What do you use for 3D GPS viewing of past flights?

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jsparks

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JSparks
I recently discovered with Garmin Pilot I can export the .GPX file of my flight into other programs (web pages) to visualize the flight in a 3 dimensional moving map program. So far I have imported into Google Earth and was less than impressed. Maybe i didn't set it up correctly or something, but it didn't seem to give me what I wanted. Then I found doarama it is what I''m looking for, but I cant download the flight. Just throwing it out there to see what others use.
 
I don't do that but now that I know u can export from GP I'll at least give it a shot. I don't really see what the point is though, other than "hey, cool, look that that"
 
I did the track think in fore flight a few times, guess if I was trying to make a route to replicate, but I haven't used it in a long time.
 
eman1200 said:
.... I don't really see what the point is though, other than "hey, cool, look that that"
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:yes: Pretty much what I'm "using" it for. And a different perspective to share with the family and friends.
 
I use my imagination. The bonus is that I can make it better/worse/interesting to suit my mood. No sense in confusing things with hard facts.
 
I'm obsessed with cloud ahoy. Every now and then it tells me something useful, but mostly it just scratches the geek itch.
 
Naviator. It lets you click a recorded flight and view it in Google Earth, or on the sectional, or on a map web page. You can also replay it in Google Earth and get a Pilot's 3D View showing the ground from the aircraft's altitude you flew at. Very nice. Naviator is $34 a year and comes with a lot of great features. Only runs on Android though, so you'd have to be willing to save a couple hundred in hardware too.
 
Not only will WingX pass the data from a recorded flight to Google Earth, but you can also create a flight plan and send it to Google Earth. This is useful to me if I'm flying to some place new to help my situational awareness. It makes for a nice preview of the flight and what to expect.
 
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jsparks said:
I recently discovered with Garmin Pilot I can export the .GPX file of my flight into other programs (web pages) to visualize the flight in a 3 dimensional moving map program. So far I have imported into Google Earth and was less than impressed. Maybe i didn't set it up correctly or something, but it didn't seem to give me what I wanted. Then I found doarama it is what I''m looking for, but I cant download the flight. Just throwing it out there to see what others use.
Click to expand...

Foreflight will export track logs to Google Earth, which has a 3D view option. I just now tried it, and it took only 15 seconds despite not knowing what I was doing.
 
You can also manually insert it in Google Earth and play it.
 
paflyer said:
What's the point?
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To see, after a flight, what was the interesting object on the ground. Maybe to evaluate aspects of his flight.

NoHeat said:
Foreflight will export track logs to Google Earth, which has a 3D view option. I just now tried it, and it took only 15 seconds despite not knowing what I was doing.
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How do you get the track logs into ForeFlight, if it wasn't recording the track for you during the flight?
 
Cap'n Jack said:
How do you get the track logs into ForeFlight, if it wasn't recording the track for you during the flight?
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Is that a rhetorical question?

Anyway, in Foreflight Settings, there are two "enable" buttons, for automatic tracking, and mine seem to be on. I don't recall fiddling with them in the past, so I don't know whether I ever turned them on, or whether they are so by default. But it apparently has been tracking me. Until tonight, I never had a reason to care, and then I spent a few seconds, found that I had tracks that could be uploaded with about two finger clicks to Google Earth and then view it in 3D.

I also discovered that if you don't know what any of the buttons are on Google Earth, and you click the one that looks like dice, you are transported immediately to the far side if the Earth, where you can no longer inspect your 3D track at the airport where there was a fly-in breakfast with yucky eggs and no pancakes, but I digress.
 
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I kind of like the 3D from Google earth.....
Half Moon Bay.jpg
 
my gps altitude accuracy is pretty terrible, even with the stratux gps(which I thought would improve accuracy), so my 3d tracks don't look quite right
like this bogus drop to 275ft on downwind:
upload_2017-9-19_9-19-2.png
upload_2017-9-19_9-24-5.png
 
I did the kml->Google Earth thing once in 2012 or so with an iPhone, IIRC using MotionX. The novelty wore off quickly.
 
I look out the window and remember. . .

Smart-a** aside, I did use CloudAhoy back in the day, to see how my search patterns looked. They looked OK, so I stopped using it. Then I stopped flying search patterns.
 
jsparks said:
Just tried it. Thank you. Works well but I'm not sure I'll be shelling out the $45 per year for it....
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Why? You're already paying about $100 AN HOUR or more to fly an airplane. Why not $45 per year for a tool that aids in making you a better pilot?
 
NoHeat said:
Is that a rhetorical question?

Anyway, in Foreflight Settings, there are two "enable" buttons, for automatic tracking, and mine seem to be on. I don't recall fiddling with them in the past, so I don't know whether I ever turned them on, or whether they are so by default. But it apparently has been tracking me. Until tonight, I never had a reason to care, and then I spent a few seconds, found that I had tracks that could be uploaded with about two finger clicks to Google Earth and then view it in 3D.

I also discovered that if you don't know what any of the buttons are on Google Earth, and you click the one that looks like dice, you are transported immediately to the far side if the Earth, where you can no longer inspect your 3D track at the airport where there was a fly-in breakfast with yucky eggs and no pancakes, but I digress.
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Uh, no, it isn't a rhetorical question. It seems we do things differently. I download tracks from a Bad Elf. I usually have automatic tracking turned off in ForeFlight since I use it on commercial flights and I don't care to log those. It helps pass the time, allows me to sometimes know about the interesting I see, and allows me to take better pictures from the window since I can better anticipate things. But I do forget to turn on tracking for my own flights.
 
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