ForeFlight's single biggest flaw

Perezhr said:
Interesting. I have never noticed that.


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care to post a screen capture? I let my foreflight lapse when we moved out of its coverage area
 
Jeff,

The paper sectionals are literally overlapped and scanned. CVK is shown on the St. Louis sectional but not on the little rock. Little rock is on top, so CVK is buried "under the overlap". The airport symbol, all the info, everything. It's all missing. The magenta ring is there, but that's it. I'll see if I can get a screen shot (got it, it's attached).

It's not the only one out there either. It's just the one closest to me that I'm the most familiar with...just like Flippin's missing info under the overlap.
 

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For me, my biggest beef is not being able to turn on and see / and or "save" tracks in real time. It's actually fairly useful to me to be able to pull up Naviator on my Nexus and show the student that they aren't tracking a straight line, or that their "rectangular course" is actually not very rectangular...

Ryan
 
timwinters said:
Jeff,

The paper sectionals are literally overlapped and scanned. CVK is shown on the St. Louis sectional but not on the little rock. Little rock is on top, so CVK is buried "under the overlap". The airport symbol, all the info, everything. It's all missing. The magenta ring is there, but that's it. I'll see if I can get a screen shot (got it, it's attached).

It's not the only one out there either. It's just the one closest to me that I'm the most familiar with...just like Flippin's missing info under the overlap.
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you are right that is an issue, but I'll bet if you drop them a note it will be fixed in a couple weeks
 
JHW said:
you are right that is an issue, but I'll bet if you drop them a note it will be fixed in a couple weeks
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I was the one that started this thread. From the first post:

IMO it is the loss of information at the "overlaps" of sectionals. One example: the Flippin AR (FLP) airport info is completely lost "below the overlapping sectional". Numerous other examples of this can be found "around the edges" of sectionals everywhere. I brought this to their attention long ago, but maybe there is nothing they can do about it.
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BTW...don't take me wrong...I love ForeFlight. It just has some interesting quirks.
 
timwinters said:
But many of us hate Jepp...on numerous levels and fronts.
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+10

The reason your Garmin avionics data is expensive is because it comes from Jepp. I wish they gave the option for doing it via govt charts.
 
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If I had such a software from someone other than jepp which covered my corner of the world, I would give thanks for it and not nitpick the edges of the paper.
 
I think FF is great...and I think we'd all agree that we'd probably pay up to twice as much for it a year if that's what they asked.

I've only being using it on flights since i got my PPL last September but one thing I thought would be cool is to have a feature enabled so that if you have closest airport enabled in your taskbar thing and you click on it (meaning you need to get there ASAP) that it would change the map for you - basically append your nav log or something so that you get a line to it and maybe even the map blows up so that all you see is you and the airport on the screen as big as it can be. Maybe even throw up CTAF or Tower freq's or something to so you can quickly change.

That said, if I ever find myself in that place I'm going to my Garmin in the dash first anyway...but for those that don't have that luxury...

And I do agree that taxi / terrain should be included in the base subscription. I just upgraded to Pro last week and just got back from flying into Lubbock International for the first time today. I landed at night coming in so it was so nice to see the taxi diagram come up immediately. It was also nice to have it up while I was taxing out after getting clearance and immediately getting a visual of it based on my location was pretty valuable to me. Hopefully in the next year I'll start my IFR and then making the investment in Pro will really be worth it.
 
Ron Levy said:
If that's the biggest flaw in ForeFlight, I can live with it, since there are a lot of ways to pull the information up besides the data block on the sectional.
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X2! Having done my flight training and early flying with charts, E6B, plotter and compass, Foreflight is nothing short of amazing.
 
I think I can fairly sum up this thread with:

ForeFlights biggest flaw is that it doesn't do everything I want it to! Right NOW!

:D
 
timwinters said:
Jeff,

The paper sectionals are literally overlapped and scanned. CVK is shown on the St. Louis sectional but not on the little rock. Little rock is on top, so CVK is buried "under the overlap". The airport symbol, all the info, everything. It's all missing. The magenta ring is there, but that's it. I'll see if I can get a screen shot (got it, it's attached).

It's not the only one out there either. It's just the one closest to me that I'm the most familiar with...just like Flippin's missing info under the overlap.
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Interesting. I just checked this on WingX. They cut the chart in a slightly difference place: basically along the lat line. See screen shot. So the airport symbol is there but not the identifier (the white one is superimposed by WingX) nor the frequency info.

But horseshoe bend appears twice. So it averages out...:wink2:

John
 

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The good news is that the new FAA charts will look better. The bad news is that they're still just sectional sized, no full seamless from the FAA yet. They are providing north and south in one file, but there was never an overlap problem there as those were designed to be merged.

I suspect the reason that only Garmin and Jepp are doing not-FAA charts since there is no single datasource to build a sectional from. The huge companies with actual money can afford to create their own formats and design them to work with all of their avionics systems so they only have to do it once. For a company who only makes software for 1-2 devices at a much lower profit margin it's far easier to pay the FAA $x/yr for their scanned sectionals.

Oh, and if anyone hasn't seen the new not-scanned sectional format: http://wms.chartbundle.com/charts/t...6.8146&lon=-13189246.60429&layers=000000000B0
 
Mike I said:
Wow, I had not seen those before. Looks great! Cluttered still, but much more legible, almost like it's vector-based text.
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It's a definite improvement. They're also available at a higher base resolution. I've not yet had time to see how this impacts the size of map files for the various apps. It does make the PDF much larger for download. The format seems to compress better due to the lack of 'randomness' caused by the scanning process and may allow the various companies to use a higher base resolution.
 
ssonixx said:
I wish the menu bar on the bottom of the screen ( to navigate between FF main pages) were relocatable to the top of the screen I use my ipad in portrait and the buttons on the top of the screen are simply easier to accurately get to, whereas I miss the buttons along the bottom quite a bit.
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Same for me.

