The problem with touch is the finger smudging. See photo attached. Perhaps, there exist screen protectors, like those for smart phones and iPhones?
That should be an advantage for Avidyne IFD, on which everything (?) can be done with the knobs if so desired.
That may be particularly relevant if using an Ipad tool such as Foreflight to transfer the flight plan to the box, which saves a large amount of keyboarding.
Now with slightly more experience in the IFD (but still not a lot), I find I use a combination of touch screen and knobbery, with knobbery probably being 70%.
The problem with touch is the finger smudging. See photo attached. Perhaps, there exist screen protectors, like those for smart phones and iPhones?
We have solved this problem by cutting a standard iPad screenprotector to the same size as the GTN display. It is working fine now for years and helps also to protect the screen from scratches.
It is good to protect the screen, but doesn’t that merely transfer the fingerprints onto the protector?
I have been around this loop many times with phones and such, and have given up using protectors on phones, preferring the smooth glass for the ability to easily wipe it. On a tablet I use an expensive antireflection protector, for improved sunlight readability.
The screens on the IFDs and the GTNs are not smooth and probably collect fingerprints more than they should but given the obvious application I would expect them to have a surface which is good for antireflection.
I’ve been watching some videos of these two products.
Even from the US flying environment perspective (where, it seems, you get ATC stuff we don’t get in Europe e.g. “intercept airway V35”) it is interesting to compare the two.
Garmin:
https://tinyurl.com/yxxhtm54 (the actual Youtube URL contains weird characters and gets mangled)
Avidyne:
These videos are several years old and maybe there have been software changes?
The Avidyne seems clearly better. That was also my impression seeing them demoed at Aero EDNY over the years.
As soon as budget allows, I’m replacing my 430W with an IFD540. I’m convinced, especially since I saw that connection to the ADL.
The differences in the user interface logic are interesting. Garmin reportedly picked up stuff from King in the 1990s (when a lot of King people went to Garmin) and seem to have retained that general approach ever since. Avidyne started their navigator interfaces in a different direction.
When I installed my IFD I would say Avidyne logic was ahead of Garmin with QWERTY and SV and the 3D follow. But I think they’ve pretty much narrowed the gap now and some features Garmin are better at, like the voice recognition. Avidyne isn’t standing still and in fact are redeveloping a suite to take on G3000 and ProLine, so I expect it to be pretty even moving forward. The reality however is that Garmin has deep pockets and can certify much quicker, so Avidyne will always be a little slower with new stuff.
I just saw an ad article for the IFD repackaged as an FMS for larger aircrafts, it looks nice.
It’s true, Garmin has narrowed the gap, and frankly with the flight stream I haven’t entered a flightplan in years – it goes straight from Autorouter to Garmin Pilot to the GTN. Same thing for databases, I haven’t had to put those SD cards out.
The ability to display the ADL info is great and I wish Garmin would open up, but it’s a marginal thing for them. The killer Garmin strategy is copied from Apple, it’s integration. For example auto land, you need Garmin all the way through. Vnav as well. For many, having the ADL on the FMS but no VNAV on their PFD will be a suboptimal choice compared with having the ADL on iPad and VNAV.
