iFly GPS Forum

I agree with Mike that some subset of Jim's spreadsheet stuff would probably make good feature additions to iFly.  Adding sunrise/sunset/civil twilight times on an airport info or weather summary page would be nice, for instance.

Some of what Jim listed in the other thread is already there:  Headwind and crosswind components on landing runways, for instance.  The distance ring with an ETA to reach that point is antoher E6B function.  Those are two examples of how the info Jim is looking for can be (and has already been) integrated into an intuitive location within iFly.

Having some separate page/area for miscellaneous common calculations that require user input and/or don't naturally fit somewhere else, like for true airspeed, might be appropriate.  But rather than a spreadsheet that the user has to build his/her calculations in, I think that should be some finite list of pre-built forms where the user can input data and spit out a result.  So for TAS, you enter altitude, Kollsman value, outside air temp, and indicated airspeed (and whatever else I'm forgetting), and iFly spits out the answer.  Enter your heading, and iFly can also give you instantaneous headwind/tailwind details by comparing your TAS to GPS-derived groundspeed.  (Just like panel mounted GPS's do.)

But I don't think I'd agree with adding every calculation Jim listed.  (I would not vote for moon phase, for instance, nor for "pattern headings".)

So I'd suggest making a list of all the calculations you think would be valuable to large numbers of pilots, and making those suggestions either one at a time, or in a single thread that folks can throw darts at.

E6B seems like a natural for an aviation app.  Mean Civil Twilight does too and has a real time in-flight application as the pilot might choose to log a second night take off and landing at the beginning or end of a trip, if the definition of 'night' can be met.  Plugins sounds like a reasonable approach, especially if that makes it do-able in iFly hardware products. 

There will always be more good ideas than there will be resources to make them part of iFly.  These are good examples of ideas that are already working outside of iFly but might not have the demand needed to get developed.  It seems then, there could be a place for iFly tools that allow a user from within iFly to access these user applications.  This way iFly has only one key development project, that allows a spreadsheet (for example) that starts out as a one-off, that could ulitmately be shared around the community for the benefit of any number of others.  I think I'm mainly speaking about PC and Tablet users, but I don't know.

I was starting to imagine how the user interface might be implemented.  For example:

1. Android's "Recently Used Apps" button allows switching between apps.  Of course while visiting the other app makes iFly invisible and I don't know if certain functions in iFly might not update or accumulate properly during those invisible times.  Anyway, this exists now in Android, not sure about iPad, and probably not in the cards for iFly hardware.

2. Existing pop-up functions like Vertical Profile.  Having that instrument on a screen provides a button to open the VProfile object itself when desired.  What if an AppWindow instrument would be able to invoke any app already installed on the tablet? As users are Customizing the layout, they would scroll through the installed apps and assign one to that button.  When the instrument (button) is tapped, and the app window pops up, there should also be a button to scroll thru size options, so that a spreadsheet for example might only show a few cells or expand in steps until the whole screen is filled with spreadsheet.  I also wonder limiting apps to those that have been beta'd to make sure they don't interfere with iFly.  Lastly, it needs to be a slide-able window so that it can be scooted around in case the pilot wants to see underneath it.

3. The other interface possibility would be an iFly instrument that just gets data from a particular cell in a spreadsheet, and then displays only that piece of data the way it currently does for speed, bearing, altitude, or text like Next Waypoint.  If the app is running in the background, and has live calcs going on, then the instrument would continuously update that data.

4.  While typing #3, I was thinking about how a spreadsheet could be very powerful if it could tap into some of iFly's live data (like an OLE link) to use as input for the calc's or lookups in the spreadsheet.  That would greatly benefit whatever is being displayed via #1 thru 3 above, and plugins as well.