EFB's: What features/functions are we missing?

[eman1200]

Would a stick shaker be too much to ask? I want a stick shaker on my tablet.

 

[TheGolfPilot]

I would really like if you could spell out a vor and it would pop up. For instance, "cleared direct Mendocino" if I typed in mendo it would be nice if ENI popped up in the short list.

Maybe that's more of a 750 request but it applies to the EFBs too

 

[gsengle]

Of course not, it's one of about 15 things you need to look at. But humidity, temp and wind profile for route of flight is a big part of picking a planned altitude.


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[NoHeat]

Lightning, along with the radar, in flight.

The problem is that ADS-B doesn't provide lightning data. XM offers it, but it costs too much.


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[citizen5000]

Lightning, along with the radar, in flight.
The problem is that ADS-B doesn't provide lightning data. XM offers it, but it costs too much.
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FIS-B (ADS-B) in 2017 will include information on lightning strikes, cloud tops, icing (current and forecast), and turbulence. The FAA is also studying uplinking one-minute automated weather observation station (AWOS) observations or center weather advisory (CWA) and graphical airmet (G-Airmet) products. https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media...y-service-adding-data-curtailing-older-notams

 

[Rykymus]

Everything everyone has listed, as well as 3D mapping, (including terrain and airspace) and an animated display of winds at selected altitudes ala Windyty.com.

FF has a good portion of its flight planning functionality in its web interface, but its a bit clunky and it doesn't have the ability to view peoples comments, which I use a lot when planning a cross country flight.

 

[citizen5000]

I gave a presentation on this topic at Sun N Fun last Thursday. I am part of the RTCA working group that is putting together all of the implementation details about the new FIS-B offerings. The statement from AOPA is almost correct. It'll include lightning, CIP analysis (not FIP) and a GTG analysis as well as a 1-hr cloud top forecast from the HRRR model. One minute weather isn't likely anytime soon, but last year I had requested they add G-AIRMETs (legacy AIRMETs are being retired) and CWAs. Appears that the latter two won't make it in the next release, but could be sometime in 2018.

The current schedule for the 4 additional products (lighting, cloud tops, icing, and turbulence) has them being deployed to a Key Site (one of the FIS-B Regional Control Centers) in September, and deployment to the remainder of the NAS (subject to FAA approval, of course) by November.

Thanks for the update. You guys are doing great work. Nothing will contribute to aviation safety more than FIS-B in the near term, especially as you improve it and it remains free to aviation. This alone is worth the upgrade cost.

 

[Frogs97]

Just looked up Aerovie thanks to this thread. Not sure how it stands up in the cockpit to my trusted FF, but that vertical weather profile is slicker 'n snot!!

 

[MD11Pilot]

I want ForeFlight Stock certicates! Alas, I asked and got a grin back with the comment..."We are a privately owned company and no we are not going public"!

 

[esorcc]

Nice. I have started to do a lot of pre-flight planning with Aerovie due to it's vertical weather profile. It's not quite ready to be a replacement for my primary EFB app, but it is an excellent app that keeps getting better and better.

Aerovie has become the weather planning tool I use most. I'm beginning to consider switching to Aerovie to replace Foreflight as my in cockpit EFB when FF subscription comes up for renewal. I'm using Aerovie with X-plane now to get use to it.

 

[JimNtexas]

TOC and TOD would be nice.

 

[denverpilot]

Nice. I have started to do a lot of pre-flight planning with Aerovie due to it's vertical weather profile. It's not quite ready to be a replacement for my primary EFB app, but it is an excellent app that keeps getting better and better.

The sad part is, that functionality (vertical weather) was available in the company-who-shall-not-be-named who sued everyone over magenta lines, years and years ago.

I've never been able to figure out if other EFB makers just never bothered to look at the competition at all, or if they were scared they'd hit another bad software patent fight by including it.

That software also allowed you to put real book numbers or other numbers of your own choosing in for climb and descent calculations (although not the crossing restriction thing you want) way back then, too. On a crappy Win98 touchpad.

Many of the features that folks asked the tablet software makers to duplicate (touch an airport for information on the airport, etc) all were in that software. It was just built on a completely sucky hardware platform.

If that company had put half the effort into moving to real tablets instead of screwing around with suing online flight planning tools that didn't compete with their stuff in the cockpit at all... they'd have been two or three YEARS ahead of even the early versions of ForeFlight.

But they didn't. Their loss.

Hmm, do you want FF to track density altitude for you also? At some point the pilot has to actually think about the flight plan.

Umm Clark... ForeFlight does DA calc with METAR temps and pressures for all airports and has since October of 2008. . See bottom item...

I agree all features of ForeFlight should be accessible from the the web (or atleast most the features).

The web planner is pretty awful.

Would a stick shaker be too much to ask? I want a stick shaker on my tablet.

I know I don't want to ask, but why do you want your stick shaken?

 

[Clark1961]

The sad part is, that functionality (vertical weather) was available in the company-who-shall-not-be-named who sued everyone over magenta lines, years and years ago.

I've never been able to figure out if other EFB makers just never bothered to look at the competition at all, or if they were scared they'd hit another bad software patent fight by including it.

That software also allowed you to put real book numbers or other numbers of your own choosing in for climb and descent calculations (although not the crossing restriction thing you want) way back then, too. On a crappy Win98 touchpad.

Many of the features that folks asked the tablet software makers to duplicate (touch an airport for information on the airport, etc) all were in that software. It was just built on a completely sucky hardware platform.

If that company had put half the effort into moving to real tablets instead of screwing around with suing online flight planning tools that didn't compete with their stuff in the cockpit at all... they'd have been two or three YEARS ahead of even the early versions of ForeFlight.

But they didn't. Their loss.



Umm Clark... ForeFlight does DA calc with METAR temps and pressures for all airports and has since October of 2008. . See bottom item...

The web planner is pretty awful.



I know I don't want to ask, but why do you want your stick shaken?

Density altitude has relevance enroute and that is to what I was referring.

 

[GeorgeC]

* Display track log on map
* Email/calendar client
* Integrated development environment
* Lisp interpreter

 

[AggieMike88]

* Display track log on map

I was thinking about this the other day. I know FF captures a track log for viewing after the flight. But seeing the bread crumbs during the flight would be a useful thing every once and a while.

 

[BGF_Yankee]

Nice. I have started to do a lot of pre-flight planning with Aerovie due to it's vertical weather profile. It's not quite ready to be a replacement for my primary EFB app, but it is an excellent app that keeps getting better and better.

Holy Cow. I'm a long time Foreflight user, and I would LOVE something like this feature. Something similar is already done with the terrain along a route in Foreflight. I've had several recent trips where this would have been extremely useful so that I could plan to get on top for the entire trip, or even know whether or not I could. Perhaps I'll have to start checking out the competition to see what exactly is out there. Got a trial of Garmin Pilot coming up. Any GP users around that can say what they like better about it?

 

[Tantalum]

seeing the bread crumbs during the flight would be a useful thing every once and a while.

I agree, seems like a useful and obvious feature to have. Maybe not for instrument flights and other general across countries where you already have a fair bit of clutter on the map, but for aerial maneuvers, training, and other stuff it would be nice to have