Updated RealViews Poll

[chrisqii]

Hello iFly EFB pilots! We are hard at work on the next version of iFly EFB. In an upcoming release, we are updating RealView Satellite imagery.

In order to keep the size of the data similar, and respect our pilots device storage, we have two options we would like your opinion on.

Here are two sets of images: The first set is the proposed larger sized images, but less resolution when zoomed in. The second set is our current images, with a smaller image area, but higher resolution when zoomed in. The voting option is at the top of this thread. Thank you!

New RealViews with Larger Area and lower resolution​

Current RealViews with Smaller area and higher resolution​

 

[Don Maxwell]

How about another option--a button or something to tap on that will automatically copy the coordinates of the field and paste them into the Apple Maps or GoogleMaps app. Or at the very least copy the coordinates to the device's clipboard so the user can paste them manually into a mapping app.

I already do that now when I really want to see the field in detail. And every time I find myself muttering something unpleasant about iFly's inability to copy and paste.)

The Garmin Pilot app does all of this very nicely (on the iPhone or iPad; I don't know about Android devices). You tap on an airport in the regular map to open Pilot's version of iFly's Quickview. That shows the chart in one half of the page and info in the other half. In between, on the right side, there's a little blue circle with the top view of an airplane. Tap on that and an Apple Maps page opens up, centered on the airport. There you can scroll and zoom as far as you wish. You can even swipe up and down with two fingers for a 3D view and with luck you can even see into a hangar that happened to have its door open when the image was made.

I doubt that Garmin has to pay Apple for using the map app that comes with the iPhone or iPad. iOS Pilot has been a native device since the beginning. Cut and paste worked there as soon as Apple made it available. And Pilot has always let you rotate between landscape and portrait orientations at will without needing to close and restart the app.

 

[Cobra]

iOS Pilot has been a native device since the beginning. Cut and paste worked there as soon as Apple made it available. And Pilot has always let you rotate between landscape and portrait orientations at will without needing to close and restart the app.

Comparing Pilot to iFly is unfair. Pilot on Android devices lacks many features compared to iOS. Part of the reason iFly works so seamlessly across platforms is because they kept the user interface the same across platforms. That comes at a price, the same way Pilot's perceived benefits to you come at the price of its serious deficiencies on other platforms.

In short, "Pilot does it, so why can't iFly?" is a fallacy: Pilot doesn't do it. It only performs well on iOS.

Regardless, while your suggestion is worthy of a separate feature request, I see it as separate-but-complementary to the question on the table. In general, as of today pilots cannot count on Internet access in the cockpit and RealView is what they can expect to have available in flight.

 

[MDreger]

I never gave this that much thought. The main thing I could think I'd use this map for is to see what the actual airport looks like, and maybe the surrounding area if I was looking for landmarks to use to land, or turn pattern points in less than optimal visibility. Hopefully I don't find myself in that situation, but if I did, I suppose I'd want the widest area around the airport to be visible. It doesn't seem to me that the increased detail will provide enough resolution to be of any additional use.

 

[Don Maxwell]

Comparing Pilot to iFly is unfair. Pilot on Android devices lacks many features compared to iOS. Part of the reason iFly works so seamlessly across platforms is because they kept the user interface the same across platforms. That comes at a price, the same way Pilot's perceived benefits to you come at the price of its serious deficiencies on other platforms.

In short, "Pilot does it, so why can't iFly?" is a fallacy: Pilot doesn't do it. It only performs well on iOS.

Regardless, while your suggestion is worthy of a separate feature request, I see it as separate-but-complementary to the question on the table. In general, as of today pilots cannot count on Internet access in the cockpit and RealView is what they can expect to have available in flight.

Cobra, your final point--about availability in flight--is very good. It hadn't occurred to me at all--probably because since I began using iFly about 10 or 12 years ago, I haven't needed to make an unplanned stop and locate an unfamiliar FBO. Earlier, there were many occasions when a good RealView map would have helped considerably. (Including KRDG, where I worked briefly in my twenties. About half a century later I made an unplanned stop there and was immediately lost. Asked the tower for progressive taxi to the FBO and heard back, "Which one?" Etc., etc.)

