots on the internet, and who tries to monetize everything within his reach. I wouldn't touch the thing with a ten-foot pole.
 
DaveInPA said:
Was intrigued by this new EFB and claims of some sort of magical weather prediction and data consolidation magic. Downloaded the trial and playing around with it and it just seems like a very crappy version of FF with much less features and intuitive UI. I like to have an open mind and wondering if others have found it useful and differentiated from FF?
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There's a million EFB's out there, and I have stopped checking them out. All I need is a moving map with a little airplane icon to show where I am. I can take care of all the rest.
 
I test drove Matt’s 8Flight (I am a ForeFlight Premium user)…..meh. YMMV
 
There’s a big discussion thread over on BeechTalk, where Matt participates. The thread, started by Matt, is entitled, “A Better Way - 8Flight EFB.”

Being an EFB Geek I pulled it down and gave it a trial run. I’m not sure what’s “better” about it. Quite frankly, the only truly “better” I’ve seen in a while innovation-wise in the EFB world is Garmin Pilot’s SmartCharts.
 
Foreflight's weather is pretty good and they are upfront about where the data comes from... 8flight seems to promise something revolutionary without saying much about what it actually is.
 
One of the things that Matt was hyping on Beechtalk was that the radar will update every 30 seconds. Maybe it will, but maybe it won't, and I am afraid that people may take that as gospel and treat it as accurate as an in flight radar. That could be deadly, and I think we've seen people get into trouble using XM in that manner.
 
While I can imagine a future where we're running WRF on our phones and generating nowcasts in real time, I don't think we're quite there yet.
 
I didn't realize until this thread that the name of this product is a diss at foreflight. Dunno how I missed that one.
 
TCABM said:
I’d like to see where he’s getting getting the raw data from since that’s faster than the NWS radar scan rates.
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This is what he said:

NEXRAD sweeps 360 degrees at different elevation tilts to get a 3D picture of the weather. Each elevation takes about 20 seconds and there are typically about 14 of them. Essentially everyone else takes the latest complete 3D volume scan of all 14, every few minutes combines all of those from the ~150 sites across the country, spends a couple minutes stitching all of that data together and processing it (in part because now that’s a lot of data to send all at once), and so by the end of that you have data in there that’s maybe as old as 15 minutes and some that’s as new as a few minutes ago if the processing is reasonably fast.

I developed an algorithm that allows us to efficiently stitch the data together in the app on the fly (instead of having to use a big computer server-side and combine it all at once), so we just continually send each of those 20 second sweeps to the app and use the most recent picture of that part of the weather. So the newest data ends up being about 30 seconds old, and depending on coverage and the exact scan mode, the oldest data in active precip is somewhere between about 30 seconds and 2 minutes old in the worst case (and we’ll show a coverage gap if the data is somehow older than that).
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Perhaps the 30 second period is the app data refresh rate and uploads the most current data transmitted from the NWS/NEXRAD. Akin to listening to the ATIS every 30 seconds to hear the same recording until it a new recording is issued. I also fail to see how it can refresh faster than a 360deg scan at multiple tilt angles can be acquired, processed and broadcast. I gleaned from BT that Matt claims to be using regional radar raw data which may be able to be delivered faster but it would only be one or two tilts in a 30 second period. ???
 
Groundpounder said:
This is what he said:
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Thanks. Interesting and in theory it might work except that still leaves me wondering how he’s sending his data stream to the app in flight unless you have inflight internet.

Ah, nevermind, that’s exactly how he’s doing it. Though never explicitly stated, it appears you need starlink to get the proprietary data.

www.eightflight.com

8Flight + Starlink: The First Truly Live In-Flight EFB Experience

Get uninterrupted, real-time weather, radar, and NOTAM updates at 300+ knots with 8Flight and Starlink Mini. No dead zones, no delays — just live intel in the cockpit. Try 8Flight free for 30 days.
www.eightflight.com www.eightflight.com

I wonder what [mention]scottd [/mention] thinks about this offering.
 
schmookeeg said:
I didn't realize until this thread that the name of this product is a diss at foreflight. Dunno how I missed that one.
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Maybe Aftflight would be more appropriate.

I eagerly await Foreflight's release of H8Flight.

Nauga,
and Richard, petty.
 
I also would be interested in @scottd 's opinion.

I thought the postprocessing that happens when the national radar mosaic is assembled does various normalization and clutter removal steps; seems that skipping those to trade for lower latency / incremental updates / finer granularity could introduce artifacts at the edges and/or mix images from different elevations.

