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HomeHomeDiscussionsDiscussionsiFly GPS for An...iFly GPS for An...A great app but some things need to be improved.A great app but some things need to be improved.
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3/14/2017 3:50 PM
 
Unknown newbie; I think your feedback is very constructive, and I'm sure it will be considered by AP. I've been an iFly owner and user since 2010, and truly believe it's by far the easiest navigation software to use, and their hardware (740) is outstanding. I've travelled everywhere from the back country mountains of Idaho to to the Bahamas, and it has NEVER failed me. Some of the negative feedback you are receiving must be taken with a grain of salt. There will always be pessimists. But believe me, the ones that count are listening. Get to know the program, and set up your preferences, and you will love it.
 
New Post
3/14/2017 4:23 PM
 
wrote:
there are several important features that I find very annoying or poorly implemented. I have recently started looking around for another EFB to replace it since I find myself needing to fiddle around too much with the app while I'm trying to fly. Below are the things that are driving me away from iFly:

the above are likely going to be deal killers for me when it comes time to renew this summer.
I don't see this as very constructive. To me, his suggestions would be better if he left this part out. Just my opinion. Who is the pessimist?
 
New Post
3/14/2017 6:54 PM
 

Greetings Unnamed user! (how did you manage to set up your account with no display name?)

We are very pleased to have your feedback, and you are correct in your assumption that we *do* want to know what type of stuff is going on inside your head, especially when it comes to things that might help us retain your business, as well as the business of those who are like-minded.

We will review all of your suggestions here, and let you know a response/plan.

I have a few questions to ask about each item:

1) Clunky access to extended runways. A one touch toggle button so I can quickly and easily turn them ALL on or off would probably suffice.
Currently you can tap-hold any airport in your plan, and select "Extended Runways => All" (3 taps). But this short-cut is only for airport landings in your flight plan. It sounds like you want to be able to see this for all airports at once, or just any airport along the way? (even ones that you are not planning to Land at?) Please be more explicit about the scenarios/reasons you'd want to see these. Our current implementation just tries to make it easy for you to show these for the landing airport in your plan. Also prioritize the importance of this feature, scale of 1 to 10.


2) Poorly implemented vertical profile making it nearly useless. It's either an icon that's too small (even at its largest setting) or it's taking up a huge chunk of the screen, blocking the moving map when open - look at EasyVFR for a well done vertical profile.
You are not alone on this. In fact, for the Tablet mode, 9.8 adds a few more oversized options for you to pick from. We could add a few more easily, and should add these to Phone mode as well. What type of device are you running on now? (screen size) And if you go to "Menu => Setup => Screen Settings => Screen Layout" does it say you are in Phone mode or Tablet mode?

3) Out of control alerts. There are far too many popping up and they're MUCH more of a distraction than a help! I'm mostly interested in obstacles and entering class B,C,D airspace. Almost every other alert is an unnecessary distraction. We need more and clearer ways to customize these.
You are not alone here either. Version 10.0 is about to be released start of April, and we may be able to handle this one by then. It's been a complaint from a number of users. We really need to make sure the "disabled alerts" is really "disabled" (no popup box), and we can surely achieve this pretty easily. Thank you for bringing it up!

4) Too little info about individual airports on the base map. Again EasyVFR is a good example of how to show info about runway type, and direction with a simple small icon. If you could do something similar and figure out a clever way to also show the traffic pattern, that would be wonderful. There are a LOT of small airports (most of them grass strips) around my area, and a small informative icon that shows which way the runway faces and the traffic pattern would make it easier for me to avoid the traffic at these airports.
This request sounds interesting. It won't make the version 10 release, but might make our wish list, after getting more input from beta testers, to make sure this is more of a widespread need of other pilots too.

5)One other item I'd like to see on the base map are VFR reporting points.
<brian>I don't know what these are. Can you be explicit for me?

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In short, I think we can do something about items #2 and #3 above very quickly. I need to gather more input about items #1 and #4 to determine what (if anything) we should do to satisfy these requests.

Also, it would be swell if you could edit your profile to give yourself a display name, so that we'll know what to call you. And if you are interested joining our beta team, please let us know. New beta testers usually bring some fresh perspectives to the team.


Brian Knox, Sr Software Engineer
 
New Post
3/14/2017 7:55 PM
 

5)One other item I'd like to see on the base map are VFR reporting points.
I don't know what these are. Can you be explicit for me?

The image below has some VFR Reporting Points circled. They're supposed to be commonly known and used (by tower controllers) to know and use as reporting points. I presume he means to transfer these to the vector map.

[attachment]VFR Reporting Points.jpg[/attachment]

 
New Post
3/14/2017 9:37 PM
 

Brian,
To expand on Mike D's post, a VFR Reporting Point, also called a VFR Checkpoint, is depicted on VFR charts by a flag and their name underlined. The name will be something like a city name ("Aliceville"), "Nuclear Plant", "Smokestacks", "Carter Lake", or other descriptive name known and used by pilots and ATC.

This is different from the VFR Waypoints that you already have in the flight planning database. VFR Waypoints are 5 characters long and start with "VP", such as VPBRK. These are used by VFR pilots for route planning and execution, but are NEVER referred to by ATC.

The big difference is that VFR Waypoints are at a specific lat/lon, whereas a VFR Reporting Point is often an entire city or body of water without a specific lat/lon to define it. Therefore, I'm not sure how you'll be able to find or create/define a database with these waypoints.

While it might be helpful to some, there's so many of them that we would need a toggle to turn them off because like some alerts, too many Reporting Points on the screen would be a distraction. Or perhaps they shouldn't show up until a certain zoom level. Again, assuming you can even find a database of them.

To the original poster, this is the type of discussions that we have in the beta forums that are available only to us. I highly recommend you request to be a beta tester and join in the discussions. We get to pay pull price, test software before it is publicly released, argue our positions with others that are just as hard headed as us, and sometimes reload iFly from scratch (losing our custom settings and saved plans in the process), but the rare frustrations are well worth the benefits to me. You appear to have some fairly thick skin, so you may just be a good fit as a beta tester. The more the merrier!

ifly.adventurepilot.com/SUPPORT/BetaT...


Jeff Nokomis Clark, Mooney M20G, iFly app on ASUS ZenPad Z8s, ASUS ZenFone AR, ASUS Windows 10 tablet, Stratux ADS-B w AHRS
 
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HomeHomeDiscussionsDiscussionsiFly GPS for An...iFly GPS for An...A great app but some things need to be improved.A great app but some things need to be improved.