On the other hand, fairness is irrelevant here. Pagmatism pays the bills. In effect, iFly runs on two types of devices only: iOS and Android. (Windows is essentially legacy.) What's unfair is requiring users to ignore important built-in capabilities of their devices just because iFly doesn't use them.

If Android tablets are incapable of copy and paste--well, too bad for Android users. If Garmin Pilot runs on Android tablets but can't copy and paste into a map app, then Garmin must have made a deliberate choice to favor iOS. AP could do the same thing--because it's obviously doable in iOS.

In any case, iFly already makes the coordinates available in Quickview no matter where you tap on the Map. And there's a "Current Location" Instrument which responds to a tap by adding a red border:



Surely there's some way to make iFly add those coordinates to the tablet's clipboard.

(iFly should also have a way to change the format to decimal. DMS is sooo dead now that we practically don't have sectional charts any more.)

If you have plenty of time, it is easy on an iPhone to make a screenshot of the Current Loc and then outline the coords. The iPhone will then copy them to the clipboard, and you can paste them into the Maps or GoogleMaps app. (I've even pasted them into a Topo map app to see the terrain better.) But that's cumbersome, and I probably wouldn't bother in flight. Works just fine when planning, though. Just cumbersome.

 

[Cobra]

Don, be careful what you ask for. The "iFly Aviation Tablet" is an Android device. If they're going to make improvements that only benefit one platform, which do you think they'll prefer?

AP develops on Windows (and v13 beta has been released for Windows, so it's not just legacy) and betas are usually released on Android first. Would you be happy if AP decided to break its platform commonality, abandoned its iOS competition to the market-dominant ForeFlight, and decided to just focus on being the best product possible for Windows and Android and grow its customer base there? Or if it put iOS on the back burner while it took a year or two to add and perfect OS-unique user interface overhauls in Android before considering whether to try to do the same for iOS?

AP is aware that incorporating native OS features is desired by the userbase. But that breaks the common codebase that has allowed them to seamlessly support multiple platforms since inception. Being a small company with limited development resources, it's not hard to understand why they've been reluctant to pursue multiple codebases for multiple platforms. Encouraging them to break away from that philosophy may not get the results you desire.

 

[Don Maxwell]

Cobra, isn't that a straw-man argument made of hypotheticals that seem easy to destroy?

Let's try a different direction:

I just did an internet search (in Firefox) on my Mac (with "Apple Intelligence" turned on--which is a bit scary!) and got two different kinds of response--an AI discussion and a traditional google search. My query was "Is Garmin Pilot identical on both Android and iOS devices?"

The traditional search went pretty much as I expected:

Garmin Pilot: Android vs Apple

Pilots of America
https://www.pilotsofamerica.com › ... › Flight Following


Mar 25, 2020 — Given the vast differences in features and performance between the two platforms it is absolutely unconscionable that Garmin is charging ...
Garmin Pilot iPad vs Android
Jan 10, 2019
Garmin Pilot - GDL39r | Pilots of America
Jul 3, 2023
Garmin pilot on multiple devices??
Jun 1, 2016
Android or IPad | Pilots of America
Apr 11, 2017
More results from www.pilotsofamerica.com
Missing: identical ‎| Show results with: identical

The AI response (which came first and may or may not be trustworthy) was more explicit:

AI Overview
Learn more

While Garmin Pilot offers largely the same core functionality on both Android and iOS devices, there may be slight differences in specific features or user interface elements depending on the platform, with some features potentially being slightly more advanced on one platform compared to the other; essentially, it's very close to identical but not completely identical across both operating systems.


Key points to remember:

• Core functionality is the same:
  The main navigation features, access to charts, weather data, flight planning tools, and moving map are largely identical on both platforms.

• Potential platform-specific features:
  Some advanced features like specific aircraft performance profiles, checklists, or weight and balance calculations might be slightly different or more detailed on one platform compared to the other.
  
  
  
• Updates may vary slightly:
  New features and updates may be rolled out at slightly different times for Android and iOS versions.

The yellow highlight is by the AI.