Flav
 
Inability to store flight plans in the cloud and download them to multiple devices

Limitation to only 2 devices...should be at least 3: iPad, iPad back-up, and iPhone.
 
NoHeat said:
Those are pretty!

I wonder if they will require more storage within Foreflight, when they become available.
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They look perhaps vector based. Might take _less_ storage.
 
dans2992 said:
My beefs are:

1. Lack of audible terrain warning.
2. Flight plans not synced between iPad and iPhone.
3. Lack of VNAV features
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I'll add to the beefs:

1. No "Set 'OBS' and Hold" (Actually prefer "Set 'Radial' and Hold", but I digress)
2. No NRST option
3. If one has a flight plan entered and you select the Airport Icon, I think it should display either your Departure Airport or your Destination AP (whichever you're closer to at the moment) by default. I would bet that is the information the pilot is looking for 90% of the time.
4. No Split Screen
5. They haven't incorporated CheckList Pro into FF as a selectable Icon at the bottom
 
dans2992 said:
They look perhaps vector based. Might take _less_ storage.
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Well, I'm sure they are vector based behind the scenes. But the FAA is providing them as TIFF raster files just like before. However, since the colors are much smoother they do seem to compress better. A quick comparison on the FAA samples show that even at the higher resolution the compressed TIFF source files are slightly smaller. (69MB new vs 88MB old for Los Angeles)

Now, the big question will be how Foreflight and other vendors post-process them and what resulting sizes they get.
 
The only flaw ForeFlight has is that it doesn't support android.
 
drgwentzel said:
1. No "Set 'OBS' and Hold" (Actually prefer "Set 'Radial' and Hold", but I digress)
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What is it you're trying to do, exactly? You can create a route from a radial/DME fix directly to the VOR to get a line on the map if you want that...

Example: OSH225015 OSH (or OSH/225/015 OSH)

Does that do what you want it to? :dunno:

2. No NRST option
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The HUD has field options for "Nearest Airport" and "Nearest Navaid".

3. If one has a flight plan entered and you select the Airport Icon, I think it should display either your Departure Airport or your Destination AP (whichever you're closer to at the moment) by default. I would bet that is the information the pilot is looking for 90% of the time.
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Agreed!

4. No Split Screen
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What do you want split screen for? :dunno:

Personally, I like the Plates On Maps function and think it really beats the heck out of split screen. I also use the iPad in flight in Portrait orientation, so I think split screen is of very limited usefulness anyway.

5. They haven't incorporated CheckList Pro into FF as a selectable Icon at the bottom
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That'd be a good one too!
 
flyingcheesehead said:
What is it you're trying to do, exactly? You can create a route from a radial/DME fix directly to the VOR to get a line on the map if you want that...

Example: OSH225015 OSH (or OSH/225/015 OSH)

Does that do what you want it to? :dunno:
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YOU ARE A FLIPPIN' GENIUS!!!! THANK YOU!!!

Now, what is the HUD (head Up Display, right?) I don't know how to access that in FF.
 
Add to the "Wish List" the ability to set alerts, i.e. alert me 40 miles northwest of MSP or 1 minute before PANIC intersection. I use that feature in Garmin Pilot and wish FF had it.
 
LDJones said:
Add to the "Wish List" the ability to set alerts, i.e. alert me 40 miles northwest of MSP or 1 minute before PANIC intersection. I use that feature in Garmin Pilot and wish FF had it.
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Loren,

What kind of alert are you looking for? Voice, alarm, flashy screen, message on top of the map, etc? What do you use it for?
 
drgwentzel said:
YOU ARE A FLIPPIN' GENIUS!!!! THANK YOU!!!

Now, what is the HUD (head Up Display, right?) I don't know how to access that in FF.
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There's a lot of features in ForeFlight that aren't immediately obvious - A trip through the user guide periodically is a good idea and will help you get the best use out of it! Also, watch their blog, they have lots of good info about new features there when a new version comes out.

The HUD (yes, Heads Up Display) is what they call the bar along the bottom of the Map view that has things like groundspeed, track, etc. If you don't see any of that, there's a button on the top of the screen with an icon that looks kind of like a speedometer, just to the left of the favorite routes button (2 stars). Tap that to show and hide the HUD. If you want to change one of the fields in the HUD, just tap on it and choose the field you want.

Hope this helps!
 
w_privett said:
If I had such a software from someone other than jepp which covered my corner of the world, I would give thanks for it and not nitpick the edges of the paper.
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Yeah, tell that to the guy who loses an engine near CVK at an altitude too low to glide to another area airfield.

There's some really inhospitable terrain in that area.
 
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timwinters said:
IMO it is the loss of information at the "overlaps" of sectionals.
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Now that you posted this, I am realizing when I got frustrated by not being able to find airport info on the VFR map in foreflight it wasn't just me (all of the time)

Normally I would just revert to touching on the airport and pulling up the info thinking I was not looking hard enough on the map.

But I am flying into KAMN and realized its not on the map, and now I know its not just me... I AM NOT CRAZY AFTER ALL!!:goofy:
 

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For me having a single source (stratus) for ADS_B data and the use of chart folders (making the effort to get the chart) are deal breakers. I have the pro version and I use it for weather when I am below 2K feet and Wing X Pro and FlyQ EFB with the Dual 170 for cross country weather. The chart selection for the other two apps are much easier for me to use than ForeFlight's bundles.
 
♫ mama always told me not to fly onto the edge of the map...but mama...that's where the fun iiiiiiiiis ♫
 
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