Great, thanks Bosco.
I think we are also persons of habit, we choose for a product and we stay with it for a few years. Every time again it takes time to learn to work properly als a tool with those products. But on this moment, one subscription for a year costs a lot and I have less coverage. Maybe within a few years, when there is the need again to compare, but for now, I think most people will wait a bit longer.
I agree; a “half baked” product never gets very far especially in a conservative market.
Vieke wrote:
I think we are also persons of habit
Very true – which is one of the reasons I really like Garmin Pilot – having used every single Garmin handheld since the GPS100 it just feels natural to me.
The same goes for Jeppesen Mobile FliteDeck VFR – the use of charting almost identical to the old VFR/GPS charts is the USP for me and Jepp are working very hard on further enhancements and coverage. I suspect that the lack of Irish airfield data is related to demand/timeconstraints. I am reasonably certain we will see a major update for Friedrichshafn – certainly the Baltic States and Greece need to be addressed and I know there is a demand from Eastern Europe for coverage there.
boscomantico wrote:
So even if looking only at enroute VFR charts: once you buy them all (and then you stil have covered only half of Europe), you spend north of 300 pounds / 400 Euros a year. A joke..
Not really a fair comparison as the Garmin Pilot price you are quoting includes subscriptions for “official” VFR charts which are copyrighted material, so could never be offered for free by Garmin.
SkyDemon will always be cheaper for VFR charting if you are happy with vector charts which are based on the freely available data. But personally, I would never fly VFR in complex airspace just with SkyDemon and without some more “official” charts. So I previously always carried copies of the CAA UK VFR paper charts, but now can see exactly the same in Garmin Pilot for 69GBP/year. Unfortunately Garmin Pilot doesn’t have France SIA VFR charts yet (north east only).
Vector charts have obvious advantages, but at least with a raster chart you know you have an exact recreation of the “official” chart, and are not at risk of busting airspace due to some weird data error or bug in the vector charting app that you are using. The raster resolution is Garmin Pilot is good enough for high zoom levels, so the only thing that does’t work as well as vector format is the track-up orientation.
Thanks for that data, dnj.
Can GP accept user-supplied raster charts? These exist for UK, France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria.
I might be the third user of GP on this forum and I pretty much like it. I wanted to bring up some features that I really appreciate like the weather and terrain representation, something that I couldn’t find in other apps for Europe.
And even if I really like JeppFD VFR for vfr flying I am not really impressed with it’s performance and stabilty …
I just grabbed a few further screenshots, for those who have not seen the new CAA VFR charts in Garmin Pilot. Thought it made sense to put all the large screenshot images into a separate thread picking up from here:
http://www.euroga.org/forums/maintenance-avionics/5626-garmin-pilot-getting-better
New CAA VFR charts, with government approach plate in lower split screen view, you can see that the resolution is good enough to compare favourably with vector alternatives:
LFAT on the CAA VFR charts, with (transparent) terrain colouring overlay:
Other side of the channel, terrain colour overlay also:
The standard vector based VFR alternative, LFBZ, radar overlay turned on and visual approach chart in bottom half of split screen view. The “20-SFC” and “5-SFC” airspace labelling is new to the latest version, so vector airspace depiction is improving slowly.
All taken on the ground, so geo-referencing not active.
Peter wrote:
Can GP accept user-supplied raster charts? These exist for UK, France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria.
No, you can’t upload your own base images. You need OziExplorer for that :)
Sir_Percy wrote:
I might be the third user of GP on this forum and I pretty much like it.
I count four of us now! We seem to be swimming against the tide of SkyDemon though. I have always used Garmin Pilot instead of SkyDemon, and I really can’t understand all the love for SkyDemon, in my opinion it is a poorly put together piece of software. The user interface is poorly thought out with inconsistent UI elements all over the place, the rendering performance is poor, and it has some pointless concepts like the “Go Flying” button. I never had to tell any of my Garmin GPS units whether I was flying or not!
Garmin Pilot feels like core Garmin avionics software ported to iOS (which is exactly what much of it is). So you get functionality comparable to a GTN750 or G1000 MFD, for a fraction of the price. Whereas SkyDemon feels more “app store” than “avionics” to me.
Sir_Percy wrote:
And even if I really like JeppFD VFR for vfr flying I am not really impressed with it’s performance and stabilty …
Agreed. Again, it doesn’t feel “avionics grade to me”, in the way that Garmin Pilot does. Tried JeppFD VFR too, and decided not to renew my subscription, which for now means using paper charts if VFR outside the areas that Garmin Pilot offers charts for. But if going that far afield, would mostly be IFR anyway.
I do have a GTN650 and a 795, together with GP and a GDL39 3D this makes a pretty consistent package. I would love to see the possibilty to use Jepp IFR charts within GP as it is possible on the 795. That would overcome the poor quality of the AIP charts … and would make a pretty good IFR package :-)
Percy,
your screenshot nicely shows that GP lacks the infamous Hohe Tauern Reserve Area. It’s those nitty gritty details that set the various softwares apart. But granted, this one is really particular. SD has it. Jeppesen doesn’t.