So if that's so, then Garmin appears to be developing to the maximum capabilities of the two platforms. I don't see any reason why AP should not do the same. Except that their current development tool may not be up to that job.


It might be more efficient to first determine whether the vast majority of iFly customers use the app on Android devices before limiting development to Android's inherent limitations.

Is it known that a large majority of iFly customers use it on Android devices? The answer might make this discussion irrelevant. Otherwise, it might mean that AP should consider more versatile development tools.


P.S. This is the first time I've given current AI a try on a serious matter. I've had a lot of apprehension about it. On the surface, this result seems to be excellent. Behind that, however, I'm even more apprehensive.

 

[Don Maxwell]

Sorry! I never did answer the original question. It seems to me that zooming in ought to bring out more detail. But that's not how the question is framed. My main reservation about those photos has been that about half the time I'm frustrated by the limited area, rather than the low resolution. So I'm voting for the new idea. But I'll still use a real map for planning.

But I hope AP will make it easier to get the coordinates into the clipboard, as I suggested "Yesterday at 5:20 PM."

 

[DFarleman]

Sorry! I never did answer the original question. It seems to me that zooming in ought to bring out more detail. But that's not how the question is framed. My main reservation about those photos has been that about half the time I'm frustrated by the limited area, rather than the low resolution. So I'm voting for the new idea. But I'll still use a real map for planning.

But I hope AP will make it easier to get the coordinates into the clipboard, as I suggested "Yesterday at 5:20 PM."

Don,

I'm not sure about Apple, but Android will copy to your clipboard pretty easily.

Tap and hold the bottom bar:



Tap on the coordinates. If needed, drag highlight to the area you need. Tap on "Copy" and it's in your clipboard to paste wherever you like



-Dave

 

[N854HC]

Hmmm...
Doesn't work on my phone but perhaps the navigation settings must be different from what I have?

 

[Cobra]

Hmmm...
Doesn't work on my phone but perhaps the navigation settings must be different from what I have?

Maybe. It's a flavor of "Circle to Search", which is usually triggered with a press-and-hold at the bottom middle of the screen, but that can vary by device.

Alternately, some devices (older or less common brands/models) may not support CtS or may not have it enabled, but you should be able to perform a similar function using Google Assistant and performing a search on the screen: With the text you want to copy visible on the screen, launch Google Assistant (also usually by press-holding the bottom center of the screen, but it might be different for some devices or if you've reconfigured how to launch GA on your device), tap the screen to search what's shown, and then crop the view to just the text you want to copy.

 

[Don Maxwell]

Don,

I'm not sure about Apple, but Android will copy to your clipboard pretty easily.

Tap and hold the bottom bar:

Tap on the coordinates. If needed, drag highlight to the area you need. Tap on "Copy" and it's in your clipboard to paste wherever you like

-Dave

Excellent, Dave! So in this regard, iFly on Android is way ahead of iFly on iOS. That doesn't make the iOS user in me happy, but it does seem to demonstrate that iFly already has different versions for Android and iOS.

Sorry, Cobra. It looks like we were both differently wrong. So there's no argument about whether to develop differently for the two platforms. It's already being done! (Sorry, I still don't count Windows as a practical iFly platform, even though I have it running on a tablet-laptop on my desk.)

I wrote that much early this afternoon, then got interrupted. Came back too late to do more than emote--as you'll see below if you look at it. I'll try to make sense before writing any more about this subject--or these subjects.

Dave, let's see if I read you right.

"Tap and hold the bottom bar:" and while holding it, "tap on the coordinates" Yes? That takes two fingers, right?

Does that work with any text in iFly? Elsewhere in Android, outside of iFly?

On my iPad and iPhone, your routine does nothing in iFly. But in many other apps it produces an effect similar to what you've described. It seems that iFly prohibits recognizing text. Also copying and pasting text.

Outside of iFly, iOS does a good job of converting images of words and numbers to text. In an image, tap and hold on anything that looks like text (letters and numerals) and iOS will recognize and highlight them, and put up a menu containing "Copy, Select All, Look Up, Translate, Search Web, Speak, Spell, and Share..." If it's in a different language--yep, the English translation pops up. And Copy, copies the text to the clipboard.