I always thought it would be better to disseminate state vectors that could then be propagated from the valid time to the present, e.g. with a Kalman filter, but again, we're not there yet, and that would probably be more of academic than operational value anyway.
 
GeorgeC said:
...seems that skipping those to trade for lower latency / incremental updates / finer granularity could introduce artifacts at the edges and/or mix images from different elevations.
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Indeed. The "move fast and break things" mantra of the tech bro doesn't work well in aviation, generally speaking.
 
AvNavCom said:
Indeed. The "move fast and break things" mantra of the tech bro doesn't work well in aviation, generally speaking.
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I would not characterize the proposed service as ‘move fast and break things’. What I will say is based on the public facing content says this service provides likely gives an incomplete weather picture from a strategic perspective - what is the weather doing over time and space - while also being marketed as a tactical decision making tool - where’s that hole I can punch thru?

That’s kind of a pandoras box in my opinion especially given the number of pilots that already do things in weather that an onboard radar would tell them not to do. If you convince these pilots that this is a better mousetrap, it may provide disastrous results.

Then again, that’s my lay opinion, which is why I really would like an actual weather expert’s thoughts on the tool.

That it’s reliant on a starlink connection hints at targeted a market user with the desire to put one of those things in their cockpit leading to watching cat videos on youtube instead of looking for traffic.
 
Not a fan of starlink? The cat videos I watch at 200kt are my clients on pointless zoom calls, allowing my billing meter to run up, covering the fuel totalizer running down.

I'll be amazed if there are not soon as many starlinks deployed in general aviation as ads-b in receivers. I give it 5-10 years for it to be ubiquitous.
 
schmookeeg said:
Not a fan of starlink? The cat videos I watch at 200kt are my clients on pointless zoom calls, allowing my billing meter to run up, covering the fuel totalizer running down.

I'll be amazed if there are not soon as many starlinks deployed in general aviation as ads-b in receivers. I give it 5-10 years for it to be ubiquitous.
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I have a roam account with the standard receiver... Just ordered the mini receiver today
 
schmookeeg said:
Not a fan of starlink? ….
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I’m not a fan of distractions in the cockpit. I also expect the device will become more ubiquitous in certain segments of GA. The real question is whether you can expense the airplane as an office while generating the income from starlink to pay the gas bill.

Do the other zoomers pay their pro rata share?
 
TCABM said:
I’m not a fan of distractions in the cockpit. I also expect the device will become more ubiquitous in certain segments of GA. The real question is whether you can expense the airplane as an office while generating the income from starlink to pay the gas bill.
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Damn, that is some 4D chess. :rofl: Guessing Turbotax can't generate that one :D
 
WDD said:
Formula 409 Flight would really clean up.........

2 Flight is really the root of modern F Flight........

New EFB AftFlight is just a step backwards.......
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If these are true then iFly only exists in your head.
 
schmookeeg said:
I'll be amazed if there are not soon as many starlinks deployed in general aviation as ads-b in receivers. I give it 5-10 years for it to be ubiquitous.
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dunno. i agree we’ll see a lot, but I see Starlink as more of a passenger convenience than as an in-flight tool. Closer to music in the airplane than ADS-B weather and traffic.
 
midlifeflyer said:
dunno. i agree we’ll see a lot, but I see Starlink as more of a passenger convenience than as an in-flight tool. Closer to music in the airplane than ADS-B weather and traffic.
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That's why I ordered starlink. Mainly for passenger. But also being able for ground coordination. If I didn't already have a roam plan I probably wouldn't have got it just for the plane.
 
Bill said:
If these are true then iFly only exists in your head.
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Descartes Flight will show an airport only if you think it does.

Schrödinger Flight shows a mountain and a valley in front of you at the same time - you'll never really know which.
 
WDD said:
Schrödinger Flight shows a mountain and a valley in front of you at the same time - you'll never really know which.
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So your plane is both crashed and flying at the same time. Quite the dilemma for the insurance company....
 
On second thought...
Schrödinger Flight shows it could be both a valley and a mountain at the same time
Heisenberg Flight shows both a valley and a mountain - you'll never know which is true
 
Or a mountain in a valley, or a valley on a mountain
 
Half Fast said:
So your plane is both crashed and flying at the same time. Quite the dilemma for the insurance company....
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WDD said:
On second thought...
Schrödinger Flight shows it could be both a valley and a mountain at the same time
Heisenberg Flight shows both a valley and a mountain - you'll never know which is true
Click to expand...

GoFly said:
Or a mountain in a valley, or a valley on a mountain
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It’s all relative *shrug*
 
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