But none of that works in iOS iFly.

I didn't know that iFly allows text recognition in Android.

I haven't found a way to recognize any text anywhere in iFly, except by screenshotting it and recognizing that image.

Sunny beach! (my current fav euphemism) I'd hate to havta buy an Android tablet just to figure out how Android and iOS differ.

(Also, I realize now that just to SEE the coordinates at the top of the popup, you first have to select the NAV view. No coords in APT or WX views. I hadn't noticed that before.)


Sorry this is so messy. I don't have time tonight to make sense, especially when I don't know what I'm talking about.

 

[Cobra]

Excellent, Dave! So in this regard, iFly on Android is way ahead of iFly on iOS.

This has nothing to do with differences in iFly between Android and iOS. It is not an iFly feature, it is an OS capability. See below.

That doesn't make the iOS user in me happy, but it does seem to demonstrate that iFly already has different versions for Android and iOS.

No, this has nothing to do with iFly. The "Circle to Search" feature in Android is an OS-level feature independent of any app, and iFly is wholly unaware of it. Android is just jumping up, looking at the screen, grabbing data from the image, and performing a Google search, all without iFly having any idea that's happening.

Sorry, Cobra. It looks like we were both differently wrong. So there's no argument about whether to develop differently for the two platforms. It's already being done!

No, different development is not occurring. See above.

"Tap and hold the bottom bar:" and while holding it, "tap on the coordinates" Yes? That takes two fingers, right?

No, just one finger. You tap and hold to activate the Android OS feature "Circle to Search". Then you can tap or drag your finger around the screen to highlight or circle areas of interest. Depending on what you "circle", Android will either do an image or text-based search. But if it's a text-based search, and the text is Lat/Lon coordinates, then Google will immediately bring up a map centered on that location.

Once CtS identifies text and places it in the search field, that text can then be selected and copied into the clipboard to be transferred to other apps as a subsequent operation.

Does that work with any text in iFly? Elsewhere in Android, outside of iFly?

Yes. It works with anything on the screen, in any app.

On my iPad and iPhone, your routine does nothing in iFly. But in many other apps it produces an effect similar to what you've described. It seems that iFly prohibits recognizing text. Also copying and pasting text.

No, it means you're using an iOS device, not an Android device.

Outside of iFly, iOS does a good job of converting images of words and numbers to text. In an image, tap and hold on anything that looks like text (letters and numerals) and iOS will recognize and highlight them, and put up a menu containing "Copy, Select All, Look Up, Translate, Search Web, Speak, Spell, and Share..." If it's in a different language--yep, the English translation pops up. And Copy, copies the text to the clipboard.

But none of that works in iOS iFly.

I'm sure you must be mistaken. iOS is always and in all ways better than Android. This is an immutable fact and a universal truth.

I didn't know that iFly allows text recognition in Android.

iFly does no such thing. This behavior is an Android OS capability independent of any app.

I haven't found a way to recognize any text anywhere in iFly, except by screenshotting it and recognizing that image.

You should try using an Android device.

Sunny beach! (my current fav euphemism) I'd hate to havta buy an Android tablet just to figure out how Android and iOS differ.

That's one way to do it.

(Also, I realize now that just to SEE the coordinates at the top of the popup, you first have to select the NAV view. No coords in APT or WX views. I hadn't noticed that before.)

That's correct--coords are NAV details, so they show up on the NAV tab. Likewise, you don't get WX data on the NAV tab, or Airspace data on the WX tab, etc.

Sorry this is so messy. I don't have time tonight to make sense, especially when I don't know what I'm talking about.

Hope this helps.

 

[DFarleman]

@Don Maxwell,

As Cobra summed it up, this is an Android tool, that isn't available on all devices, and is independent of iFly. I do not have Apple products and mentioned this as maybe Apple products would have something similar for a different approach to get what you are looking for.

-Dave

 

[N854HC]

Confirmed that Circle to Search is not available on Pixel 5A phone, but is available beginning with Pixel 6 phones. In case that is useful to anyone.
john